When your ancestors have been targetted, racialized, abused and enslaved for centuries and the effects of that are still felt to this day, and when you are still being racialized and abused because of the colour of your skin and your heritage, you feel like you have nothing to be proud of. The world is telling you you don’t matter, that ‘your kind’ deserves it.
THAT’S why POC are so adament about being proud. Because when a racist tells them they’re worth nothing, and when the world tells them they’re nothing, they need to rely on themselves and their community.
Being proud is resistance. Against all the shit that has been done to POC, and the shit that is still being done today.
White pride is not resistance, other than resistance to the idea of black pride taking over from a centuries old status quo where white people were the only ones who ‘mattered’. You’re not resisting anything with ‘white pride’. You’re taking away voices and dignity of POC.
It’s no wonder the only people who unironically say ‘white pride’ are fucking nazis. That should inform anyone about the whole concept of it. Don’t weaponize your whiteness.
I was sitting here thinking it’s pretty silly to be proud of things you have no control over, even if you appreciate it over other possible variations of a given attribute. Using it as a means of personal or societal deprogramming is valuable, though, so long as it doesn’t extend to denigrating people who are ‘other’, otherwise you end up with the same problem but different people suffering.
In my mind, LGBTQ Pride is generally called that because Shame was, at least in contemporary history, a huge driver in suppressing LGBTQ existence and freedoms. If it was called LGBTQ No-More-Shame, it would remain antithetical but might not be as catchy. I’m sure other groups will employ the same argument, but it is difficult to overstate how powerful shame and social stigma specifically suppressed LGBTQ expression, and still attempts to in some ways.
To be fair, the right would immediatly counter with “white dignity” or “straight dignity” and accuse everyone holding up LGBTQ±dignity or black dignity of denigrating white dignity and complain about an atmosphere where “whites aren’t allowed to feel the dignity of their race anymore”.
There legitimately are powerful people who are systemically oppressing non-whites/non-straights.
There is a significant amount of people that lack empathy and have never experienced personally this type of systemic oppression, and thus don’t believe it’s real. This is particularly evident on the right where empathy is in short supply. See also: my abortion is the only moral abortion, the government shouldn’t be supporting these freeloaders (but make sure my HUD/food stamps/social security show up on time!), Obamacare needs to be abolished (but don’t drop me from my insurance I need my meds!), etc.
Back to point number one, even the blue team has been unfortunately ignorant about the level of systemic oppression and often serves as a validating factor. It’s one of the small things that I think have been positive about the social media era, these stories are getting to far more people than they used to. When I was in school in the 2000’s, if you asked basically anyone in my predominantly white school (including me, tbh) they probably would have said racism is basically a solved problem and is only a tiny little fraction of the actual experience for POC/LGBTQ++, etc. People with empathy pick up on this faster, but if you say ACAB in a room full of blue team, you’re probably still going to get a lot of pushback…
Speaking of ACAB, a big part of the problem is that people just do not fucking get nuance. Most of even the staunchest ACAB supporters don’t believe that everyone who is a cop or will become a cop is a bastard/bad person, the point is that the institution of policing in this country is systemically racist, systemically corrupt, and systemically insulated from consequences in a way that is unjust and bad for society. Or, shorter, we have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and know that when you give people this type of power you can expect bad things. Thus, there isn’t a way to be a moral cop because the system removes the ability to stay moral, which is also why a lot of those that we would call “good” cops are forced out of the field. Anyway, pretty fucking hard to fit that on a bumper sticker, so we end up with things like ACAB/BLM/Pride, etc.
Yeah, but at least then you can retort with saying “that’s not a very dignified thing to say” while sipping tea with your erect pinkie finger.
Also, I would just open up the gaytes on Pride month, henceforth known as Dignity Month. Let the straights celebrate their missionary position all month long!
Idk the stereotype that gays are indignant polyamorous debaucherists still persists to this day. Even though the straights are still equally as debaucherous. Put differently, people have a different perception of guys who have a lot of Tinder hookups as opposed to guys that have a lot of Grindr hookups. Gay men are much more likely to be slut-shamed than straight men.
I don’t actually think Dignity is a better choice than Pride, I just didn’t feel like being argumentative to someone who I think was receptive to my initial argument. I agree with you 100%.
He’s completely wrong too. Celebrating American, European, or general Western heritage is very commonplace, to the point that the US even has a holiday for itself. If that isn’t enough for someone, then odds are they’re just a fucking racist.
Most of the time, there’s a country or region you can celebrate the heritage of. The only exceptions are Jewish people and black people, but that’s because they had forced diasporas, persecution, and/or slavery. Their ethnic identity to a region was stripped from them.
I think everyone should be proud of their race, which is the human race… No matter ones ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. we are all the same race. Yes, I know in this context race means something else. But, my point still stands. If everyone would stop worrying about our little meaningless differences and realize that we are all the same race. We would be much better off. Yes, I know that will never happen.
