On losing my privilege
Friends, you may have noticed that I've been angry lately. And a big part of that is, as I know many of you have suspected, anger at the loss of privileges. I did not want to admit this was the case, but here it is: I have lost my liberal privilege.
To start, I still consider myself a liberal. But I no longer pass for one in Cambridge, MA. I am not that fussed by labels, so it doesn't bother me anymore. There was a time when having my liberal credentials (which I equated with morality) questioned really hurt my feelings. It was a very effective shaming tactic, and that shame sustained growing cognitive dissonance over years until the dam finally broke. I began to say what I thought was true without thinking about what that meant for my tribal membership, and I stopped using the liberal/left label as a proxy for truth.
It was then I discovered what a privilege it had been to be squarely in the liberal tribe. The whole time I was a card-carrying lefitst, I thought I was being really bold and speaking my mind. I felt proud of my bravery. But it wasn't actually that brave, because I almost never got any real pushback or faced negative consequences for doing it. I had had an utterly warped view of what "radical" or "heterodox" meant. I thought they meant something that invoked the disapproval of the faceless, amorphous "man"-- I didn't realize how hard it is to say things that are actually controversial among your peers. It would be funny how intolerant the "speak truth to power" crowd is of actual dissent if it wasn't so sad.
I don't think I'm any more outspoken that ever before. Until very recently, I would say I'm less outspoken than I was in high school and college (I am just that outspoken). I still passionately discuss and debate issues that I care about using basically the same intensity calibrator. But now everything I say is perceived as more aggressive and personal. I realize now what a luxury it was to be able to make fairly extreme political statements in class and at work without disapproval when I was a more doctrinaire lefty. I thought political expression was a right people just needed to seize (and I sure as hell won't let go of it), but I see now that it is not equally available to all. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing entirely-- we don't need to treat all opinions as equally valid. It's just something I was completely oblivious to when I had liberal privilege.
In majority conservative areas, conservative privilege works the same way. This message is for everyone with majority-ideology-privilege. Please consider what people are saying and whether it is true instead of falling back on whether that person is in your in-group.