On "Pride" and "Power" messages...

[MellowDem]

In light of the recent Supreme court tuling on the "straight pride" shirts, I thought it would be interesting to discuss a message that has a lot of confusion and anger surrounding it in the general populace, but especially on the right.

When I was in high school and much more naive about the world, I remember seeing a "Black Pride" shirt being worn in one of my gym classes. I remember being ticked off by the shirt, viewing it as an intentionally divisive shirt meaning to highlight racial differences. I assumed that the wearer was bigoted in their views to take pride in their race. My views were informed by my limited understanding of history, but especially memories of seeing old films of the KKK chanting "white pride" and "white power". From that knowledge, it was easy for me to see this message as having the same meaning. I understood it as an angry and equal response to KKK types, and figured that white racists had made this guy wearing the shirt into a racist himself out of anger.

Also while I was in high school, I remember our school having its first gay pride week ever (this was in 2003 I think). Once again, I completely misunderstood the message or idea of Gay Pride week. Signs were hung up stating that as many as 1/5 men were gay and 1/10 women were lesbians and also cited statistics about discrimination against gay students. While I was in complete agreement with the GLBT club who had put it on in regards to not wanting them to be discriminated against, I was turned off by the whole "pride" part of it. To me it seemed to be fighting fire with fire. Arrogance and bigotry was being met with the same in response. Why have pride in something as irrelevant as your sexual preferance? Or for anything that you do not choose to be, but just are by birth? Wasn't that what started the problem in the first place? Thinking that sexual preferance or race mattered and having "pride" in being born one way over another?

Being raised in a religious household, I had always figured that "pride" was a sin for a reason and was basically the opposite of humility. I didn't care about a person's race or sexual preferances, and I would think of myself as a douchebag if I cared about my own race or sexual preferance and wore it on my sleeve, much less had "pride" in it.

I know quite a few of my classmates felt the same way and know of quite a few adults older than I who still think the same way about pride or power messages from minorities. Many of them sympathize with the group's cause but don't understand it from the way the message is being conveyed.

Through further learning of my own (I'm a big history buff that reads a lot of history for "fun") and personally getting to know a more diverse group of people in college I eventually understood that pride messages were not simply the same as "white pride" from the KKK. It was not about "pride" in how I thought about it, but about awareness and confidence.

I have had to explain this to others now quite a few times, but I can't really blame them, as their ignorance comes from a lack of knowledge of history (which is unfortunately very common) and interactions with people not like them (also very common), things which for the most part society has done to them, what with schools not focusing on history much in the first place and the segregated nature of most of American society.

So I guess the moral of the story is that the confusion that still surrounds the "pride" and "power" message of minority groups is an indication of the ignorance still out there and is a good reason to educate whenever you can. You'll be suprised at the potential allies out there who are just confused or misunderstanding the message.

[haifa lootin]

1. Claiming "pride" for an accident of birth is arrogant and ignorant.

You won the bakeoff for your banana cream pie, you can be proud of that but not for just -being- whoever or whatever you are. Think how ridiculous if someone were 'ashamed' to be white or black or whatever...


That is how I feel about it. :-)

[Igel]

2. There's a problem in generalization.

It cuts in an absurd number of ways.

Take my neighbors. Many are Latino. Some are "proud" in the sense that they feel they have nothing to be ashamed of: They insist on their dignity. They're as good as anybody else. Fine and dandy. It's as it should be. "Latino pride" writ non-exceptional. Most of them don't make an issue of it.

Not all of them are like this, however. A couple are into Mexican "pride": Mexico is better than the US, Mexican culture is better than the US, Mexican food is better than the US. The US would be a far better place if we all became Mexicans. They've taught their kids--born in the US--that they aren't "Americans" but "Mexicans"; they don't speak "Spanish," they speak "Mexican" (which is better than the crap they speak in Spain and Argentina and Venezuela). To say anything bad about Mexico is an insult. Current gang warfare in N. Mexico? Not done by Mexicans; the US is behind it. ("So, G., why, exactly, does your family live in the US if it's sos bad here and so good there?" gets a nasty silence.)

The 16-year-old daughter's mostly broken out of this Mexican supremacy mindset--she still gets pissed at American flags everywhere on the 4th of July while being pissed that we personally don't sport Mexican flags on Mex. Independence day and May 5, but she's getting better. The young kid is still firmly held in the grip of Mexican superiority in all things. As is the father, who's been here 20 years and considers it a point of pride to be illiterate in English and unable to hold a conversation in anything other than "Mexican." They don't like their kid to play with a neighbor down the street because they're "dirty Salvadorans." Latino pride, writ exceptional.

This is "Latino pride" in the same sense as the KKK's "white pride"--the only difference is that the idiot doesn't have the power to actively oppress those outside his family.

My point: Both kinds of "pride" exist, and they exist among all the groups I know

I've known blacks and Asians and Latinos and Muslims and gays and whites with precisely the same supremacist mindset, who look down on others because they had the horrible misfortune of not being born black or Asian or Latino or Muslim or gay (or had the even worse misfortune of being born a cracker or a Jew or a breeder). I've known blacks and Asians and Latinos and Muslims and gays and whites who were simply confidence and rebelled against being told that they were inferior, hence argued for "pride."

So I can support things like "ethnic pride" in one breath while condemning them with the next: It's a question of which *kind* of pride is intended. However, whenever I condemn the racist, supremacist kind of non-white ethnic pride I've invariably been condemned. The assumption is that I'm condemning the "average dignity" sort of pride because, well, racism isn't a matter of supremacist beliefs and actions it's structural, so oppressed groups can't be racist and therefore the only kind of "pride" they can feel is the good kind and the only kind of dignity that kids taught that whites and Americans are generally bad can shoot for is evil. That, of course, is paternalistic claptrap. It's generalizing one kind of pride--the good kind--and denying the existence of the other because it's "unhelpful"; then it turns around and generalizes the bad kind of pride for other groups, because to do so is helpful.

[MellowDem]

3. Good point...

it was not my intent to generalize all minority "pride" as being the "good" kind. But more in the context of the positive messages. Of course, national, ethnic, and racial pride are poisons everywhere when taken in the sense of being better than others.