This has always bugged me. It’s strange how labeling someone as “racist” actually works in the racists favour; you’re partially validating their point by implying there’s a greater biological gap than actually exists.
Bigot works well as a replacement if this bugs you, and it’s probably more accurate, people with “racist” views are more likely to be homophobic too.
I mean, idk about other cultures/langages but it does feel weird as fuck to french speakers that English even has a concept of “race” for humans in the first place. In french we only use the word “race” for animals. If you want to refer to someone’s ethnicity, well, that’s the word you use (“ethnie”). Although iirc the distinction is quite recent (from the enlightenment period or something).
And we also have the word “raciste” which refers to one’s belief that there are human races, it doesn’t validate that belief.
Yeah iirc that’s also why human races aren’t really a thing in french.
Although we do use that word for animals’ breeds (which are just subspecies iirc) but I guess that’s just because it wouldn’t really be french if there were no weird exceptions
Yeah unfortunately our government has been pretty much continuously giving absurd levels of power to the police and they’re paving the way for the fascists to win the next elections so it’s not looking too good
Nah, racist is a descriptor of a viewpoint, not something that’s inherently built into people because of their ethnicity. So it makes about as much sense to say that calling someone a racist is “validating their point” as saying calling someone a flat earhter somehow validates their ideas about flat earth theory. It’s just a silly line of reasoning.
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race?
In the cases of actively oppressed people, particularly people that were assigned a race regardless of actual national origin, and then were denigrated for being that race, it’s a point of pride to say that “our people” (who you basically forced “us” to become not on the basis of our shared heritage or nationality but purely on the basis of lumping together everyone with the same color skin) survived and thrived, and eventually developed our own culture despite the shitty circumstances.
White people don’t fit into this category because nobody forced people to be white and then said they weren’t citizens in the country or that they could only live in certain towns, forcing them to band together as one and develop their own white people culture with basically strangers, and nobody robbed them of their history and forced them into brutal chattel slavery for hundreds of years.
Edit: Most white people who care to do so still have an understanding of their lineage, national origin, religion, and/or festivals, and many of those are or were celebrated in their own ways: St Patty’s Day, Octoberfest, Christopher Columbus Day (which was basically an Italian pride day originally), Catholic holidays, Jewish holidays, etc.
Can a gay person who has never experienced homophobia rightfully celebrate Pride Month?
Can a black person who was adopted by white parents and has no black cultural influence be proud of being black?
In any case, I understand the sentiment, I’m not saying “I don’t understand why black people want to be recognised and celebrate the victories afforded to them by their ancestors”.
What I don’t understand is the specific vernacular of the word “pride” in these cases. Rosa Parks was a BAMF, but why would I be proud of her? I didn’t put the idea in her head, I didn’t give her the courage to sit at the back of the bus.
Whether I’m black or white has no bearing on whether I should be proud of anything outside of my own influence; I’m convinced identity politics gets us nowhere.
Whether I’m black or white has no bearing on whether I should be proud of anything outside of my own influence; I’m convinced identity politics gets us nowhere.
When you’re born, you aren’t just dropped out of the clear blue sky onto a level playing field fully defined by the merits of your own actions. Life isn’t a lone survivor video game.
You’re born in context: historically, financially, genetically, and otherwise. Some people take pride in their heritage, their lineage, their culture, their traditions, etc etc etc. Just because it isn’t your cup of tea and you’d rather only celebrate what you consider to be your own accomplishments (and I say it this way on purpose because without your born context there’s no guarantee that your life would’ve turned out as it did) does not mean everyone views the world the same way.
I think more generically you should ask yourself why it bothers you so much when people celebrate aspects of their identity.
I’d largely have no problem with “white pride” festivals if the concept even made any sense at all (which it doesn’t, and which is why it’s basically “white power” with a tiny PR tune up), but these “events” are basically just Klan rallies. Versus look at most pride festivals. They’re full of people dancing and singing and genuinely celebrating things they have in common with one another (or in some cases, like with gay pride and ally ship, things they simply have an affinity for).
I think you may be viewing my thoughts through an uncharitable lens. I am not bothered at all when anyone celebrates any aspect of their identity.
I’m a white Australian; my ancestors committed atrocities, yet, I do not feel shame for their actions, because I wasn’t involved. I can only take shame in how I have acted.
To reiterate, the definition of pride is localised to the individual. It doesn’t make sense to be proud of someone else’s accomplishments if you haven’t helped them.
A parent may feel proud if their child has done well, they have contributed to their success. However, if my college in a different department gets a promotion, I shouldn’t.
Now extend this to people you don’t know, and it makes no sense at all.
To reiterate, the definition of pride is localised to the individual. It doesn’t make sense to be proud of someone else’s accomplishments if you haven’t helped them.
