Pampered academics are the 'privileged' ones

White masculinity is THE problem for America’s colleges,” wrote Saida Grundy, professor of sociology and Afro-American Studies at Boston University, in an indiscreet tweet.

Whites have had it better than peoples of color, men have had it better than women, so white male students should be made to “check their privilege,” say some college administrators, professors and students — chiefly those in ethnic and gender studies. The irony of arguably the most cosseted and subsidized among us demanding that others “check their privilege” is lost on them.

What they call “privilege” is really “a consequence of hard work, of delaying gratification and of sacrifice,” according to Art Schlichter, a retired Army officer turned trial lawyer.

“If we have privilege, it was earned at Bunker Hill, Gettysburg and Normandy,” he said. It’s a function of character, not of “skin tone or the number of vowels in your name.”

Per capita GDP in the Roman Empire was about $3.50 a day. It didn’t change much for 1,700 years. English-speaking whites benefited first, and most, from the vast explosion of wealth in the Industrial Revolution — for a reason that has nothing to do with race or gender.

Shakespeare and Chaucer wrote before John Locke published his Second Treatise on Civil Government (1690). Great pictures were painted, great music composed, great cathedrals built.

But before Locke, little about Western civilization was exceptional. The West hasn’t produced better architects and engineers than the Egyptians who built the pyramids or better mathematicians than the Mayans. Art, music and science flourished in several Chinese dynasties. For the better part of 800 years, Moorish Spain was more culturally and scientifically advanced than Christian Europe.

The ideas Locke introduced and our Founding Fathers refined made the Industrial Revolution possible. He and they were white males. But their ideas — that all have a right to life, liberty and private property; that government should serve the people, not people the government — apply to all races. And to both genders. In much of the world, women still are treated as chattel. Women in the West have equal rights, thanks chiefly to Locke, Jefferson, Madison, et al.

Their ideas grew largely from (Protestant) Christianity, another target of the “check your privilege” crowd. The philosophical basis for liberty is the belief “all men are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.”

We owe primary allegiance to G0D, not the state, so we must be free to serve Him as our consciences dictate. We must be treated as individuals — not as part of a gender, racial or socio-economic tribe — because God will judge us as individuals.

It’s no coincidence that almost all prosperous nations are free, that the more they embrace the principles first expounded by Locke, the more the wealth of all peoples — white and nonwhite — increases. When people are free to pursue their dreams, prosperity follows.

We’ve never followed our founding principles entirely, so we should abandon them, some leftists say.

Our most grievous national sin, slavery, mocked those principles utterly. But slavery wasn’t unique to America, or uniquely horrible here. There have been no slaves since 1865, and legal segregation ended in 1964. The only legal discrimination blacks under age 50 have known has been discrimination in their favor.

When their grandmothers were the age of coeds today, women in the office typed, answered phones, fetched coffee. Now women are CEOs as well as secretaries, doctors as well as nurses, lawyers, generals, governors, senators. When “gender equality activists” at Georgetown University whine about how unfair it is that guys can urinate standing up, we know the long battle for equal rights has been won.

It is college administrators and faculty — whose lavish lifestyles are financed from taxes paid chiefly by the white males they malign — who should “check their privilege.”

No responsible parent should send a son or daughter to a college that shames, harasses and intimidates students because of their race or gender. Such colleges shouldn’t receive a dime of public funds.

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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.