Is it wrong to be proud of your race?
I’ve been debating with myself for the past few days and I still don’t quite have the answer to my question: Does it make any sense to be proud of your race? Before I start, I’m going to clarify what I mean by race. Race, in my opinion, is defined by physical appearance (skin colour, hair colour, eye colour, facial features, etc.) along with the origin of one’s ancestors. There is somewhat of a debate as to the true meaning of “race”, but I’m using this definition since it’s simple and easy to understand. So, there are the black (Negroid and Australoid/Pygmy), white (Caucasoid) and yellow (Mongoloid) races that make up humanity more or less.
Now, it’s one thing to say that you’re proud of your heritage. I’m proud to be Russian, specifically western (Caucasian) and eastern (Mongoloid) Russian. However, I’m not proud of the fact that my skin has less pigmentation than someone who is black. One of the main arguments of pro-White organisations is that the white race is “dying out” due to mixing with other races. The way I see it, this is inevitable.. Now that we have airplanes, cars, and boats, the mixing of races is going to happen no matter what. However, it’s not entirely wrong of a person to not want to have children with a person who isn’t of their race. Some people believe that their race is superior to others and while there really is no biological evidence of this, they have the right to choose whom they want to marry.
However, I see pride in one’s race as being pointless. If people want to stress equality between races, then things like “Black History Month” are as meaningless as “White Pride”. Let’s celebrate our skin pigmentation, eye colour, and facial features!! It’s things like this which negate the possibility of equality among races. Favouring a race by granting it special social handouts (”Affirmative Action” in the US where minorities are able to gain clout based on their race) only create animosity with other races. This whole idea of letting a minority race “rise up” through these social programmes is ridiculous since it only leads to reverse-discrimination. Races achieve equality by working their way up to the same socioeconomic status as other races, not through handouts from other races who feel pity for them. According to the logic of Affirmative Action, the black races has had 40+ years to work their way up in society, yet they’re still considered the most poor (as of a 2004 study) of any other minority. More than Hispanics, Asians, etc who have been in the country a lot shorter of a time than they have. Granted, there wasn’t much of a means to live off of after slavery, but still. I don’t see why the US government continues to toss money around like this.
So my question to you all is.. are you proud of your skin colour..your race?
Tags: Miscellaneous |
April 24th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
I prefer to look a little deeper in to people. I think celebrating skin colour, race is all pointless really. We are all human beings.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
I am god damn proud that I am Jewish and how I was grown to be.
I honestly hate when people say “We all are equal.”
We are not the same, we were created differently, all of our races/cultures had grown differently.
For example I can’t say that when I look up at some black rapper with his pants pulling down and talking “all street”, I can’t say that me and him were created diffently. Or an asian kid from my math class who had never scored below 97 on any test and who had grown to think that he was better then everybody else. I am not like him.
Moral of the story, we are all different and that’s how we will be forever.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Biologically speaking, Alexandr, the difference between white and black is mostly skin deep. What you’re talking about is difference in culture. Maybe this Asian kid’s parents push him hard to study and this black rapper acts that way because that’s how his friends act.
What I mean by equal is that all people of different races having equal social status.
April 27th, 2007 at 12:09 am
I couldn’t care less about my race and I don’t know why anyone else does.
I don’t know whether I’d go as far as saying it’s wrong, but I find myself looking down on a lot of people who are proud of their race because of the fact that it’s so pointless. I suppose on that basis you could say it’s wrong, but it’s not like anything could be done about it.
April 27th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
Everyone wants to feel superior.
Besides, if these “white pride” etc, things are banned. It’d be “racist”.
June 23rd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
I think you hit the nail right on the head on this one MQ. Let me see if I can’t answer some of the questions that have come up.
First, desertphoenix, I don’t believe everyone wants to feel superior, I think they want to feel secure. The key to security of course is to be part of an organization or group of people who are in fact the strongest of all groups considered. Now, these groups have many levels. The most obvious one, in times of crisis is the nation of which that person is a member of. This is because the country they live in is both strong militarily, and financially. Hence after 9/11 in American most people fell back on the U.S. Government for protection. Socially, people can also demand security such as having a group like the boy scouts, or a sports team, or even a club at school (think a fraternity). The inner bonds of the group protect the person socially. Race is closer to this type of a group. Race, however, can protect a person far beyond that if a race group grows large or bonds strongly in time of crisis. Basically, like in Germany between WW1 and WW2 the nation was so weak that the “Arrian” race took its place and the race became the nation. This all hinges on the fact, of course, that the person does not desire to accept the lack of security and amount of work proposed by individualism.
Second, Alexandr, there is nothing that says a thug on the street of L.A. can’t be developed into a “civilized” human being. If you have ever read book like the Lord of the Flies or seen the movie My Fair Lady that is what they are talking about. The amount of work it takes and the desire to fit into a social class, in this day and age at least, are often the only limiting factors in social movement. Oh, and that asian kid…probably worked pretty hard on that Math. Math has a way of building on itself, we all struggle with it at some point (if we go far enough) it is just a matter of how much time and effort you are willing to put into your cognitive development.