That’s just what you think / feel / opine / believe. Pride has many definitions, and people often take pride in their ancestry which they cannot possibly have helped because they didn’t exist the entire time they lived their life. Humans aren’t fully rational and again, aren’t dropped in greenfield without context on a level playing field. Also, you apparently don’t feel much pride for your heritage, but you still benefit from it. Your achievements and failures are partially possible and/or caused by your birth situation. If, by birth lottery you were born a Palestinian, you might have died in childhood before ever going to school or college.
A parent may feel proud if their child has done well, they have contributed to their success. However, if my college in a different department gets a promotion, I shouldn’t.
Who are you to tell others that their feelings are valid or invalid?
Ultimately, I’d suggest that you take a look inward because I don’t think a lot of your problems with these things stem from a logical place either but also an emotional one. To be human is much more than a fancy calculator, and it’s perfectly fine to feel various feelings without them necessarily being rationally justified. There is only, in my opinion of course, a problem when people start to use emotions to justify violence or other forms of abuse.
But life isn’t generally, and being human isn’t certainly:
I did one good thing = I have earned one smile.
EDIT: Outside and inside and in addition to all of this, I think it’s perfectly fine and even kind of justified to feel proud of others because we are all ultimately only members of one race: the human one. I haven’t marched at LGBTQ+ pride but it wouldn’t bother me to do so if someone genuinely wanted me there for some reason, and I take pride in the positive achievements of lots of other people who I did nothing to help all of the time.
You seem to be assuming a lot about my position, and getting most of it wrong.
My only stance thus far is one of definitions. Yes, I know the definition of “pride” has changed, which I’m trying to illustrate is an issue.
Elon’s “white pride” rhetoric stems from nationalism, which stems from the conventional definition of “pride”, which is:
a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from one’s own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired
The pride displayed here is that of perceived inherent superiority, which leads to bigotry.
Rationality and emotion aren’t mutually exclusive. Empathy has flaws, it causes people to become hijacked by emotion. Conversely, compassion is a choice, even psychopaths can be convinced behaving compassionately is in their own self interest.
So, I don’t accept the assertion that feelings are an acceptable metric for evaluating the validity of a claim. I’m convinced it’s wrong to be proud of an identity.
I appreciate your measured arguments here, and they echo my own thoughts over the years. I’ve always struggled to see the upside to celebrating any sort of heritage. I can’t really find fault with any of your assertions, but it’s such a classic “white guy on the Internet” take that it reflexively feels bigoted to a lot of people, I think. It doesn’t make any sense to me when people take pride in their ancestry, but folk can be happy about whatever, I guess, as long as they’re not denigrating others.
I’ve always struggled to see the upside to celebrating any sort of heritage
And I’ve always struggled to see the upside to celebrating the community team or whatever, but that doesn’t make my opinion more rational, valuable, or human than anyone else’s.
folk can be happy about whatever, I guess, as long as they’re not denigrating others.
“Whatever” “I guess”… These words aren’t in here by accident, but this overall sentiment is the one actually worth pursuing IMO without all of the passive aggression.
You and the Aussie don’t seem to understand that you’re advancing Musk’s (and other racists’) “arguments” by equating overwhelmingly positive movements with reactionary, retrograde movements that use co-opted words and rhetorical tricks to pretend they’re the same thing.
Elon’s “white pride” rhetoric stems from nationalism, which stems from the convention definition of “pride”
You’re acting like Elon or a klansman (same picture.gif) sat down and read a dictionary definition and came up with this. He didn’t.
Rationality and emotion aren’t mutually exclusive. Empathy has flaws, it causes people to become hijacked by emotion. Conversely, compassion is a choice, even psychopaths can be convinced behaving compassionately is in their own self interest.
Of course they’re not mutually exclusive, you were pretending they were by saying someone’s “correct” feeling of pride can only be derived from their own achievements.
Rationality is a man made concept. Humans are not purely or perhaps not even mostly rational.
So, I don’t accept the assertion that feelings are an acceptable metric for evaluating the validity of a claim.
What claim are you even talking about? You’re the one tossing out claims left and right, like it’s morally wrong to go to a pride parade unless you’ve personally experienced homophobia… Meanwhile you’re side stepping the very relevant and obvious thing: that someone acting positively due to unearned pride harms absolutely nobody.
You’re getting confused by rhetoric because you’re overly concerned about the dictionary definition of co-opted words. Just because it’s called white pride and gay pride doesn’t mean that the intentions, the events, the attendants, or anything philosophically backing any of it are remotely the same. Straight pride is practically a homophobic hatred event, gay pride is largely a block party with fun and revelry.
