The white liberal is an unhealthy type of creature that you will undoubtedly have encountered, if not in real life, certainly via the media. By ‘liberal’, I do not mean simply someone who has a generally liberal outlook, in the sense of a ‘live and let live’ philosophy, nor do I mean liberals in the sense of the classical liberals of the conservative tradition. By ‘white liberal’, I mean a white Western individual who is likely to come from a middle class background and have a university education, considers him or herself to be both ‘left-wing’ and socially ‘liberal’, and almost certainly reads The Guardian or The Independent.If this beginning intrigues you, you could do much worse than reading the whole article. It is by Edmund (not Jewish) Standing, it is thoughtful, provocative and it hits where it hurts. Some people, at least.
Via (and thanks to) Peter Risdon.
4 comments:
Thanks for the link, Snoopy.
Interesting and in places thought provoking but he hugely over applies the traits of smoe (but in my view sdome is far too many!) white liberals to all so-called white liberals,
Can you imagine Mod, Bob, Kellie, the Engage posse or many other examples of people who would may well fall into Standing's White liberal description soouting any of the views the applies to that subset!
I would say he tries to limit the scope of the definition at the start of the post. So I guess the people you mention and many others don't fall into that category. But of course, the definition is sufficiently fuzzy, so one could put some people in or get some people out at will ;)
True, mon ami
I suppose at the end of the day that arseholes abound!
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