Last week, three young Tamils from Toronto, Montreal and London, published a piece on the website Tumblr, listing the 'privileges' of being Sinhalese. Since then, the piece entitled ' Check your Sinhala privilege ', has sparked widespread praise, criticism and passionate debate online. Tamil Guardian caught up with the writers, Ram, Ahila and Sinthujan, via Facebook, to find out more.. Tamil Guardian: What inspired you to write this piece? Sinthujan : We were just speaking about the concept of privilege in general, unrelated to Sri Lanka, and som e of the problematic things some of our friends would say. Even though many of them are well-intentioned and well-educated, they often neglect to see the issues in some of their statements. Most of them similarly don't see the ways the social, political, and economic arrangements of any given society are what systematically produce existing inequalities between different social groups. Ram: This neglect is especially prominent in discussions of Sri Lanka, for instance, when civil conflict is simply explained in terms of “ethnic hatred” rather than through a close examination of the ways societal arrangements in Sri Lanka have benefited some ethnic groups relative to others.