While walking down Washington Avenue on Wednesday afternoons, I stop at Espresso Exposé (which will be gone soon…R.I.P.) to sharpen my senses for the Minnesota Student Association (MSA) meetings that will surely be full of identity politics and multiple pleas for victim-status.

Don’t get me wrong: MSA does wonderful things to improve student life at the UMN. With that said, the University of Minnesota–like most academic institutions–explores social implications. One of these new conceptual buzzwords is privilege.

University faculty and students use “privilege” to describe disparities within our society. It is ideally used to discuss issues related to racism and gender roles. Unfortunately, it has instead become a way for people to justify claims of victim status. Often, these same people who overuse and accuse with the word “privilege” are political zealots who demonize the Republican Party.

The privilege-callers fail to realize that they themselves, however, are endowed with privilege. University of Minnesota students have access to a world-class education that will grant them access to employment opportunities which would be only a fantasy for the majority of people living in the United States. This privilege is colorblind, which is a dangerous idea to our campus progressives.

The American left quickly condemns Trump and his supporters as illiterate racists–toxic to the construction of a leftist utopia. The most recent poll from ABC and The Washington Post projects Clinton winning with a spread of plus eight. This brings up the question: Who are the other 42 percent?

Donald Trump’s supporters come from a myriad of backgrounds; however, slightly over half of his supporters make less than 50,000 dollars per year.

Let me reiterate that: Slightly over half of Trump’s supporters make less than 50,000 dollars per year.

We rely on these working-class Americans for taking out our garbage, building our homes, and manufacturing our goods. Their demographic has traditionally been the backbone of the Democratic Party, until the elites neglected them. Instead of bringing people together, the Democratic Party has relied on divisive identity politics to maintain its reigning power.

We have men and women working in industries that cap them out at twenty dollars an hour; these people often do not have access to education because of their socio-economic statuses, and yet, they are the people professors warn us against in lecture halls. An honest job that once could support a family is now stigmatized in our society, and it no longer offers much of a future for citizens and residents of our country. After all of this reality, people still have the audacity to bring up privilege and to connect it to Republicans.

Donald Trump appeals to a cross section of our society by inspiring national unity. It is the Democratic Party that has divided us on race, sexual orientation, and gender. We students need to understand where his supporters are coming from.

Until our average University leftists can look the average factory worker (who is white) in the eye and tell him or her with a straight face that the left is part of the problem, they are nothing but cowards. We as a university– as people of all races, genders, and ethnicities– need to check our own privilege.