Quote:
Originally posted by Senusret I
I wonder if I'm the only one who sees that you actually agreed with what she said.
In your case, it's not your whiteness that you are proud of, it is your family and their accomplishments -- as she said.
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no, it seemed the same to me.
Quote:
Originally posted by Little E
OPhiARen3- when you tell people they can't be proud of being 'white' because it is inherently racisit, at a level you are telling people to deny who they are.
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Maybe I misread what OPhiARen3 was saying, but I didn't take her to mean telling people to deny who they are at all. I read her as saying be proud of who you are.
I think she was trying to say this (she can certainly correct me if I'm wrong): historically the label white (or "white race"): has had no real meaning except "not black, aboriginal, etc." Basically, describing someone as "white" necessarily described them by saying what they weren't. I think she was saying that pride comes from heritage, not just from pigmintation. "Whites" cover a whole range of very different ethnicities -- Italian, Irish, Norwegian, historically Northen African and Middle Eastern and on and on and on. I think she was saying be proud of who you are and where you came from, but that "white" didn't necessarily describe that.
I think it can be a bit more nuanced, though. Race may indeed be a social construct, but social constructs can take on a reality. Like "white," "black" describes people of various ethnicities, but who, for the most part, share a common historical experience in this country. That shared historical experience gives some meaning to being "black" in this country that transcends whether one's ancestors came from Nigeria or Uganda. In some cases, this may be true of "whites" as well. I am a Southern white man, and I think that may give rise to a common historical experience that is not limited to nation of origin. The same may well be true elsewhere.
So what would I say? I am very proud of my Scottish, English, Welsh, Cornish, Dutch and Huguenaut heritage. I don't think of myself as being proud of being white. I'm not ashamed of it, I don't deny it -- it just seems to me like being proud of having green eyes.
But yet I am proud of being a Southern white, because the experience, good and bad, of being a white person in the South is part of who I am. I fully recognize the baggage that carries and what some, including some of my ancestors did. But while I don't deny history, I don't deny my pride either, because that is part of who I am. Does the distinction make any sense?
But, and this is a big but . . . I would be very careful of how I express that pride, if for no other reason than the phrase "white pride" carries connotations of the Klan and of Nazism with which I definitely do not want to be associated.