Racial pride

From RationalWiki

"Racial pride is simply the idea of pride in one's race." ^[1]

[edit] Reality of race

There isn't really a thing called "race". Race is a construct. The people on the next block could be considered a different race, regardless of what physical attributes they possess. 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 people who're white proclaiming their pride for being white.

The only time when "race" becomes a relevant concept for analysis is when a society has organized itself along racial lines, as both apartheid-era South Africa and pre-civil rights era United States. In these cases, however, race is only important because the people in charge made it so. From an "objective" standpoint, there was no real difference between those oppressed and the oppressors.

[edit] 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. In this sense, "racial pride" can act much like nationalism to bring a group together to fight back against its oppression. Moreover, it can help to instill 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. However, also much like nationalism, it can also be used by members of a dominant, oppressive group as a means to achieve further solidarity with the aims of keeping oppressed groups down. This is the case for much of the "White Pride" groups that crop up in the West.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ↑ Some people claim that "If you are proud to be white, you are attacked with vitriol and labeled as a "racist", "Nazi", etc." These labels are not usually applied to those who are "proud" - as seen in, for instance, St. Patrick's Day parades. The labels are applied to those who take their so-called "pride" to the extreme of hatred or even violence towards other races. Moreover, 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).