Daily Effects of Liberal Privilege

A reader sent me a link to the United Way’s 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge and while reading through “equity journey”, “How White Parents Can Talk to the Kids About Race”, “Racial Equity Unwrapped” and “White Privilege” I realized something. Besides the silliness of it all, the “daily effects of white privilege” could be applied to liberals – because labels and stuff.

In Peggy McIntosh’s “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”, which was day 12’s content, the author gathered a list of thoughts and actions that indicate how privileged white people are versus their minority brethren. In my adaptation of that section, I pull together similar thoughts and actions showing liberal privilege versus their conservative counterparts.

Liberal Privilege or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Hate Conservatives

1. I can place a liberal-aligned bumper sticker on my car without fear that someone may vandalize the vehicle or the home where I park it.
2. I can watch any news program, awards show, or Netflix series confident that my liberal ideas will never be seriously challenged or maligned. (Study: Pretty Much All Of Journalism Now Leans Left)
3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing inside a major city where my ideas are accepted and echoed.
4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
5. I can go shopping wearing hats or t-shirts supporting my political candidate, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. (Covington Catholic Boys, harassment of conservatives in restaurants, etc)
6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my ideology widely and positively represented.
7. When I am taught about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that liberals made it what it is.
8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that only promote liberal ideals.
9. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only liberal.
10. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the only conservative.
11. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic bias against their way of thinking – because it doesn’t exist.
12. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their liberalism.
13. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals of my party.
14. If the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my ideology. (Lois Lerner IRS targeting of Conservatives, 2013)
15. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring liberals knowing that conservative books and magazines are systematically being removed from society.
16. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.
17. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a conservative colleague is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
18. If I declare there is a political issue at hand, or there isn’t a political issue at hand, liberalism will lend me more credibility for either position than a conservative would have.
19. My liberalism gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of conservatives.
20. If my day, week or year is going badly, it’s never my fault.
21. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a liberal would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.
22. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that liberals cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen (harassment of conservatives in restaurants).
23. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my ideology.
24. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention to liberals.
25. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to the experiences of liberals.
26. I can travel alone or with my spouse while wearing pro-Democrat clothing without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.
27. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of my household.
28. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

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