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

[tylik.livejournal.com]

Okay, I thought about my own reaction a bit before I read other people's but I did read them before I wrote this.

The words by themself just make me go "huh?" While the anti-diversity interpretation certainly occurred to me, I'm not at all certain of it. (Certainly as an individual statement. Think of who might have printed a large number of such bumper stickers for sale, it somehow becomes more likely.) I don't see anything wrong with a majority group being proud... until it veers over into exclusion, which this, by itself, does not.

If I saw it, I have to admit I'd look for context. Other bumper stickers? (For instance, were it near "Marriage = 1 Man + 1 Woman" that would definately shade my reading.) Other decorations? Typeface? Colors? What kind of car? While these things might make one interpretation more likely than another, I guess I don't tend to assume I know what people mean by such statements.