Check your privilege, Buzzfeed!

Which Dolly Parton song are you? What Disney ride are you? Which black best friend from the 90s are you?

The ridiculousness of the Buzzfeed quiz isn't a secret. Most of us have taken one, or many, of these quizzes, and then we've gotten an answer that makes no sense and were left to wonder how that was even possible and why the hell we took that quiz in the first place. There's no way to understand the oddness that is the Buzzfeed quiz or why it became an internet zeitgeist. The quizzes themselves are dysfunctional. There's no transparency to how they weight their questions and there's no way to see what all the potential outcomes could be, so you can't see how biased the quizzes are at the start. For example, it's totally unclear how exactly different pictures of a crying babies represents what cookie you are (I'm sure this is a thing, but it could be).

The Buzzfeed quizzes are all fine and dandy (if royally stupid) when asking which city are you most likely to your leprechaun and gold, or which TV dog are you (these are not yet quizzes, but just you wait!), but when Buzzfeed tries to take things seriously, well that's when they look the most ridiculous. 

In case you haven't noticed, there's been a revived discussion regarding the phrase 'check your privilege.' There was a freshman at Princeton who wrote an article that went viral discussing his frustration with the phrase/term. He appeared on conservative talks shows and, whether he liked it or not, became the current poster boy for those unhappy with the war-against-white-men. The New York Times printed an article that discussed the controversy from both sides. And then...and THEN there was the Buzzfeed quiz to see just how privileged you are in nice packaged questionnaire with no factual or scientific method at all. 

Let's just take a moment to look at the Buzzfeed quiz that examines how much you have to 'check your privilege'. They ask questions such as whether you're male, whether you're comfortable with your identity, whether you are white, whether you've gone to bed hungry, whether you have a disability, whether you've worked in services, whether you've been treated poorly due to religion, whether you've been treated poorly due to your race or gender, whether you've thought of suicide or attempted suicide, whether your parents are divorced, whether your parents went to college, whether you've studied abroad, and more.

In a broad sense, these aren't terrible questions, except 1) they are all on a 0-1 scale, so you could go to bed slightly hungry or have not eaten in a week, or you could have stuttered as a child or had Lupus and either way it counts toward the same amount of privilege or disadvantage in life. 2) there's no way of knowing how these question and answers are weighted, if at all. This second problem is not at all trivial and comes with a variety of problems. For example, which is 'worse' having multiple sclerosis or being a woman? I think it would be hard for most women to say they'd have an easier time in life with multiple sclerosis. But things get more difficult when you ask which is harder dealing with racism or dealing with homophobia? Is life more difficult when your parents are divorced or if they never went to college? And what if the divorce was reasonably amicable? What if you have a chronic disease but it's asthma not Lupus? These comparisons of privilege get very murky very quickly upon closer inspection.

And this is why telling someone to 'check their privilege' is at best an over-simplification and unthoughtful, and at worst a form of hubris, ego, and lack of empathy, which ironically is what the phrase is attempting to 'call out' in the first place. In some ways that is what the freshman at Princeton was trying to point out; though as he found out the subject matter is extremely personal and no matter what your views or background, people get defensive and angry at what they perceived to be a lack of understanding about their lives. 

Despite trepidation with the phrase, it's well worthwhile to be reminded about the good things one has going one's life. We do it all the time. You may have lost your job, but you are reminded that you have loving family and friends. You may be going through a terrible breakup, but you remember that least you have your health. You hate your job, but you're reminded on the walk to work that you could be homeless (this happens in the Bay Area a lot). And this is what check your privilege really means, right? Don't take for granted the things in life that make your life easier than some else's. And yes, there are varying degrees of hardship, but nothing good comes from trying to compare how much privilege one has versus another, it's beneficial to just be reminded that other people have problems that you wouldn't want, be grateful for what you have, have sympathy for others disadvantages, and consider how society might make things better for everyone. Hopefully then we can stop trying to distill this sentiment into a three word catchphrase or a Buzzfeed quiz. Life's not that simple.