It’s evident you’re arguing in bad faith. I never claimed its morally wrong to attend a pride parade unless one has experience homophobia. I’m out, peace
you should be a little ashamed that you benefit greatly from their actions. Nobody thinks it’s your personal fault, were just trying to get you to see how you have an unfair leg up over your darker skinned counterparts. Nobody wants you to apologize, you yourself didn’t do anything. We just want you to understand that it’s a little fucked up how your life is easier in general just because you’re white, and we want you to try and figure out why that is
Spare me with the condescension. I don’t feel ashamed for something I have no control of.
Of course I want the same outcome as you, for people who have been historically discriminated against to have the same opportunities as me.
It is fucked up that things are easier because I won the genetic lottery, and was born male, and straight (mostly).
That being said, I have no obligation to make up for the sins of my fathers. However, I do have a moral obligation to fight injustices to the best of my abilities, this would be the case, regardless of the dice roll of life.
it’s impossible to never experience those things when they’re institutionalized. You don’t have to actively feel or even know you’re being supressed when it’s going on behind the scenes.
I get the sentiment, and it’s not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people saying “pride” mean “There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from” and some people mean “the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash”. And “white pride” has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
Pointing out that “white pride” COULD also mean the former doesn’t remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
Just to clarify, I’m not asking about the implication of “white pride”, just the semantics of pride in general.
It reminds me of “Black Lives Matter” - of course they do, but too many people heard “only black lives matter”, when what they’re trying to say is “black lives matter too”.
These twits responded with “All Lives Matter”, which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, “defund the police”, “all cops are bastards”, “math is racist”.
We can’t expect the Right to read between the lines, it’s up to the Left to use better language so we don’t give them more ammo.
The right will often purposefully misrepresent whatever the left uses as a slogan. So only so much can be done there. As for the use of racial pride, I find that often those who can claim no accomplishments in themselves will often claim pride by association. They could claim pride in race, but really any group. This could be considered a defense mechanism for their own ego as they are not okay accepting their own short comings.
Deliberate misrepresentation can only be employed if one understands the original intent.
If a malicious person wants to try to convince others “Black Lives Matter” means “only black lives matter”, they may have a pretty clear shot (assuming they’re trying to convince someone Right of Centre).
If it was rebranded to “Black Lives Matter Too”, then they would have a harder time trying to be deceitful.
I’m convinced there are more people in the camp of failing to read between the lines.
In either case, language games are important; playing poorly will lead to catastrophic outcomes. The worst part is this is so easy to correct for - a little bit of imagination will illustrate predictable backlash, or lack thereof.
Fair enough. My conservative family is on the side of purposefully misunderstanding, but I can understand that some may just misunderstand and we should mitigate that when we can.
This is human nature at end of day. If it’s not being white/black, it’s your football team, what country you’re from, or on lemmy crap like whether you use Linux or not.
I never understood it myself but people are morons.
It’s totally okay to be proud of aspects of your heritage. It’s important to also own up to harm done by your ancestors too, especially when you benefit in tangible or intangible ways from that history, which becomes less expected of you the more injustice was done to your ancestors vs done by your ancestors. However… “White” is not a race, white is a skin tone, there is no universal white heritage, even “European immigrant to America” is far from a monolithic heritage. “Black” being considered a heritage confuses some people but that’s because “black” is shorthand for two things that aren’t directly skintone. “Black” refers most commonly to the shared experience and built/rebuilt heritage of the descendents of slaves who’s culture and heritage were stolen from them, brought mostly to the Americas from West Africa, and then systemically oppressed for generations. “Black” can also be used to describe people who share the experience of oppression based on their black skin color regardless of their specific history.
I think white people have the least to be proud of of any other people.
What have we accomplished? We stole land, science, math, technology, the whole concept of civilization, and pretty much anything else you could think of, from non-white people. We stand on the shoulders of colored giants, and act relish the scent of our own shit because of it. Literally a lesson in “history is written by the victor”.
Basically all we really have that’s purely our own is our art, philosophy, and religion. And even a lot of that is stolen and built upon.
The irony of claiming I’M the selective one by quoting me, but missing the next line which reads “I think the language is kind of wrong”.
The implication is I support the idea of a time to celebrate marginalised communities and to raise awareness for their current battles, but I think the word “pride” is the wrong word.
So, Elon dislikes that white people can’t be proud of being white.
Why would a person of any race be proud of their race? Shouldn’t people be proud of their own accomplishments, and those of the people they’ve helped?
I never really understood the rationale here. I support Pride Month for example, but I think the language is kind of wrong.
Shouldn’t people be proud, despite traits which have historically been denigrated?
This is a serious question BTW.
When your ancestors have been targetted, racialized, abused and enslaved for centuries and the effects of that are still felt to this day, and when you are still being racialized and abused because of the colour of your skin and your heritage, you feel like you have nothing to be proud of. The world is telling you you don’t matter, that ‘your kind’ deserves it.
THAT’S why POC are so adament about being proud. Because when a racist tells them they’re worth nothing, and when the world tells them they’re nothing, they need to rely on themselves and their community.
