But while this retort makes a very correct statement, it is nonetheless a Straw Man argument, because the correctly interpreted meaning of the phase “check your privilege” contains no assertion whatsoever that anyone ought to feel guilty. What it actually means is merely that it is important for someone with privilege to make zimself aware that zie has such privilege – because people who have such privileges often take them for granted to the point of not even being aware that they have such privileges, a phenomenon known as “privilege blindness”.
And why is privilege blindness such a problem? The reason is that it taints one’s understanding of important social issues, often to the point of those affected being unaware that certain social problems even exist, or that any action is needed to remedy them beyond the very people who are most impacted by them picking themselves up by bootstraps that they don’t even have.
But the truth is that even though privilege blindness is a real thing, as are the problems that it contributes to, it is hardly the only cognitive effect that hinders our quest for a better, more just society. Integrating the implorement for those with privilege to check their privilege into a broader effort to get everyone who check all their biases will not only have a good chance of reducing the opportunity for “check your privilege” to be misinterpreted. It will also help clear away some of the other obstacles to a brighter future.
I first heard the phrase “check your privilege” so long ago that I can’t even remember for sure where or when I first heard it. On the other hand, “check your biases” is a phrase that I never came across until very recently when reading a certain book by Zoe McKey1, a book that isn’t even about social justice, but just plainly about critical thinking. Considering how much time I’ve spent in social justice circles, this is a testament to how little emphasis there is there to any form of bias-checking other than privilege-checking on the part of those with privilege. This negligence is much to the detriment of the very causes that those circles wish to promote.
So why is there so much of a fixation on those with privilege checking their privilege to the exclusion or near-exclusion of any emphasis on any other kind of bias-checking that needs to be done? That question is a bit difficult to answer. If there has been a scientific study on that matter, then I certainly don’t know about it. Frankly, I doubt that there has been – let alone that it has been adequately scrutinized and replicated for its conclusions to be accepted as theory, assuming that the study was able to come to any clear conclusions in the first place.
I could always offer my guesses as to why the emphasis is so strongly just on privilege-checking on the part of the privileged – but not only do I lack any scientific answer to this question, but I even lack enough information to qualify my guess as an educated one. Guesses are more forthcoming as to why this tendency has been preserved ever since it came into being, but not as to why this tendency came into being in the first place.
But there are several ways in which progressive circles would benefit if the implorement for bias-checking were to expand from just those with privilege checking their own privilege to everyone involved in a movement checking all biases that would obscure navigation toward a better, brighter future.
For starters, while those with a specific privilege are at greater risk of blindness toward that privilege, privilege blindness can also occur (even if by different psychological mechanism) among those lacking in said privilege. For example, there are plenty of people with dyslexia and/or attention deficit disorder who have been told that they’re lazy and/or undisciplined enough times that they’ve come to believe it themselves. They try to “apply themselves” repeatedly and to no avail, but they aren’t able to call out the accusations of their slackishness for the nonsense that it is because they have been gaslit into doubting their own empirical experience of having tried in earnest over and over again.
In other scenarios, those without privilege may be well aware that others have advantages that they lack, but they’ve been brainwashed into accepting such things as just part of how things ought to be. Details of different ways that this can be done must be deferred to later articles, but suffice it to say now that society has a track record of great creativity in the narratives that it can come up with to get people to think without due cause that their lack of certain advantages that others have is something that should be simply accepted. Yes, it is true that sometimes these narratives are used by those with privilege to justify measures that they take to maintain their privilege, but they also at times get internalized by the underprivileged as well. Greater emphasis on critical thinking, which would include a more comprehensive approach to bias-checking, can help with this problem as well.
But so far, we’ve only discussed the matter with regards to awareness of privilege and underprivilege. This issue, however, goes well beyond this. Sometimes, even once everyone in the movement understands what privileges those in privilege have that others don’t have, the movement still needs to determine how to go about pursuing reform. Lack of focus on critical thinking can cause the movement to pursue a course of action that is not the most effective one possible, can be totally ineffective, and might even be down-right counterproductive. Critical thinking is needed to guard against this – and bias-checking is an inherent part of the art of critical thinking.
Failure to engage in critical thinking can even taint the movement’s very agenda. The goal of a social justice movement, for example, should be to pursue the goals that best redress the injustices that prompt it. However, lack of critical thinking can cause the movement to invest tremendous resources in pursuit of gals that, even if achieved, will not do much at all to redress said injustices. What’s worse, the movement might pursue goals that aren’t really beneficial at all to redressing those injustices, but which cognitive biases, mere glitches in human psychology, confused those who steer the movement into thinking that those goals are important.
This is not to say that those steering the movement are bad people. On the contrary, suggesting that would be missing the very point of this critique. My point is that they, like everyone else, have human failings, and are just as suceptible to cognitive biases as everyone else is. It is in their interest to stop once in a while and examine their biases, so that that way they can more clearly see the path to pursuing that which they truly strive for.
But there is one more area where a more comprehensive checking of biases is important. Very often, it is easy for one marginalized group to throw another one under the bus. Histoically, this has been attributed to a process known as “respectability politics”. Respectability politics is when one marginalized group adopts a strategy of trying to appear respectable by mainstream society’s standards rather than challenging the justice and validity of those standards. There are obvious benefits to this strategy when followed appropriately – but it becomes a problem when this appeasement of mainstream standards calls on them to shun anoghet marginalized group that deserves their solidarity, or even to jettison a subset of their own group that is less capable of adapting to those mainstream standards of respectability. Critical thinking can help draw the fine line between proper use of respectability politics and this kind of abusive use thereof.
However, while it is true that respectability politics undoubtedly plays a role in the tendency of one marginalized group to throw another under the bus, there are other factors at play as well. Once such factor that is way too easily ignored is the fact that members of marginalized groups are human beings just like everyone else. As such, they are vulnerable to all human frailities, including the capability of prejudice and bigotry. In short, sometimes members of one marginalized group participate in the marginalization of another not in order to appease the mainstream, but rather, due to the same human failings that cause the mainstream to marginalize both groups.
At any rate, whether it’s caused by respectability politics or by the same old frailties as everyone else or even a combination of both of the above, critical thinking is crucial to guarding against the tendency of marginalized groups to bail on one another. And, as previously stated, critical thinking requires a bias-checking that is far more comprehensive than just telling privileged people to check their own privilege.
Again, I don’t know why progressive circles limit the emphasis on bias-checking to such a narrow scope. But I do know that it is crucial that this tendency be fixed.
