The privilege critique helps to remind that white upper-middle-class status in America should not provide a default stand-in for normality, leaving everyone else vying for best supporting actor. Even so, the construct is more harmful than beneficial, Bovy concludes, in part because “its role as an aide in online bullying exceeds its utility as a theoretical framework.” And she worries that, in the current political climate, it is the wrong battlefield on which liberals should make a desperate stand. “Addressing unconscious bigotry — never the most effective strategy — is altogether hopeless against the conscious variety,” she concludes. “And it’s the conscious one we’re now up against.”