Being proud is resistance. Against all the shit that has been done to POC, and the shit that is still being done today.
White pride is not resistance, other than resistance to the idea of black pride taking over from a centuries old status quo where white people were the only ones who ‘mattered’. You’re not resisting anything with ‘white pride’. You’re taking away voices and dignity of POC.
It’s no wonder the only people who unironically say ‘white pride’ are fucking nazis. That should inform anyone about the whole concept of it. Don’t weaponize your whiteness.
I was sitting here thinking it’s pretty silly to be proud of things you have no control over, even if you appreciate it over other possible variations of a given attribute. Using it as a means of personal or societal deprogramming is valuable, though, so long as it doesn’t extend to denigrating people who are ‘other’, otherwise you end up with the same problem but different people suffering.
That’s a great writeup
In my mind, LGBTQ Pride is generally called that because Shame was, at least in contemporary history, a huge driver in suppressing LGBTQ existence and freedoms. If it was called LGBTQ No-More-Shame, it would remain antithetical but might not be as catchy. I’m sure other groups will employ the same argument, but it is difficult to overstate how powerful shame and social stigma specifically suppressed LGBTQ expression, and still attempts to in some ways.
There are other better choices than No-More-Shame.
LGBTQ Honor / Dignity / Glory (on second thought, this one may conjure images of bathroom stalls, so maybe not this one)
Dignity is pretty solid.
To be fair, the right would immediatly counter with “white dignity” or “straight dignity” and accuse everyone holding up LGBTQ±dignity or black dignity of denigrating white dignity and complain about an atmosphere where “whites aren’t allowed to feel the dignity of their race anymore”.
Because that’s just how they work.
I think there are a few major problems here:
There legitimately are powerful people who are systemically oppressing non-whites/non-straights.
There is a significant amount of people that lack empathy and have never experienced personally this type of systemic oppression, and thus don’t believe it’s real. This is particularly evident on the right where empathy is in short supply. See also: my abortion is the only moral abortion, the government shouldn’t be supporting these freeloaders (but make sure my HUD/food stamps/social security show up on time!), Obamacare needs to be abolished (but don’t drop me from my insurance I need my meds!), etc.
Back to point number one, even the blue team has been unfortunately ignorant about the level of systemic oppression and often serves as a validating factor. It’s one of the small things that I think have been positive about the social media era, these stories are getting to far more people than they used to. When I was in school in the 2000’s, if you asked basically anyone in my predominantly white school (including me, tbh) they probably would have said racism is basically a solved problem and is only a tiny little fraction of the actual experience for POC/LGBTQ++, etc. People with empathy pick up on this faster, but if you say ACAB in a room full of blue team, you’re probably still going to get a lot of pushback…
Speaking of ACAB, a big part of the problem is that people just do not fucking get nuance. Most of even the staunchest ACAB supporters don’t believe that everyone who is a cop or will become a cop is a bastard/bad person, the point is that the institution of policing in this country is systemically racist, systemically corrupt, and systemically insulated from consequences in a way that is unjust and bad for society. Or, shorter, we have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and know that when you give people this type of power you can expect bad things. Thus, there isn’t a way to be a moral cop because the system removes the ability to stay moral, which is also why a lot of those that we would call “good” cops are forced out of the field. Anyway, pretty fucking hard to fit that on a bumper sticker, so we end up with things like ACAB/BLM/Pride, etc.
Extremely well said!
Yeah, but at least then you can retort with saying “that’s not a very dignified thing to say” while sipping tea with your erect pinkie finger.
Also, I would just open up the gaytes on Pride month, henceforth known as Dignity Month. Let the straights celebrate their missionary position all month long!
Idk the stereotype that gays are indignant polyamorous debaucherists still persists to this day. Even though the straights are still equally as debaucherous. Put differently, people have a different perception of guys who have a lot of Tinder hookups as opposed to guys that have a lot of Grindr hookups. Gay men are much more likely to be slut-shamed than straight men.
I don’t actually think Dignity is a better choice than Pride, I just didn’t feel like being argumentative to someone who I think was receptive to my initial argument. I agree with you 100%.
He’s completely wrong too. Celebrating American, European, or general Western heritage is very commonplace, to the point that the US even has a holiday for itself. If that isn’t enough for someone, then odds are they’re just a fucking racist.
Most of the time, there’s a country or region you can celebrate the heritage of. The only exceptions are Jewish people and black people, but that’s because they had forced diasporas, persecution, and/or slavery. Their ethnic identity to a region was stripped from them.
I think everyone should be proud of their race, which is the human race… No matter ones ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. we are all the same race. Yes, I know in this context race means something else. But, my point still stands. If everyone would stop worrying about our little meaningless differences and realize that we are all the same race. We would be much better off. Yes, I know that will never happen.
