My reactions, in order (which grew long enough to transition from a comment to their own post):
1. Any time you start a sentence with “It’s not racist,” it’s probably racist.
2. That poor girl. Who looks heavily tranked.
3. But why would we not also then say that “black pride” or a love of “black heritage” is racism?
4. It is, but is set against a backdrop of institutionalized white racism / normalcy, where blacks loving black things is noteworthy because it’s so unusual, but white loving white things (but not calling it that) is so common.
5. “Loving Your [White] People is usually dressed up as “Loving America” or, paradoxically, “Loving [Your European heritage]” (which is pretty ironic, given how Slavs, Italians, Spanish, Greeks, Poles, and Irish have all been treated at times by “Americans” who were here before them).
6. Which in turn is also different from saying “Loving Your [White] People” because, in modern America, it’s rarely done divisively; when I say (which I rarely do, but work with me) that I am proud of my Italian heritage, I’m talking about my Grandmother’s recipes and family history and traditions around the holidays. I’m not saying “to the exclusion of your ethnicity’s heritage.”
7. It’s also different from saying “I’m proud of the Italian people” because that’s implying that it’s the people, not some collective cultural group, that are somehow distinct; that there is something in the blood and genes of Italians that makes them substantively different from other Europeans. Or other humans. And that starts to look racist, indeed, whether it’s meant positively or negatively.
7.5 “Your People” is on a blurry line there between “people who have a similar background and culture” and “people who look like me.”
8. Love is different from Pride. One is considered a cardinal virtue, another a deadly sin.
9. In the most noteworthy way in which Jesus talked about love (Luke 10:29-37), he emphasized love of neighbor — and by “neighbor” he didn’t mean the folk the next street over.
10. If some folk in Harrison, AR, wants to celebrate its history, that’s not necessarily racist (depending on what it’s celebrating, e.g., http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/encyclopedia/entry-detail.aspx?entryID=3712). That strikes me as quite a bit different from celebrating “White Pride,” which is hard to construe as not racist.
11. Going back to 3-4 above, it seems to me the distinction between “White Pride” and “Black Pride” is a distinction between context and ends.
If the context is one of a group being told individually and institutionally they are not worthy, that the achievements of they and those like them are not worthy of pride, that they are in fact a shame upon the overall culture, then calls for group pride as a means of support and solidarity against oppression are understandable, depending upon the ends sought.
If the ends of a group pride movement are superiority and dominance over other groups, or even just separation and purity from them, then the movement has crossed the line from mutual support to “groupist” thinking. In this case, racist.
Originally shared by +George Wiman:
Racist? Nah. Just white-loving:
(There are almost no circumstances in which anyone will cop to racism, no matter how blatantly racist they are.)
I've never really understood the whole "black pride" /"white pride/latino pride" thing. Are people, as a whole, that different that they need to perpetuate such segmentation of society?
+Mark Means As I tried to say, I think part of it comes when a portion of the population feels segmented from what is accepted as mainstream and "normal." The desire to say "We're important, too" becomes an urgent means not necessarily of perpetuating segmentation but of helping redefine inclusively what the whole actually is.
(It can be segmenting, of course, if the goal is to be separate. That tends to be a fringe motivation, though, at least in this country.)
E.g., "White History Month" is silly because every month is treated as White History Month (both because of what white-dominated society considers to be history or historical figures, and because, within that context, the vast majority of important movers and shakers have been white / of European descent). Whereas "Black History Month" offers a still-needed chance to highlight the contributions of blacks to the nation as a whole — not "more cool than thou" but "part of thou, too".
An earlier pair of examples that occur to me: St Patrick's Day parades in much of the country, especially back East (a means of solidarity and pride amongst Irish immigrants who were otherwise kept out of "decent society" for quite some time) and the establishment of Columbus Day (with associated parades) by Italian-American groups as their own solidarity and promotion, for much the same reason.
The essence of racism is to think of anyone, including yourself, in terms of race. "Loving your people" in the sense meant by that billboard is indeed racist.
+Brian Rush, to me (but I'm not the billboard folk!) "Loving my people" would be identical to "Loving my species". Race? " Human".
Even this seems limiting to me, because it doesn't include Bear People, Bee People, or Tree People.
The problem I have with "White Pride" is how often it seems to be synonomous with "White Superiority." This doesn't usually seem to be the case with other "Pride" movements.
In the interest of full disclosure, I should probably admit my own racist tendencies. I have always despised Romulans, Andorians, and Tellarites. I'm on the fence about Vulcans.
The functioning definition of "white" is whoever it takes to make a majority. 100 years ago, Irish & Italians were not white. In 30 years hence, Hispanics and Asians will be white.
+Rick Gary "White (Non-Hispanic)" already shows up in a lot of demographic questions.
I suspect that in 30 years — 50 years at the outside — racial questions like that will be obsolete.
The KKK will never be anything but racist trash and the fact that they put “love lives here” on their billboard makes me want to vomit.
I'd aside that "black pride" or similar movements are different in that they are created as a counterbalance to existing systemmic racism. In contemporary America, "White pride" reinforces existing systemmic racism.
It's a false equivalence at best.