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I'm White And I'm Proud?

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  • fm93
    replied
    Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post
    But the social aspect is solidarity based on skin color.
    Not what I meant. It also involves an association of power, which is why the Irish initially weren't considered "white" in America.

    That doesn't describe "pride" at all; it also appears to be extremely naive. Pride has a tendency to be negative, which is perhaps why it is one of the seven deadly sins.
    This is "pride" in the sense of not being ashamed more so than a feeling of satisfaction from personal accomplishments.

    That makes no sense whatsoever.
    The discussion about power might be a bit complex, but the simpler point is that "black pride" ultimately derives from a defensive response to oppression, which white people (as a whole, not specific nationalities) have not experienced. Hence, it makes no sense to have "white pride" in the sense in which black people talk about black pride.



    Originally posted by seer View Post
    BTW idiot I'm half Brazilian and half Italian. I just love exposing the hypocrisy of you leftists....
    I really don't see how the fact that you're Brazilian and Italian is relevant to anything that anyone said, and you didn't expose any hypocrisy. Nor did anyone say anything "leftist."

    Leave a comment:


  • whag
    replied
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    BTW idiot I'm half Brazilian and half Italian. I just love exposing the hypocrisy of you leftists....
    That's a hell of a way to do it: pretend you're proud of achievements you really think are hoaxes.

    Leave a comment:


  • rogue06
    replied
    Originally posted by One Bad Pig View Post

    I agree that it makes no sense to be proud of one's race.
    It is silly to be proud of something you had absolutely nothing to do with.

    Leave a comment:


  • rogue06
    replied
    One last derail post in response to cere's statements, this one concerning Darwin's views on the intellectual differences between the "so-called races." It'll be short.

    Darwin compared the intellect of the Brazilian slaves with Europeans, and notes that the slaves are mentally and tactically as capable as the greatest of the Roman generals in his "Voyage of the Beagle"

    He wrote Thomas Wentworth Higginson, the commander of the Union's first battalion of freed slaves in the American Civil War, after reading his book "Army Life in a Black Regiment" (in which Higginson concluded that blacks weren't biologically inferior to whites) saying "I always thought well of the negroes" and how "delighted [he was] to have my vague impressions confirmed" concerning "their character and mental powers."

    He wrote in a letter to John Stevens Henslow in 1834 that "I was told before leaving England that after living in slave countries all my opinions would be altered; the only alteration I am aware of is forming a much higher estimate of the negro character. It is impossible to see a negro and not feel kindly towards him."

    Darwin's earliest encounter with a black person was when he spent 40 hours learning bird-stuffing (taxidermy) from a freed Guyanese slave named John Edmonston, while at the University of Edinburgh. John became, in Darwin’s own words, an "intimate" and (in his autobiography) "a very pleasant and intelligent man." Visiting Americans were appalled at the sight of blacks being treated as equals on British streets, but Darwin showed no sense of ignominy at being taught by a “full-blooded negro.” His interaction with Edmonston confirmed Darwin’s belief that white people and black people possessed the same essential humanity. In “Descent” he cited their friendship as evidence for the close similarity between the minds of men of all races.

    Darwin claimed that all of humanity was one species descended from a common, shared ancestor (something that actual white supremacists like the Klan vehemently denounce and oppose).

    Finally, he wrote "Often the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal servants or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters they have eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites." Japhethites are generally equated as being Caucasians or those who settled in Europe[1]. IOW, blacks aren't as smart as whites.

    Oh wait. That last quote comes from Henry Morris, the "father of the modern creationist movement" and founder of the young-earth Institute for Creation Research which he wrote in 1991.





    1. From Ken Ham's AnswersinGenesis Creation "museum": http://www.realbiblestories.com/wp-c...3/hamite1.jpeg

    Leave a comment:


  • Jedidiah
    replied
    Pride should be in accomplishments. Even that is dubious. What pride is there in being white, or black, or homosexual, or straight? All silliness in my opinion.

