There are few phrases in modern political discussion that manage to sound simultaneously self-righteous, presumptuous and intellectually lazy quite as efficiently as:
“Check your white privilege.”
In its most charitable interpretation, the phrase is supposed to encourage people to consider whether there are forms of discrimination they have never personally encountered because of their ethnicity.
That is a legitimate subject for discussion.
The problem begins when the phrase stops being an invitation to reflect and becomes a judgement about an individual.
Because the colour of somebody’s skin does not tell you their biography.
It does not tell you whether they grew up wealthy or poor.
It does not tell you whether they had loving parents or were neglected.
It does not tell you whether they lived in a comfortable home or in accommodation with no heating or running hot water.
It does not tell you whether they were privately educated or barely educated at all.
It does not tell you whether they inherited wealth or built everything they have from nothing.
Yet “check your white privilege” is often delivered as though all of those questions have already been answered.
They have not.
Consider Two Children
Imagine one child is white.
His parents separate when he is very young. His grandparents intervene because otherwise he may enter the care system. He later returns to a household characterised by poverty, neglect, rubbish accumulating inside the home, inadequate heating and no reliable hot water.
Imagine another child is black.
She grows up in a financially secure household with two supportive professional parents, attends excellent schools, travels internationally, has access to tutors and eventually receives substantial help with university and buying a first home.
Which child is privileged?
The intellectually serious answer is:
It depends what kind of privilege you are talking about.
The black child may still encounter racial prejudice that the white child does not.
But it would be absurd to describe the white child’s overall upbringing as more privileged merely because he is white.
Human life is not one-dimensional.
Privilege Exists in Many Forms
Privilege can arise from:
wealth,
education,
family stability,
inheritance,
good health,
social connections,
geography,
citizenship,
housing,
access to good schools,
and countless other circumstances.
Race can be one factor among them.
But elevating race above every other variable turns a complicated human life into a racial classification exercise.
That is not sophisticated sociology.
It is reductionism.
Douglas Murray’s Objection
Douglas Murray has repeatedly criticised the way “white privilege” is used as a moral accusation.
One of the strongest elements of his argument is the distinction between being treated properly and being privileged.
Suppose one person is badly treated by the police because of their ethnicity while another person is treated lawfully and respectfully.
The injustice is the mistreatment of the first person.
The solution should be that everyone is treated properly.
It does not necessarily follow that the second person has received an illegitimate racial benefit simply because they were treated as they should have been.
The same principle applies in employment.
If one candidate is rejected because of race and another is assessed fairly on merit, the injustice is the discrimination against the first candidate.
The objective should be equal treatment.
Normal treatment should not be reclassified as something morally suspect.
Statistics Are Not Biographies
There is another conceptual error buried inside the slogan.
Population-level statistics can identify disparities.
They may show that certain ethnic groups experience poorer outcomes in employment, health, education, housing or policing.
That can be important evidence.
But population statistics cannot tell you everything about an individual.
A statistical tendency is not a biography.
If a particular ethnic group is, on average, wealthier than another, that does not mean every individual member of that group is wealthy.
If a particular group experiences discrimination more frequently, that does not mean every member experiences it.
And if one group statistically encounters fewer racial barriers, that does not automatically mean every member has lived a privileged life.
Confusing group averages with individual circumstances is one of the most basic errors in reasoning.
The Problem of Racial Assumptions
There is also an uncomfortable contradiction at the heart of telling somebody to “check their white privilege.”
Modern anti-racism rightly argues that people should not be judged according to skin colour.
Yet the phrase can do precisely that.
It can infer somebody’s social status, life experience and opportunities from their race.
That is racial essentialism.
Changing the ethnicity involved does not make the reasoning suddenly sound.
If it is wrong to assume that a black person must be poor, disadvantaged or culturally deprived simply because they are black, then it should also be wrong to assume that a white person must have had an easy life simply because they are white.
The principle has to work in both directions.
Character Matters More Than Pigmentation
A healthier standard is to judge individuals according to character and conduct.
If somebody is decent, honest, informed and behaves with integrity, they deserve respect.
If somebody behaves dishonestly, arrogantly, abusively or irresponsibly, they should be judged accordingly.
Their pigmentation is irrelevant.
True equality does not mean refusing to make moral judgements.
It means applying the same moral standards to everyone.
A member of a minority group does not become incapable of arrogance, ignorance or bad behaviour because of their ethnicity.
Likewise, a white person does not become morally suspect simply because of theirs.
Equal treatment requires equal moral agency.
The Unfalsifiable Argument
There is another weakness in the idea of “checking privilege.”
Suppose somebody says:
“I do not believe my life has been particularly privileged.”
The response is sometimes:
“The fact that you cannot see your privilege proves how privileged you are.”
Now the proposition has become impossible to challenge.
Agreement proves it.
Denial proves it.
Personal evidence is dismissed.
The conclusion survives every possible response.
That is not a particularly healthy form of reasoning.
A claim that cannot meaningfully be questioned begins to resemble dogma rather than analysis.
Hardship Is Not a Competition
Rejecting simplistic ideas of racial privilege does not require denying racism.
That would be equally foolish.
A person may experience racial discrimination that another person never encounters.
A different person may experience poverty, neglect, disability, family instability or social exclusion that the first person never experiences.
Both experiences are real.
Neither cancels the other.
The mistake is turning suffering into a league table.
Human beings accumulate advantages and disadvantages across many different dimensions.
There is rarely a single variable capable of explaining an entire life.
Personal Responsibility Still Exists
Modern discussions of privilege also sometimes underestimate personal agency.
Circumstances matter greatly.
Some people undoubtedly start life with considerable advantages.
Others begin several steps behind.
But background does not account for every eventual outcome.
People still make choices.
They work.
They study.
They persevere.
They take risks.
They recover from failure.
They accept responsibility.
Or they do not.
Recognising structural disadvantage should never require pretending that individual effort and character are meaningless.
Likewise, achievement should not automatically be dismissed as the inevitable product of privilege.
Sometimes people succeed because they worked extremely hard for what they have.
That remains true regardless of their race.
The Crayon Problem
If somebody genuinely wants to discuss racial inequality, there is plenty worth discussing.
History.
Discrimination.
Education.
Housing.
Employment.
Social mobility.
Policing.
Those subjects deserve evidence and serious conversation.
But if someone knows nothing about another person’s background and simply responds with:
“Check your white privilege.”
they have already demonstrated one of the problems under discussion.
They have decided they understand another person’s life by looking at their skin.
At that point, one might reasonably conclude that explaining the logical contradiction using words — or possibly crayons — is unlikely to be especially productive.
The joke works because there is a serious point underneath it.
An accusation of prejudice loses much of its moral force when it is itself based upon a racial assumption.
Check Your Assumptions
Perhaps the more useful instruction is not:
“Check your white privilege.”
Perhaps it is:
“Check your assumptions.”
Before deciding somebody is privileged, learn something about their life.
Before assuming somebody is disadvantaged, understand their circumstances.
Before assigning collective guilt, examine individual conduct.
Before dismissing an argument because of the speaker’s race, examine whether the argument itself is true.
And above all, resist the temptation to turn complex human beings into representatives of racial categories.
If equality means anything, it must mean judging people primarily as individuals.
Not by the colour of their skin.
But by the content of their character.
