Written by Tal Fortgang, the article that I have found centers around the statement, "Check your privilege" (Fortgang 1). Fortgang explains how often other students at Princeton University, where he attends school, tell him this "command." He expresses his condemnation for those that say he would not be as successful as he currently is, if he was another race (Fortgang 2).

The core of his argument is that his success was earned through his hard work as well as his family's hours of labor, which he explains in an extremely sarcastic manner.


Fortgang opens his argument with the statement, "Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland (Fortgang 4). As he continues to explain that his family has suffered through escaping the hands of Hitler and concentration camps, only to face more labor pursuing the American dream, he continues this sharp form of sarcasm (Fortgang 5-6). Harshly, he explains that what others view as "privilege," is actually the exact thing that should be praised because it is not privilege, but rather "self-sacrifice" (Fortgang 12).

He attacks those who have told him to "Check your privilege" directly, expressing, "You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression (Fortgang 8). Through this statement he is calling his condemners ignorant because no one ever truly knows a person's background, so they should not speak as if they do.

The author again restates that, "It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege” (Fortgang 14). Once again he tries to prove that his success is unrelated to his race, but in contrast, values the morals that were passed from one generation to the next, rather than the privilege that was passed on.

He closes his article with a statement that summarizes his reality, "I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing" (Fortgang 16).

This research connects to my essential question through countering the very idea that white privilege exists. The author of this article strongly contradicts and gives absolutely no credit of his success to his race. He angrily expresses the suffering his family has endured, in an effort to prove that they have suffered too.