This has always bugged me. It’s strange how labeling someone as “racist” actually works in the racists favour; you’re partially validating their point by implying there’s a greater biological gap than actually exists.
Bigot works well as a replacement if this bugs you, and it’s probably more accurate, people with “racist” views are more likely to be homophobic too.
I mean, idk about other cultures/langages but it does feel weird as fuck to french speakers that English even has a concept of “race” for humans in the first place. In french we only use the word “race” for animals. If you want to refer to someone’s ethnicity, well, that’s the word you use (“ethnie”). Although iirc the distinction is quite recent (from the enlightenment period or something).
And we also have the word “raciste” which refers to one’s belief that there are human races, it doesn’t validate that belief.
I’m considering this from the perspective of taxonomy. Race is basically a synonym for “subspecies” which is pretty fucked up.
Yeah iirc that’s also why human races aren’t really a thing in french.
Although we do use that word for animals’ breeds (which are just subspecies iirc) but I guess that’s just because it wouldn’t really be french if there were no weird exceptions
At least the French got that going for them.
Hurry up and overthrow your government already, everyone is waiting for one of your classic revolutions.
yea yea yea we’re waiting till the very last moment so it can look all theatrical and fabulous
Yeah unfortunately our government has been pretty much continuously giving absurd levels of power to the police and they’re paving the way for the fascists to win the next elections so it’s not looking too good
Nah, racist is a descriptor of a viewpoint, not something that’s inherently built into people because of their ethnicity. So it makes about as much sense to say that calling someone a racist is “validating their point” as saying calling someone a flat earhter somehow validates their ideas about flat earth theory. It’s just a silly line of reasoning.
Biologically we’re the same species, not the same race. There’s no concept of race in humans
Race was actually invented to justify invading and enslaving people who were different colours
In the cases of actively oppressed people, particularly people that were assigned a race regardless of actual national origin, and then were denigrated for being that race, it’s a point of pride to say that “our people” (who you basically forced “us” to become not on the basis of our shared heritage or nationality but purely on the basis of lumping together everyone with the same color skin) survived and thrived, and eventually developed our own culture despite the shitty circumstances.
White people don’t fit into this category because nobody forced people to be white and then said they weren’t citizens in the country or that they could only live in certain towns, forcing them to band together as one and develop their own white people culture with basically strangers, and nobody robbed them of their history and forced them into brutal chattel slavery for hundreds of years.
Edit: Most white people who care to do so still have an understanding of their lineage, national origin, religion, and/or festivals, and many of those are or were celebrated in their own ways: St Patty’s Day, Octoberfest, Christopher Columbus Day (which was basically an Italian pride day originally), Catholic holidays, Jewish holidays, etc.
This opens a whole new can of worms for me.
Can a gay person who has never experienced homophobia rightfully celebrate Pride Month?
Can a black person who was adopted by white parents and has no black cultural influence be proud of being black?
In any case, I understand the sentiment, I’m not saying “I don’t understand why black people want to be recognised and celebrate the victories afforded to them by their ancestors”.
What I don’t understand is the specific vernacular of the word “pride” in these cases. Rosa Parks was a BAMF, but why would I be proud of her? I didn’t put the idea in her head, I didn’t give her the courage to sit at the back of the bus.
Whether I’m black or white has no bearing on whether I should be proud of anything outside of my own influence; I’m convinced identity politics gets us nowhere.
Those gay people wouldn’t have a need to celebrate Pride Month.
Sadly, no gay person on this planet has never experienced homophobia, even in the most LGBTQ+ friendly countries in the world.
Strangely enough, we’re closer to a gay tolerant society than an ethnic tolerant society (not factoring in transfolk).
One of my cousins is a gay teen but has never experienced homophobia first hand, only vicariously through media and online, which is notable.
When you’re born, you aren’t just dropped out of the clear blue sky onto a level playing field fully defined by the merits of your own actions. Life isn’t a lone survivor video game.
You’re born in context: historically, financially, genetically, and otherwise. Some people take pride in their heritage, their lineage, their culture, their traditions, etc etc etc. Just because it isn’t your cup of tea and you’d rather only celebrate what you consider to be your own accomplishments (and I say it this way on purpose because without your born context there’s no guarantee that your life would’ve turned out as it did) does not mean everyone views the world the same way.
I think more generically you should ask yourself why it bothers you so much when people celebrate aspects of their identity.
I’d largely have no problem with “white pride” festivals if the concept even made any sense at all (which it doesn’t, and which is why it’s basically “white power” with a tiny PR tune up), but these “events” are basically just Klan rallies. Versus look at most pride festivals. They’re full of people dancing and singing and genuinely celebrating things they have in common with one another (or in some cases, like with gay pride and ally ship, things they simply have an affinity for).
I think you may be viewing my thoughts through an uncharitable lens. I am not bothered at all when anyone celebrates any aspect of their identity.
