White pride

Some young white people today find it shameful to be white and part of the "oppressive majority". "The white heritage is one of slavery, oppression and exploitation!", so they say.

As a Chinese person, whose country was brutally oppressed by a not one, not two, but an entire coalition of white nations for decades before World War II, I feel no hatred against the white race. In fact, since many whites I talk to today are so brainwashed that they actually believe that their own heritage is one of brutality and atrocities, I guess I should tell them a bit about the achievements of their own race. Yep, the yellow man is here to tell you about the good things the white man has done!

• Unparalled contributions and achivements in just about every field of science, mathematics, medicine and technology for the past 500 years.

• They indeed did spread democracy and capitalism, two wonderful things.

• Whites played a huge role in shaping the world into the way it is today.

• Renaissance, Industrial Revolution, Computer Revolution, you know, good things.

I'm sure there are more. And I'm not saying that the white man is wholly responsible for all those achievements, but they did play a big part in them. In addition, whites have caused plenty of havoc and chaos as well, but why keep focusing on those and ignoring the good things they've done? Why? It's a shame to be white?

Every time I hear someone say there is no white heritage to celebrate, I have to laugh.

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Don't call me white..... The connotations are wearing my nuts thin.

Does it mean I have to take such shit for, for being fair-skinned now! I ain't part of no conspiracy, I'm just an average Joe!"

NOFX

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And to think, I'm not even white. I can write for days on the things we Chinese can be proud of, and all these white kids think it's a shame to be white. Political correctness once again.

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No, robwicks. Sometimes, this trend is so extreme, people are ashamed to be white. Case in point. Read white pride is hateful, black pride is not. Note how Saige and prole are saying how whites have nothing to celebrate. Thank God there were sensible souls to counter their brainless ramble, like Uberfetus, ophie, Woundweavr and even moJoe.

I've never heard anyone say there is no white heritage to celebrate. I'm sure one moron or another has said many things over the years, but I have spoken to a number of people in various stages of their lives, and this is one opinion I have not come across. The simple fact is, in America, the phrase white pride has been in use, and has had a decidedly negative connotation (at least to me; others will differ, strongly). With most Americans, the use of a word determines its meaning. White pride has been used almost exclusively by people we consider unsavory, unlike black pride, Asian pride, etc.

One of the unfortunate things about popular culture is that it does not discriminate between certain differences between similar things. For example, gangsta rap gives some people an opinion on all rap. The phrase welfare mother generally evokes a negative reaction, but I find it difficult to believe that all mothers on welfare are somehow evil. If someone calls me a hip cat, this is a somewhat antiquated complement, even if it is comparing me to an animal. If they call me a porch monkey, this is an insult, even though I am still being compared to an animal. This is how language works. Some terms, though similar in nature, differed in development and differ in common usage. In short, the American experience influences heavily how words are interpreted by Americans. I cannot speak of other English speaking countries, but that appears to be how things work here.

One of the funniest thing about a racist is that he's usually the last to understand the mechanism of his own racism.

When a person expresses any sentiment, in this case pride in a heritage, the words spoken are themselves meaningless. What gives words meaning is the context endowed them by the social power of the speaker. As a member of the dominant social group, a white person's words carry a much different meaning than those of another. In the context of American culture, for example, when a white person speaks of pride in heritage the history evoked is very charged. His words conjure the facts of colonization, genocide, segregation, and oppression that continue to this day. Thus to speak of white pride, while not in and of itself a bad thing, is at the very least inappropriate in light of social history.

I'm sure there are some of you out there who are at this very moment gasping, "But I, average Joe White Guy, have never called anyone a nigger, kike, or gook! Why should I have to admit some sort of complicity in the wrongs of a history to which I may not even have a direct link? Am I damned merely because I possess a particular skin color or ethnicity?" Before you start to feel too much like a victim, remember that one does not have to actively participate in a racist power structure to benefit from it. This is the power of not being marked as "other". Every time you enter a store and are not instantly followed by security, you are benefiting. Every time a cab passes up other fares to stop for you, you are benefiting. Every time you enter a room and the people around you do not instantly become tense and nervous at your presence, you are benefiting. I for one would gladly forfeit the concept of white history month (as if every month isn't already white history month) to be one of the "unmarked".

It's all in the connotations. Since the concept of "white pride" is associated with racist assholery and pointy white hoods, idiots who blather about it are associated with the Nazis, the KKK, and ignorant racist rednecks. Political correctness has nothing to do with it; I just don't want to be associated with that type of people. So you're proud to be white. Whoopty-goddamn-doo, I could care less.

Apathy pride! We don't care where our ancestors came from. We don't care what color we are. We're here, and we're human, and that's what really matters

May I remind you that the "white race" (so to call it, because to me it does not have a reality as a collective entity) does not have the exclusive on war, oppression, hatred and slavery ?
The enslavement of Africans was possible only through the help of other Africans, to which clearly slavery was not such a repellent concept. Other races, other peoples have had slaves for the whole lenght of recorded history.
The Mongols have waged war and massacre with impressive efficiency. The Chinese have hacked each other to pieces for centuries, with gusto and literary elegance no doubt (read DMan's nodes about Chines history). The Japanese have done the same, on a somewhat smaller scale because there were less of them.