    Leave a comment:


  • rogue06
    replied
    Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post

    Even Stephen Jay Gould admitted this much.

    Source: Ontogeny and Phylogeny


    ‘Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.’

    © Copyright Original Source

    This is a quote mine from a chapter of the book Ontogeny and Phylogeny on the notion of recapitulation (not evolution).

    Note also that the quote by Gould states that "biological arguments for racism" had increased not that racism itself had increased. Moreover, it is also important to note that he doesn't say it was actually a result of the theory.

    In fact Gould goes on to say that

    Source:

    But the data were worthless. We never have had, and still do not have, any unambiguous data on the innate mental capacities of different human groups--a meaningless notion anyway since environments cannot be standardized. If the chorus of racist arguments did not follow a constraint of data, it must have reflected social prejudice pure and simple--anything from an a priori belief in universal progress among apolitical but chauvinistic scientists to an explicit desire to construct a rationale for imperialism.

    © Copyright Original Source



    And if the racists had bothered to actually check what evolutionary theory proposed -- namely that all of humanity was one species descended from a common ancestor -- then they probably would have never tried using it but would have denounced evolution like all of the major white supremacy groups have done.

    Leave a comment:


  • rogue06
    replied
    Originally posted by Cerebrum123 View Post
    Then there's the fact that Darwin also said the opposite.

    Source: Charles Darwin The Descent of Man

    The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Then of course there is this.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    - At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Oh, and at the introduction of the book, you have an endorsement of the conclusions of Ernst Haeckel, who was supporting infanticide, and eugenics in said book.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    If this work had appeared before my essay [The Descent of Man] had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine.

    © Copyright Original Source



    So yeah, bring out the one or two "nice" statements of Charles Darwin, and ignore the rest, as well as his praise of those who were actively dividing up humanity into different groups, all but one to be exterminated. Of course Charles Darwin was doing the same, but not many people let the facts bother them.

    Source: Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

    ‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start–‘Darwinism’ was always intended to explain human society.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Even Stephen Jay Gould admitted this much.

    Source: Ontogeny and Phylogeny

    ‘Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.’

    © Copyright Original Source



    I wonder why that happened.

    So, who should I believe, Charles Darwin, or Charles Darwin? Maybe someone who he knew could shed some light on this. Oh yeah, we have Ernst Haeckel the racist, eugenicist, about whom Darwin said this.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    Dear & Respected Sir

    You must permit me to thank you sincerely for the present of your paper & for the Stettin Newspaper. I am delighted that so distinguished a Naturalist should confirm & expound my views, and I can clearly see that you are one of the few who clearly understand Natural Selection.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Let's see what Haeckel said about the topic.

    Source: Ernts Haeckel:History of Creation Volume 2

    Even many Christian missionaries, who, after 366 long years of fruitless endeavours to civilize these lowest races, have abandoned the attempt, express the same harsh judgment, and maintain that it would be easier to train the most intelligent domestic animals to a moral and civilized life, than these unreasoning brute-like men. For instance, the able Austrian missionary Morlang, who tried for many years without the slightest success to civilize the ape-like negro tribes on the Upper Nile, expressly says: “that any mission to such savages is absolutely useless. They stand far below unreasoning animals; the latter at least show signs of affection towards those who are kind towards them, whereas these brutal natives are utterly incapable of any feeling of gratitude.”

    Now, it clearly follows from these and other testimonies, that the mental differences between the lowest men and the animals are less than those between the lowest and the highest men; and if, together with this, we take into consideration the fact that in every single human child mental life develops slowly, gradually, and step by step, from the lowest condition of animal unconsciousness, need we still feel offended when told that the mind of the whole human race has in like manner gone through a process of slow, gradual, and historical development?

    © Copyright Original Source



    Does the underlined sound familiar? Oh, and there is this too.

