“This Is Our Country”: Identities of Privilege

Abstract

Movement identities are a powerful and fundamental component of any social movement. They inspire solidarity among movement participants and spur people to action (Gamson 1992; Jasper 1997; Bernstein 1997). They often are used to vindicate claims of unjust persecution (Schrock, Holden, and Reid 2004). Social movements even forge new identities or rearticulate existing ones in their efforts to generate structural or cultural change (Bernstein 1997). The identities of conservative social movements function in all of these ways to form a conceptual foundation for their members’ claims to privilege. However, theories that explain identity formation in progressive social movements pose a conundrum for interpretation of the identities of conservative social movements. These theories assume social movements represent long-oppressed people who seek to rectify historically stigmatized identities, and the movements formulate their new or reframed identities largely through criticisms of the dominant culture (Bernstein 1997). But if members of conservative movements are relatively privileged in society, how can conservative movements characterize their participants as oppressed? How can they criticize the dominant culture when, by definition, conservatives strive to preserve the dominant culture? In this chapter, I illustrate the conceptual means by which the anti-illegal immigration, antiabortion/pro-life, and Tea Party movements use cultural critique to construct identities of American moral exemplars whose righteous goal is to preserve or restore privilege to deserving Americans like themselves.