[AlphaFrog]

Originally posted by MysticCat81
no, it seemed the same to me.

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. In some cases, that 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 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.

All hail the Sinfonian.

Seriously, this is why I love Phi Mu Alpha!