“In my opinion, it’s sort of a manufactured right-wing idea that people are running around left wing colleges saying ‘Check your privilege,’ ” he said. “He would have to say, in my opinion, something incredibly outrageous to get someone to say ‘Check your privilege.’ ”

Mr. Fortgang, 20, said he often saw the phrase used on Facebook after he has voiced conservative opinions.

In his essay, Mr. Fortgang, who is from New Rochelle, N.Y., uses his own family’s powerful story as evidence that his “privilege” should not be assumed. He tells how his grandfather fled the Nazis and was forced into exile in Siberia and how his grandmother was sent to a concentration camp, Bergen-Belsen. “Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown,” he wrote. “Maybe that’s my privilege.”

His grandfather and father built up a wicker basket business, he wrote, and emphasized education in the home.

“While I haven’t done everything for myself up to this point in my life, someone sacrificed themselves so that I can lead a better life,” he wrote. “But that is a legacy I am proud of. I have checked my privilege. And I apologize for nothing.”

All the attention he has received since then has been somewhat surprising, Mr. Fortgang said, adding that he was not always happy with the kind of people who have rallied around him.

“I am sure there are some really racist white supremacists who point to me as a hero on the college campus,” he said. “That is not me. I don’t have a racist bone in my body.”