I’m a white Australian; my ancestors committed atrocities, yet, I do not feel shame for their actions, because I wasn’t involved. I can only take shame in how I have acted.
To reiterate, the definition of pride is localised to the individual. It doesn’t make sense to be proud of someone else’s accomplishments if you haven’t helped them.
A parent may feel proud if their child has done well, they have contributed to their success. However, if my college in a different department gets a promotion, I shouldn’t.
Now extend this to people you don’t know, and it makes no sense at all.
That’s just what you think / feel / opine / believe. Pride has many definitions, and people often take pride in their ancestry which they cannot possibly have helped because they didn’t exist the entire time they lived their life. Humans aren’t fully rational and again, aren’t dropped in greenfield without context on a level playing field. Also, you apparently don’t feel much pride for your heritage, but you still benefit from it. Your achievements and failures are partially possible and/or caused by your birth situation. If, by birth lottery you were born a Palestinian, you might have died in childhood before ever going to school or college.
Who are you to tell others that their feelings are valid or invalid?
Ultimately, I’d suggest that you take a look inward because I don’t think a lot of your problems with these things stem from a logical place either but also an emotional one. To be human is much more than a fancy calculator, and it’s perfectly fine to feel various feelings without them necessarily being rationally justified. There is only, in my opinion of course, a problem when people start to use emotions to justify violence or other forms of abuse.
But life isn’t generally, and being human isn’t certainly:
I did one good thing = I have earned one smile.
EDIT: Outside and inside and in addition to all of this, I think it’s perfectly fine and even kind of justified to feel proud of others because we are all ultimately only members of one race: the human one. I haven’t marched at LGBTQ+ pride but it wouldn’t bother me to do so if someone genuinely wanted me there for some reason, and I take pride in the positive achievements of lots of other people who I did nothing to help all of the time.
You seem to be assuming a lot about my position, and getting most of it wrong.
My only stance thus far is one of definitions. Yes, I know the definition of “pride” has changed, which I’m trying to illustrate is an issue.
Elon’s “white pride” rhetoric stems from nationalism, which stems from the conventional definition of “pride”, which is:
The pride displayed here is that of perceived inherent superiority, which leads to bigotry.
Rationality and emotion aren’t mutually exclusive. Empathy has flaws, it causes people to become hijacked by emotion. Conversely, compassion is a choice, even psychopaths can be convinced behaving compassionately is in their own self interest.
So, I don’t accept the assertion that feelings are an acceptable metric for evaluating the validity of a claim. I’m convinced it’s wrong to be proud of an identity.
I appreciate your measured arguments here, and they echo my own thoughts over the years. I’ve always struggled to see the upside to celebrating any sort of heritage. I can’t really find fault with any of your assertions, but it’s such a classic “white guy on the Internet” take that it reflexively feels bigoted to a lot of people, I think. It doesn’t make any sense to me when people take pride in their ancestry, but folk can be happy about whatever, I guess, as long as they’re not denigrating others.
And I’ve always struggled to see the upside to celebrating the community team or whatever, but that doesn’t make my opinion more rational, valuable, or human than anyone else’s.
“Whatever” “I guess”… These words aren’t in here by accident, but this overall sentiment is the one actually worth pursuing IMO without all of the passive aggression.
You and the Aussie don’t seem to understand that you’re advancing Musk’s (and other racists’) “arguments” by equating overwhelmingly positive movements with reactionary, retrograde movements that use co-opted words and rhetorical tricks to pretend they’re the same thing.
You’re acting like Elon or a klansman (same picture.gif) sat down and read a dictionary definition and came up with this. He didn’t.
Of course they’re not mutually exclusive, you were pretending they were by saying someone’s “correct” feeling of pride can only be derived from their own achievements.
Rationality is a man made concept. Humans are not purely or perhaps not even mostly rational.
What claim are you even talking about? You’re the one tossing out claims left and right, like it’s morally wrong to go to a pride parade unless you’ve personally experienced homophobia… Meanwhile you’re side stepping the very relevant and obvious thing: that someone acting positively due to unearned pride harms absolutely nobody.
You’re getting confused by rhetoric because you’re overly concerned about the dictionary definition of co-opted words. Just because it’s called white pride and gay pride doesn’t mean that the intentions, the events, the attendants, or anything philosophically backing any of it are remotely the same. Straight pride is practically a homophobic hatred event, gay pride is largely a block party with fun and revelry.
It’s evident you’re arguing in bad faith. I never claimed its morally wrong to attend a pride parade unless one has experience homophobia. I’m out, peace
you should be a little ashamed that you benefit greatly from their actions. Nobody thinks it’s your personal fault, were just trying to get you to see how you have an unfair leg up over your darker skinned counterparts. Nobody wants you to apologize, you yourself didn’t do anything. We just want you to understand that it’s a little fucked up how your life is easier in general just because you’re white, and we want you to try and figure out why that is
Spare me with the condescension. I don’t feel ashamed for something I have no control of.
