The shame of white pride

I’m glad I don’t have “white pride.”

From what I can tell, 95 percent of white pride is bitching about the two or three privileges that whites don’t have, all of which exist to compensate for centuries of white oppression. And 99 percent of the other five percent is sneering defiance of those who are so mean as to make racism some kind of hate crime.

I’m not proud of being white, just like I’m not proud of any aspect of myself that I can’t help. Real pride arises from what you accomplish in life, because you do control that. I don’t know if there’s an inverse correlation between inherited pride (race, region, bloodline, etc.), and accomplishment pride (family, career, charity, education, etc.), but I suspect there is. The former is negative in the sense of, “I’m better and/or persecuted,” while the latter is positive: “I made this wonderful thing happen.” I’d bet that most people who complain about other racial groups haven’t done much of note in their own lives. There certainly aren’t many white supremacists who’ve ever done anything of non-racist note.

White pride is about as negative as it gets. It’s also as stupid as it gets.

Affirmative action is the perfect example. White-priders claim that this is government-mandated prejudice, completely missing the irony there. They ask where their affirmative action is. Well, it’s in America, the land where white people always have a built-in advantage in every situation. I may be a liberal in the Deep South, but I still have to open my mouth or bang out a blog for anyone to realize it. No one sees it on my face when I walk into a store. No one throws out my résumé at the sight of my name (it usually takes a paragraph or two). I can walk up to any white racist anywhere and be treated civilly, because I look like they do. I didn’t have to fight for years just so employers and admissions counselors would even consider my people for positions. That’s because “my” people were at the wheel from the beginning. And that’s why there’s no affirmative action for whites. (And why there’s no White History Month, White Congressional Caucus, white advancement organizations or anything else that a majority people never need.)

Sensible white people know that while there’s no shame in being white, there is shame in white pride.