    Source: Ernst Haeckel

    “All these five [speaking of an earlier classification than Haeckel’s own] races of men, according to the Jewish legend of creation, are said to have descended from ‘a single pair’—Adam and Eve, and in accordance with this are said to be varieties of one kind or species. … The excellent paleontologist Quenstedt is right in maintaining that, “if Negroes and Caucasians were snails, zoologists would universally agree that they represented two very distinct species, which could never have originated from one pair by gradual divergence.”

    © Copyright Original Source



    I think that Darwin's buddy certainly adds some context to this. Don't you?

    Yeah, I'll admit right now, this topic upsets me greatly. When I see a few of Darwin's "nicer" things said without the contrast of the other things he said, which he backed up with scientific citations, and in the case of eugenics, stated that the scientific case for it was 100% accurate(you won't see people admit that, but he did do it). It sickens me to my core.

    This is going to be my last post in this thread, I only wrote this because I had to get this anger out of my system.
    Ignoring Haeckel because what he said or didn't say has nothing whatsoever to do with my post, let's concentrate on the implied nonsense that Darwin was calling for the extermination of anybody.

    Darwin never promoted the extermination of anyone. Such a thing is diametrically opposed to everything he stood for. In fact, during his travels on the HMS Beagle Darwin witnessed actual attempts to exterminate indigenous populations most notably in Argentina where he describes the perpetrators as "villainous," "banditti-like" and "inhuman" and asked "Who would believe in this age that such atrocities could be committed in a Christian civilized country?"

    It boils down to the simple truth that technologically advanced societies either exterminate or assimilate more primitive cultures. It happens over and over, again and again and that is an unfortunate fact that Darwin was merely pointing out.

    Let's look at the quote in a bit more context rather than a snippet:

    Source: Descent of Man, Chptr. 5


    The great break in the organic chain between man and his nearest allies, which cannot be bridged over by any extinct or living species, has often been advanced as a grave objection to the belief that man is descended from some lower form; but this objection will not appear of much weight to those who, from general reasons, believe in the general principle of evolution. Breaks often occur in all parts of the series, some being wide, sharp and defined, others less so in various degrees; as between the orang and its nearest allies—between the Tarsius and the other Lemuridae between the elephant, and in a more striking manner between the Ornithorhynchus or Echidna, and all other mammals. But these breaks depend merely on the number of related forms which have become extinct. At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

    © Copyright Original Source



    This is extracted from a relatively technical argument concerning the reality of species wrt to humans and whether or not there still should be distinct species. Darwin was ultimately concluding the answer is no and is basically contending here that there is no simple unbroken line of intermediary forms since breaks are formed by extinction.

    And it appears that after 140 years since publishing Descent Darwin was correct at least in his assessment that the “anthropomorphous apes” are indeed being driven into extinction as their numbers rapidly dwindle as do their habitats as well. It appears that they will, at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, be no longer around.

    His experience with Tasmania while sailing aboard the Beagle after that island’s so-called Black War which exterminated the aboriginal population of Tasmania[1] certainly justified his concerns that the same thing would happen to other native peoples at the hands of the "civilized races."

    Further, atrocities like the forcible deportation of Native American tribes, resulting in the Trail of Tears was also taking place about this time and the forced Long Walk of the Navajo had taken place just a few years before Descent was published while Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert was just gearing up. There are other examples that I could also cite.

    No, Darwin had many reasons to fear that natives will end up getting exterminated by the "civilized races." Further, he wasn't entirely wrong. I don't think that anyone can deny that even today we can still see more technologically and militarily "advanced" cultures either destroying or replacing the less advanced ones.

    As an aside, Darwin was also merely echoing a common view of both humanitarians and apologists for imperial expansion that was already many decades old that primitive people were inevitably doomed at the hands of the “civilized races.” Going back to the genocide committed against the native Tasmanians it was casually described by Edward Curr as having ended “as all such matters have ended in other parts of the world, by the extermination of the weaker race."

