Fourteenth Blog

            Privilege, as I discussed earlier, is an important concept to understand and discuss, but it is also very delicate ground to tread. Being privileged, to my last point, does not make one at fault or accountable for injustice, and it should not be construed that way. Privileged people should acknowledge, however, as many refuse to, at least what they have that others do not. People who need to learn this lesson, however, include some of the people trying to teach it. Not all activists for the concept, of course, need to do so, but there are a few who do whom I will refer to as the hipster left.

Regional privilege. We can all agree that you should not disrespect people because of where they are from, right? There is privilege in growing up in a first world country and in an open culture. The hipster left would eagerly claim to acknowledge this, but when it comes to disadvantaged regions in this country, suddenly they forget it. Living outside the Deep South is a privilege. You have access to public schools offering unadulterated lessons on the theories of evolution and the big bang is a privilege. You are less likely to be poor or get the brunt end of a corrupt government. This is all even more pronounced in the Appalachian valley. People there are severely poor, with many families making as little as $5000 per year, and are in terrible health, particularly due to abuse of the region in practices such as mountaintop removal mining. (Irreligious privilege should be acknowledged as well – you do not have to practice religious devotion, and if you face religious prejudice, it would not go against your conscience to fake it.)

But forget all of that. It gets in the way of the hipster left’s (and common suburban American’s) precious, time-honored fun of bashing “rednecks” (and religious Christians.) They love hurling at them some of the most disgusting slurs and stereotypes, never shying away from accusing them of incest. Even though the United States has one of the lowest rates of consanguinity in the world and regions such as Appalachia do not exhibit unusual levels of inbreeding, (save for some isolated pockets and populations.) Nonetheless, they would not let themselves be caught dead spewing these insults toward people from third world countries where inbreeding is actually common. (And not to say they would be justified at all in that case.)

Ultimately, the hipster left is doing this to make aliens out of these people, so that when they prove to be a political inconvenience, or else if their hardships provide an economic boon, we do not have to acknowledge them as being people like us.