Check Your Privilege

The intellectual foundation for "Check Your Privilege" traces back to Peggy McIntosh's 1989 essay "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack," first published in *Peace and Freedom Magazine*2. McIntosh listed 26 daily advantages that white people enjoy, framing privilege not as individual meanness but as invisible systems conferring dominance on certain groups2. The essay became a staple of women's studies curricula and was widely discussed on the WMST-L academic listserv throughout the 1990s and 2000s17.

Inspired by McIntosh's work, numerous privilege checklists appeared online. In September 2006, the social justice blog Alas! A Blog compiled fifteen such lists, covering able-bodied privilege, heterosexual privilege, class privilege, American privilege, and more14. Earlham College students adapted McIntosh's framework into a "straight privilege" checklist examining daily effects of heterosexual advantage7.

The specific phrase "Check Your Privilege" appeared as early as March 2006 on the social justice blog Shrub.com, in an article explaining how to accept one's inherent privilege and better understand the experiences of non-privileged groups1. The author wrote in response to frustration from a man "who felt that he was always told what *not* to do, but never enlightened on strategies for what *to* do," creating something intended as both an activist resource and a bridge to well-meaning people who didn't understand why marginalized groups got angry at them1.

The phrase crossed from internet slang into mainstream political vocabulary during the mid-2010s. Major outlets including *The New York Times*, *Time*, *The Guardian*, and *The American Prospect* all published analyses of the phrase and its effects on public discourse613.

In academia, the underlying concept of privilege checklists became standard material in women's studies and social justice curricula. McIntosh's original essay was discussed on the WMST-L listserv from 1992 onward, with educators developing exercises around her checklist, including having students categorize each privilege item as "discretionary" or "non-discretionary"17.

The phrase also shaped how platforms handle discourse about identity and inequality. Its rise on Tumblr in 2011-2012 coincided with the growth of social justice blogging as a distinct internet subculture, influencing the rhetorical style of progressive online spaces for years afterward7.

The 2020 TikTok challenge demonstrated the phrase's ability to adapt to new platforms and contexts. By translating abstract privilege theory into a visual, participatory format, the challenge made the concept accessible to audiences who might never encounter academic frameworks10.

The phrase entered mainstream political discourse in May 2014 when Tal Fortgang, a Princeton freshman, published an essay in the campus conservative magazine *The Princeton Tory* titled "Checking My Privilege: Character as the Basis of Privilege"12. Fortgang had been told to check his privilege during a classroom discussion on welfare and responded by detailing his Jewish family's history, including grandparents who survived the Holocaust and Bergen-Belsen, and a father who worked his way through City College12. The essay was reprinted by *Time* and covered by *The New York Times*, which called the phrase "conversational kryptonite"13.

The Fortgang episode highlighted fault lines in how "check your privilege" operated in practice. The *Ordinary Times* blog noted that similar confrontations "happen on every college campus, every semester," making it curious that this particular incident went viral12. The writer observed that "I've never found the term 'check your privilege' to be an effective discourse especially in the currently diluted Internet form of the phrase because it exists at the surface level and does not deal with family or personal history"12. The case also raised questions about intersectionality: Fortgang identified as white and male but came from a family marked by extreme persecution, complicating neat privilege categories12.

Meanwhile, the phrase generated sustained counter-discourse. FeministCritics compiled a "female privilege" checklist as a rebuttal to male privilege frameworks, listing 24 areas where women in the West have advantages over men, from lower murder rates to greater latitude for emotional expression15. CounterPunch extended McIntosh's framework to American national privilege, arguing that citizens of powerful nations enjoy an "invisible knapsack" of advantages including cheap goods from exploited workers and the luxury of not needing to understand other countries16.

Urban Dictionary entries captured the phrase's semantic drift over time. Earlier definitions described it as a genuine call to recognize advantages: "a Phrase meant to tell somebody to look at the Privileges they have"18. Later entries documented its weaponization: "A Term used to dismiss any Problem as unimportant, because of that Person being 'Privileged'"18. One entry illustrated the shift with contrasting examples, showing the phrase moving from calling out someone complaining about the wrong-colored car to dismissing someone at risk of losing their house18.

The phrase got a second life in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's killing. A TikTok user named Kenya, posting as @boss_bigmamma from Virginia, created a "put a finger down" challenge asking viewers to lower a finger for each racially motivated experience they'd faced10. The prompts included being called a racial slur, being followed in a store, having someone clutch their purse in an elevator, and having to teach children how to interact safely with police11. Kenya told BuzzFeed she chose the label "check your privilege" rather than "white privilege" because "I know discrimination happens for many reasons"11.

The TikTok challenge went viral, with thousands of users posting their own versions. White participants used it to highlight racial disparities, while others applied it to socioeconomic and religious experiences11. Kenya's original video was viewed more than 59,000 times, and the responses overwhelmingly praised its impact. "This was extremely eye opening, and very appreciated," one commenter wrote10. Kenya expressed hope that "people will use the privilege they have to help others" and that the challenge would "create a better existence for our grandchildren"11.