    OK, now that we established the context and some background, perhaps it should next be noted that Darwin was not in any way urging anyone to commit genocide. In fact, there is nothing in Darwin's words to support (and much in his life to contradict) the implied claim made by those misquoting him here that he wanted anyone exterminated.

    Instead, he was merely noting what appeared to him to be an obvious fact, based as noted above in no small part on the atrocities being committed in the name of conquest whether it was for European imperialism and colonial conquest or American “Manifest Destiny.”

    Darwin constantly listed what he thought were facts about the prospects of any given race, culture or society, but this was in no way an endorsement of what he thought should happen. In fact, and to the contrary he clearly states that to act in a way so as to eliminate an "inferior" would result in doing enormous damage to our better natures:

    Source: Descent of Man, Chptr. 5


    The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind

    © Copyright Original Source



    Further, his comments near the conclusion that...

    Source: Descent of Man, Chptr. 21


    Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc, than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense.

    © Copyright Original Source



    ...show that while such oppression comes to the human race as a force of nature, other forces like morality, religion, and the capacity for reason are still far more important in determining how we treat each other.

    To continue to assert that Darwin was urging the extermination of others here is at the very least committing the naturalistic fallacy of confusing statements of "what is" with those about "what ought to be." The way things are does not imply that’s how they ought to be. That’s akin to arguing that if someone broke their leg then it should stay broken. Again “is” does not mean “ought.”

    I guess the overall point being that evolution is descriptive. It is ignorant to think that evolution prescribes or proscribes the use of brute strength to resolve every problem that comes up whether in nature, society or whatever.

    IOW, evolution describes, not prescribe. It merely attempts to tells how things are, not how they should be.





    1. Who Darwin described as being evolutionarily more fit to inhabit the environment than the European colonists who slaughtered them were.
    Last edited by rogue06; 10-16-2014, 07:57 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • seer
    replied
    Originally posted by whag View Post
    Read what I said again.

    You can't possibly be proud of achievements you've admitted being skeptical of. You're a transparently angry white guy trying to make a lame point. It backfired on you.
    BTW idiot I'm half Brazilian and half Italian. I just love exposing the hypocrisy of you leftists....

    Leave a comment:


  • One Bad Pig
    replied
    Originally posted by square_peg View Post
    This is slightly divergent from the OP, but I believe this is an essential point to understand. The terms "Black" and "White," in regard to race, don't simply refer to skin color. There's also a social aspect of it.
    But the social aspect is solidarity based on skin color.
    So when they speak of "black pride," they mean that they refuse to feel the shame that oppressors tried to cast upon them, that they'll instead view themselves with honor and esteem, knowing that to the contrary, it's not at all shameful or evil to be black. When they speak of black pride, they mean that they're grateful and content to be part of a racial group that kept persevering against oppression despite all the obstacles. Though some extremist groups may try to twist it into something different, that is the historical meaning of and reason for the term. Unless one is a relatively recent immigrant to America, to be black in this nation is not only to have dark skin, but also to be a member of that which was societally viewed as inferior, evil and powerless, the historic underdog. That sort of pride isn't "Look at what other black people did hundreds and thousands of years ago!" but rather "I share a characteristic with many other people who have been horrendously denigrated and oppressed precisely because of that characteristic, but I will not let myself be shamed and thereby continually oppressed by this characteristic. I will instead view myself and my fellow people who share this characteristic with esteem and honor."
    That doesn't describe "pride" at all; it also appears to be extremely naive. Pride has a tendency to be negative, which is perhaps why it is one of the seven deadly sins.
    Meanwhile, white people in America have never been an oppressed minority group; they were never counted as essentially only 3/5ths of a person or told that they're naturally inferior to other races and that their skin color is something shameful and evil. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for them to have "white pride." An important distinction here is that there have been some people in America who had white skin and were legitimately mistreated, such as the Irish, but as crazy as it may sound, the Irish weren't considered "white" back then. By "white people" I don't simply mean "people who have light skin tones," but rather people who are considered to be the default of a nation, the "pure" setting, the majority that holds the power. When speaking of race, "white" never simply means skin color, but also power. It's perfectly legitimate for descendants of oppressed groups who happen to have light skin tones to have Irish pride or German pride or Italian pride, but never "white" pride. To be Irish or German or Italian in America didn't always mean to hold power and be lumped into the default group, but being considered "white" has always meant that.
    That makes no sense whatsoever.
    As Zymologist pointed out earlier, there's no rational reason to be proud of one's race in the sense of having certain physical features or skin tones. After all, you didn't choose or "achieve" those features. You were simply born into them; it was essentially a genetic accident. There's also no rational reason to be proud of one's race in the sense of boasting that people who aren't related to you and lived hundreds of years before you did achieved great things. There's no inherent feature in Europeans that made them capable of achieving all those things. As with most great works, they had to build off the prior accomplishments and discoveries of people from all over the world, many of whom weren't light-skinned. And as I've explained, that's not what black people mean by "black pride."
    I agree that it makes no sense to be proud of one's race.