The tribes of New Guinea have a remarkable passion for stone-age technology wars, which are every bit as deadly and nasty as computer-age wars.
If you look at the recorded history of Africa you will notice reigns and empires (Mali, Zimbabwe) that did not disappear because of the common cold, but rather because they were invaded, crushed and looted. Even the poor, oppressed, all-killed-by-Spaniards Aztecs were, as a people, dedicated to the brutal oppression (and eating) of other conquered peoples.
The "peaceful" Mayans have records (read the Chilam Balam) of internecine wars. They were made peaceful through conquest and exhaustion.

There are many more examples, but what I would like to point out is that, despite all the bullshit, the "whites" never were the monopoly of "colonization, genocide, segregation, and oppression that continue to this day".

What we (they, whatever) had was technology before the others, which is why Moctezuma did not conquer Spain - not that he would not have liked to do so.

As an aside, it always seems to me laughable to have pride in being part of an ethnic group, much like pride in being of a given sex or sexual orientation.
These are things that happen to us. I was born a Parmesan, and an Italian, but does that make me part in any way of the genius of Bodoni, Correggio, Dante Alighieri or Michelangelo or Julius Caesar ? No way. Or of the beauty of Florence and Venice ? Neither.
I may happen to be better equipped to enjoy them than someone else, but this because of education. An education that I have not chosen, that again (much like the place, manner and date of my birth) simply happened to me.
I can be proud of something I have done, or to which I have contributed.
I approve of the Linux movement, and I like it, but I cannot be proud of it until the moment I release MY contribution to it, my own kernel patch or little piece of code, or until I do my bit to evangelize.
As Kipling said, if I remember, "the race is run one by one". Despite all the collectivistic bullshit and feel-good talk, it is not the group, it is the individual's worth that counts.

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a long rant for a Saturday morning, eh ? Addendum: I find myself in a similar position to whizkid. Once, in the US, I remember that I defused a heated race discussion that was going on in an IRC channel, about the OJ trial. They asked me what race I was, and I answered "pasty-white". That seemed amusing to a lot of people, because it took all possible pride out of whiteness ... it is just a color. And it is not even white, it is pink !

Though I live in the US, I grew up in Central Europe. As such, I have never thought of myself as "white". I mean I have always known I was white, but it was never an issue to me. Everyone around me was white.

For that matter, I have never thought of myself as European either. My first real contact with Americans was when I lived in Rome, Italy. I became a very good friend with an American (in fact, it was this friendship that resulted in my move to America), and his parents came to visit.

His mother was observing Romans and then would say things like "Europeans do such and such things."

To that, I would react, "Whoa! Wait a minute! All you've seen is a small part of Italy. Please don't generalize!"

The truth is, in Europe, which is essentially where most "whites" come from (or their ancestors did), there are so many radically different cultures that it is hard for me to think of myself as a European (again, of course I know I am a European, but all that means to me is that I was born in a country that happens to be in Europe - a geographical identity, not a cultural one).

If I have any "identity" in cultural sense, I am a Slovak because that is where I was born, where I grew up, and that is the language I spoke for the first 29 years of my life. I also identify myself as an American, because that is where I have lived for the last 16 years, that is what I am a citizen of, and that is where I intend to spend the rest of my life (at least, I intend it now) — and, boy, you should have seen how green with envy everyone was for me being an American when I went to visit Slovakia ten years ago (and a hundred times greener when I flashed my badge as a deputy sheriff — they all love cowboy movies there), hehehe.

So, if I feel any ethnic pride, it may be a Slovak pride and an American pride. But I feel no particular call to a white pride. I am neither proud of being white nor ashamed. It is just the level of pigmentation in my skin as far as I'm concerned. (If anything, being a redhead is something I'm happy about <grin>).

The only time I hear anyone talking about white pride is from white supremacists—and those people I just plain don't understand.

So, what difference does it make that the computer was thought up by someone white? It was not his skin color that made him smart. There are smart people in every race. And there are not so smart people in every race. The achievements mentioned in the original writeup are not achievements of the white race, race had nothing to do with it. Perhaps the relatively mild weather of Europe helped.

On the other hand, things like slavery in America were related to the stupid idea that we are somehow superior to others. As a direct immigrant I can say quite straight that my personal ancestors had nothing to do with it (indeed, my ancestors were quite oppressed in 19th Century just for being Slovak - we were destined for ethnic extermination, but that's a different story). But I can see how some white Americans can feel ashamed. And I certainly can fully understand how many white Americans feel the need to right the wrongs of the past (and, alas, the present).

So, I suppose, the difference is cultural, at least to a point. I suspect most Europeans do not think of themselves as whites but rather as German, or French, or Swiss, or Slovak, or Hungarian, or Irish, or ... you name it (or, maybe, Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist...).