It feels odd to have pride in family/ancestry stuff that you have no proper claim to because it was all done by people before you were born. You can be proud of people you’re descended from for having done good things (though it’s often difficult to know all the good and bad stuff your ancestors did since good, reliable records are often hard to come by), but the personalization of that pride seems inappropriate.
About the closest thing I have to such “pride” is being proud of my father for being the first in his family to go to college and get two masters degrees eventually and lift himself and by extension my mother and siblings and I out of the uncultured racism and poverty that permeates his side of the family. I benefit from that, but I have no claim to it since I didn’t do it, so I can’t have any personal pride in it. That wouldn’t be honest. Same goes for anything my genetic forbears did.
It’s a good hypothesis, though there’s the usual Jesus Problem of the main source we have for his life being a very heavily edited version with a clear agenda told more-than-secondhand. Still, it’s a solid look into a tantalizing possibility!
I’m proud of my grandad (one of the Rats of Tobruk, helped kick Rommel’s Nazi arse all over North Africa). I’m proud of my Mum (clawed her way from a very 1950’s working-class background to high public office, while simultaneously raising two kids on her own). And I’m proud of my brother (teaches high school in severely disadvantaged remote Aboriginal communities, throws his heart and soul into the work).
But that is pride in them, not me. You don’t get any credit just because you share genes with good people.
Aside from numerals, mathematics, religion, Christianity, irrigation, novels, paper, ink, dance, music, gunpowder, guns, bombs, time bombs, the seismograph, the compass, just-in-time manufacturing, CD players, MP3 players, Pokemon, calculators, karaoke, lithium ion batteries, yoga, martial arts, silk, umbrellas, tea, noodles, instant noodles, shampoo, punk futurism, and futures markets, what have those other sub-groups ever done for us?
I don’t “prefer” anything. I am white and I am proud of it.
Any group identity is a social construct, based on systematic interactions of individuals, their typical traits and our conceptualization of it.
What is your point, exactly ?
At a guess, the point is that you’re presenting yourself here as a wilfully ignorant douche, and choosing to publicly affiliate yourself with vile and destructive political figures.
But that’s just a guess. I’m sure @anon15383236 will clarify if I got it wrong.
Well, I’m familiar with the “Bell Curve” as a book, so that’s some work under the bridge that probably needs to be chucked on the rubbish heap. You got anything of your own?
I read it when it came out, and you’re not making points. You’re deflecting. Try to point to something of substance. Also, state your opinion. Don’t hide behind authors.
Uh huh. So, violently subjugating another group is people is, by your implication, not something to be ashamed of, and, if one is ashamed of that, that’s somehow a problem? Because it’s all part of their heritage, of course.
This time. It’s a short step from this particular position–“My people are the best because I believe us to have done more”–to the general white supremacist attitude–“Other people are worth less because they are not part of my people”.
And, as part of his larger pattern, he is pretty clearly a bigot with massive leanings in that explicit direction–not the least being that he displays a Confederate flag on his desk (despite the fact that his state was on the Union side), and the infamous “cantaloupe calves” comment.
But, at the end of the day, the concept of “whiteness”, and “white pride”, as opposed to pride in a particular national identity that also happens to be white, was effectively created as a divide-and-conquer approach in the European colonies by the elite to keep the lower-class European immigrants, the conquered locals, and the slaves from finding common ground and a common cause. And that is what he, and others like him, are perpetuating.
Just so you know, no one cares that you feel you score a rhetorical point with this phrase. It’s a canned response that is used pretty much exclusively by racists and misogynists. You keep your civility, and feel as superior as you like to those who you think lack it if it makes you feel good.
Incidentally, the more recent editions of SJ Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man include an appendix that fairly thoroughly demolishes the mendacious bullshit presented in The Bell Curve.
Gould was a fine scientist and a writer of quality; worth the read.
