There is an ongoing debate within the libertarian community on whether libertarians focus enough on “privilege.” Telling an individual to "check their privilege” urges them to look at the overarching power structures that disproportionately affect different groups, and to appreciate the fact that, statistically, they are more or less likely to have certain advantages over other groups. Although this is an ultimately well-intended exercise of perspective, the concept of “privilege” is wholly irrelevant and misleading from a libertarian perspective.
The problem is, telling people to look at their “privilege” is like trying to make a sociological mosaic out of human beings: Someone already knows what they want the larger picture to look like — whether it reflects hardships, advantages, predispositions — and so they carelessly muddle together the individual pieces to fit their conclusion. If you tell a white male to check their privilege, what are you really saying to them?
Although this may be a great exercise for a sociology class, it has no constructive place in the meat and potatoes of libertarianism. People — which is merely an abstract term for real, individual actors — are far too intricate and nuanced to be filed away like paperwork according to the surface of their skin or their sexual orientation. Invariably, this (literally) black and white way of looking at the world substitutes the infinitely complex nature of the individual for a rhetorically convenient collective.
And for what? While it’s certainly true that cops target black people more than they target people with fairer complexions, what is to be gained by segregating this overlying issue from the brutal murder of Kelly Thomas? The solution, like so many others in our society, is not to merely look at the symptom itself, but the disease that causes it: The drug war, the ongoing welfare programs, government schools, wage controls, zoning laws — all of these and more are factors that keep black people disproportionately stuck in poverty traps and rotting in the bellies of the penal system. But the magnitude of these problems stem not from the racist whims of society, but from