“But what about White pride?”

Why do advocates of “White pride” and “White history month” sound like racist tools? Share this explainer with the next person you find who doesn’t get it.

Transcript

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A common and seemingly reasonable argument for white pride or white nationalism is "why can't I be proud of my culture?"

Well, you can. Always have been able to. We have Irish pride celebrations, we have German drinking festivals, we have Serbian food festivals. Any European culture you can think of has multiple organizations in North America dedicated to taking pride in their heritage and NO ONE gives them shit for it.

But, you see, when you start talking "white pride", that's not a culture. That's a skin colour. There is no white culture, never was. There is no pan-European culture, never was. Europe is a continent, not a culture or ethnicity.

Now, some of you are probably about to go "But wait! Black pride! How is that okay?" Well, easy. Go find a black person and ask them if their ancestors were slaves. When you find one who says "yes", proceed to ask them "what country in Africa were your ancestors from?" Do you know what their answer will probably be? "I don't know." This is because their culture was taken from them. It was beaten out of them. They were enslaved, Christianized, and then white washed. The one unifying feature they have as a people is that history of slavery and that history of being black. They can't have Liberian pride, or Congolese pride, or "insert African country" pride because they have no fucking idea where their ancestors came from other than the broad region of West Africa.

Meanwhile us white people can often trace our ancestors to specific cities and regions. I can trace my mother's maiden name to a single fucking village in Ireland. I know where I came from. I don't have white culture, I have Irish culture.

So that's why white pride makes you an asshole but black pride actually makes sense.

Skin color alone isn’t anything worth being proud (or ashamed) of. “Black pride” isn’t about celebrating the physical trait of dark skin; it refers to the variety of cultures and subcultures, the dialects and traditions and fashions and historical baggage shared between various groups of Black people in the US and elsewhere. That they’ve survived the evils that Western history put them through and forged their own identity is something worth taking pride in. The same can be said about LGBTQ pride and similar sentiments from other historically oppressed minority groups who, through effort and sheer perseverance, have reached the point where they can exist without persecution and condemnation from the majority of the population. (More or less, anyway.)

Conversely, “White pride” is the reaction of people who feel threatened that their historically privileged group is no longer the only people worth paying attention to at the table. They’re like a child who protests because their parent took a tiny number of their toys and gave them to the other kids who until then had been left to play with paint chips. So their instinctive reaction is, “But what about me/my group?”

They just need to grow up and accept the fact that they don’t have the exclusive right to all the toys, and that other people deserve the chance to play with them, too. Thankfully, as the amplitude of counter-protests (both in the US and abroad) has shown, those who scream and whine because they’re no longer the only voices being heard are vastly outnumbered by more sensible people, and their number will only continue to shrink … even if there’s an occasional step back for every two steps forwards.

(via @AdrianXpression; RT: @pzmyers)