what does it mean?

[cos]

Please comment on this post before you read anyone else's comments.

This weekend, I saw a bumper sticker that said,
Straight, White, English-Speaking
Proud American
For a moment, I was offended ... then I started thinking of several different possible intentions, meanings, and contexts for this slogan. After a bit of confusion, I settled on curiosity. What does it mean? What did the people who sold it intend for it to convey, and what did the person who put it on their car intend to say by it? I can think of several different possibilities or nuances, and maybe there are more.

So tell me, what do you read in this bumper sticker slogan? And if, like me, you see several possibilities, which one came first, before you thought about it?

Comments

[outherelistenin.livejournal.com]

I considered reading the comments page before responding, but decided not to in the interest of an off-the-cuff response.

My first thought is that the bumper sticker is marketing to a straight, white, English-speaking (usually Christian, usually male, usually conservative) Americans with a persecution complex. There's this big chunk of the population who are pissed off because they think they're supposed to feel guilty for being in the majority. It's kind of, "Hey, when do I get to feel righteously indignant about being oppressed?"

I hate to sling around meaningless political labels, but it's usally anti-liberal backlash, and it's usually stoked by conservative pundits. The meme that keeps a certain section of the population under control is that an intellectual liberal elite is intent on making "ordinary people" feel bad about things like racism, homophobia, the ways in which America screws over the rest of the world, and their love of NASCar. And they do feel bad, which makes them feel pissed-off and indignant.

Thus, the defiant "Straight White English-Speaking Proud American" slogan. There's nothing wrong with being any of those things, and perhaps I'm reading it with too much bias, but that's the first thing that pops into my mind when I see that.