Racial pride

Racial pride is the idea of pride in one's race, which turns out to be problematic in some instances when the phrase is intentionally used as a euphemism for racism.

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“”If you are busy drinking and fighting all the time, you accomplish nothing, so then need to attach yourself vicariously to the success of other white people as a source of your 'pride.' But it is utter hypocrisy.

—Singer and white supremacist George Burdi.[1]

“”The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

— Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher (This also applies to race)

White pride = racism?

Some people claim that "If you are proud to be white, you are attacked with vitriol and labeled as a 'racist', 'Nazi' etc.," and there is a concept of "white guilt," in which people feel guilty for being white due to past racial injustices.

However, the labels of "racist" or "Nazi" are not usually applied to those who are merely "proud" of their ethnic heritage — as seen in, for instance, St. Patrick's Day parades (these aren't tied with a specific race anymore[2])—but to those who take their so-called "pride" to the extremes of hatred, denigration and violence towards other races, such as Neo-Nazis and New Black Panther groups (not to be confused with the Black Panther Party from the 60's and 70's). Also, most "white" people in the US more closely affiliate with some subsection thereof, since the majority of Americans are "white" (or more correctly pink, or even slightly greenish-blue).

Reality of race

According to the biologists of the present day, our concept of "race" is an awful biological designator, and it is better understood as a purely social designator. Real definitions of race overlap considerably with nationality, ethnicity and culture, but a hypothetical definition of race could, for example, deem people living on different streets as being of different races.

In such a situation, people taking pride in living on Elm Street, if only because they were born on Elm Street and have not (yet) left Elm Street, have much the same reasons for "pride" as white people proclaiming white pride.

The only time when it is possible to analyze "race" as a concept is when a society actually uses it — and the more emphasis that the society places on race, the more the concept can be explored. This was the case in racially-segregated societies such as apartheid-era South Africa and the pre-civil rights era United States. In these cases, race was important only because "the people in those societies made it so." From an objective standpoint, the only quantifiable differences between individuals of various "races" were skin color, eye color, language, etc.

Oppressed groups

However, in those cases where a group has been oppressed due to their "race," there is often a sense of deep shame in being a member of that group, as these members often allow themselves to be characterized in the terms invented by their oppressors. In this sense, "racial pride" can act much like nationalism to bring a group together to create, or revive, an independent identity that does not require self-hatred. Moreover, it can help to instil people who have had all pride beaten out of them with something to be proud of, as a first step toward a more rational self-esteem. This can be seen in the "Black is Beautiful" movement of Marcus Garvey and others.

If this sort of "racial pride" is confused with and/or replaces more rational self-esteem, however, it can turn right back into racism, as seen with the Nation of Islam. This is the difference between the St. Patrick's Day marchers and neo-Nazis mentioned above — the former viewing racial/ethnic pride as a positive unifying force (e.g., to drink copiously), the latter using it as a tool for division and hatred (sometimes also occurring over drinks, as in 1923.)

See also

• Identity politics
• Racialism
• White History Month
• White supremacy
• White nationalism
• Black supremacy

References

1. I am not my DNA
2. For instance, this guy was as proud an Irishman as ever there was.