benlehman

I've been thinking about this lately. One thing which often comes up in discussions of discrimination is "but I'm discriminated against for being [white, conservative, male, whatever.]" My initial thought range here is "conservative."

I think that a lot of conservatives use this argument (this is me giving them the benefit of the doubt: that they're not just immature losers) is because they see it working with liberals, but don't really understand why. For instance, in some discussions, I'm going to privilege a woman speaking over a man speaking, for any number of reasons. Conservatives see that privileging, and want a piece of it, but don't really understand how to get it.

To be fair, that they are discriminated against is almost certainly true on some level. I cannot imagine any category which someone could belong to which would not cause someone to be biased against them in some way, particularly if we're going to include unconscious bias. The question is: do I have to give a fuck? Or, in other words, are they discriminated against enough that I should care?

I have found my line in the sand for this!

"If, in your society, someone who belongs to said group has suffered un-punished murder at the hands of a group -OR- uninvestigated murder at the hands of the police, explicitly due to them being a member of said group. Furthermore, the more recently this is the case, the more I give a fuck."

So. Gays? Check. Black people? Super-check. Women? Yeah, although not as much as black people. Indians? Jesus Christ.

Jews? Sorta check.

So the question is: has anyone ever been institutionally murdered in the US for being a conservative?

The answer is yes. During the revolutionary war, people were killed -- sometimes in brutal ways -- for the crime of being Loyalists. Now, this was a long time ago. But if a conservative wants to identify themselves with the Loyalist faction (which is, indeed, their intellectual ancestry) I will grant them a privileged voice in appropriate conversations*. But I'm not sure any conservative I know would be willing to do that.

* Offer also extends to communists, who were much more recently institutionally murdered in the US.