Of course I want the same outcome as you, for people who have been historically discriminated against to have the same opportunities as me.
It is fucked up that things are easier because I won the genetic lottery, and was born male, and straight (mostly).
That being said, I have no obligation to make up for the sins of my fathers. However, I do have a moral obligation to fight injustices to the best of my abilities, this would be the case, regardless of the dice roll of life.
it’s impossible to never experience those things when they’re institutionalized. You don’t have to actively feel or even know you’re being supressed when it’s going on behind the scenes.
I get the sentiment, and it’s not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people saying “pride” mean “There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from” and some people mean “the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash”. And “white pride” has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
Pointing out that “white pride” COULD also mean the former doesn’t remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
Just to clarify, I’m not asking about the implication of “white pride”, just the semantics of pride in general.
It reminds me of “Black Lives Matter” - of course they do, but too many people heard “only black lives matter”, when what they’re trying to say is “black lives matter too”.
These twits responded with “All Lives Matter”, which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, “defund the police”, “all cops are bastards”, “math is racist”.
We can’t expect the Right to read between the lines, it’s up to the Left to use better language so we don’t give them more ammo.
The right will often purposefully misrepresent whatever the left uses as a slogan. So only so much can be done there. As for the use of racial pride, I find that often those who can claim no accomplishments in themselves will often claim pride by association. They could claim pride in race, but really any group. This could be considered a defense mechanism for their own ego as they are not okay accepting their own short comings.
Deliberate misrepresentation can only be employed if one understands the original intent.
If a malicious person wants to try to convince others “Black Lives Matter” means “only black lives matter”, they may have a pretty clear shot (assuming they’re trying to convince someone Right of Centre).
If it was rebranded to “Black Lives Matter Too”, then they would have a harder time trying to be deceitful.
I’m convinced there are more people in the camp of failing to read between the lines.
In either case, language games are important; playing poorly will lead to catastrophic outcomes. The worst part is this is so easy to correct for - a little bit of imagination will illustrate predictable backlash, or lack thereof.
Fair enough. My conservative family is on the side of purposefully misunderstanding, but I can understand that some may just misunderstand and we should mitigate that when we can.
God damn, I don’t envy you.
Having a family which is consciously malicious must make for some very frustrating conversations.
I, on the other hand, have a right-of-centre family who are mostly just too dull to extrapolate, and spend too much time on FB.
At least in my case I can sometimes dispel misconceptions.
Besides my severe trust issues I am fine, life is better now that I have mostly cut them all off.
This is human nature at end of day. If it’s not being white/black, it’s your football team, what country you’re from, or on lemmy crap like whether you use Linux or not.
I never understood it myself but people are morons.
Absolutely. Tribalism is toxic.
At least Linux is a choice.
I use Arch BTW.
Because in this case it’s talking more about KKK type of “white pride”.
It’s totally okay to be proud of aspects of your heritage. It’s important to also own up to harm done by your ancestors too, especially when you benefit in tangible or intangible ways from that history, which becomes less expected of you the more injustice was done to your ancestors vs done by your ancestors. However… “White” is not a race, white is a skin tone, there is no universal white heritage, even “European immigrant to America” is far from a monolithic heritage. “Black” being considered a heritage confuses some people but that’s because “black” is shorthand for two things that aren’t directly skintone. “Black” refers most commonly to the shared experience and built/rebuilt heritage of the descendents of slaves who’s culture and heritage were stolen from them, brought mostly to the Americas from West Africa, and then systemically oppressed for generations. “Black” can also be used to describe people who share the experience of oppression based on their black skin color regardless of their specific history.
I think white people have the least to be proud of of any other people.
What have we accomplished? We stole land, science, math, technology, the whole concept of civilization, and pretty much anything else you could think of, from non-white people. We stand on the shoulders of colored giants, and act relish the scent of our own shit because of it. Literally a lesson in “history is written by the victor”.
Basically all we really have that’s purely our own is our art, philosophy, and religion. And even a lot of that is stolen and built upon.
Damn, now THAT’S some racism
why would a person of any gender would be proud of their gender? You seem pretty selective.
The irony of claiming I’M the selective one by quoting me, but missing the next line which reads “I think the language is kind of wrong”.
The implication is I support the idea of a time to celebrate marginalised communities and to raise awareness for their current battles, but I think the word “pride” is the wrong word.
Damn, can you just say: “well my bad, indeed I’m contradicting myself”.
LGBTQI are not marginalized anymore, they are becoming noisy now and it starts to become a bit too much… we have now a “pride month”, wtf.
It’s not a contradiction at all.
The intent behind saying “I support pride month” was about what it represents, not the vocabulary used, which is what I went on to articulate.
I’m really not looking to get into it, but I am convinced LGBTQIA+ people are marginalised and discriminated against.