    Leave a comment:


  • fm93
    replied
    Why did a thread responding to seer's racism require a lengthy post about Charles Darwin?

    Leave a comment:


  • Cerebrum123
    replied
    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
    Geneticists have demonstrated that race is an artificial construct, that we are remarkably homogeneous genetically and that Darwin was correct when he observed that far larger differences could be seen within a "so-called race" (a term that he often employed) than between them. In pointing out the problems with even trying to divide humanity into separate races he emphatically stated that, "they graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear distinctive characters between them" as well as "It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant.”
    Then there's the fact that Darwin also said the opposite.

    Source: Charles Darwin The Descent of Man

    The variability or diversity of the mental faculties in men of the same race, not to mention the greater differences between the men of distinct races, is so notorious that not a word need here be said.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Then of course there is this.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    - At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked (18. 'Anthropological Review,' April 1867, p. 236.), will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Oh, and at the introduction of the book, you have an endorsement of the conclusions of Ernst Haeckel, who was supporting infanticide, and eugenics in said book.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    If this work had appeared before my essay [The Descent of Man] had been written, I should probably never have completed it. Almost all the conclusions at which I have arrived I find confirmed by this naturalist, whose knowledge on many points is much fuller than mine.

    © Copyright Original Source



    So yeah, bring out the one or two "nice" statements of Charles Darwin, and ignore the rest, as well as his praise of those who were actively dividing up humanity into different groups, all but one to be exterminated. Of course Charles Darwin was doing the same, but not many people let the facts bother them.

    Source: Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist

    ‘Social Darwinism’ is often taken to be something extraneous, an ugly concretion added to the pure Darwinian corpus after the event, tarnishing Darwin’s image. But his notebooks make plain that competition, free trade, imperialism, racial extermination, and sexual inequality were written into the equation from the start–‘Darwinism’ was always intended to explain human society.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Even Stephen Jay Gould admitted this much.

    Source: Ontogeny and Phylogeny

    ‘Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1850, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.’

    © Copyright Original Source



    I wonder why that happened.

    So, who should I believe, Charles Darwin, or Charles Darwin? Maybe someone who he knew could shed some light on this. Oh yeah, we have Ernst Haeckel the racist, eugenicist, about whom Darwin said this.

    Source: Charles Darwin

    Dear & Respected Sir

    You must permit me to thank you sincerely for the present of your paper & for the Stettin Newspaper. I am delighted that so distinguished a Naturalist should confirm & expound my views, and I can clearly see that you are one of the few who clearly understand Natural Selection.

    © Copyright Original Source



    Let's see what Haeckel said about the topic.

    Source: Ernts Haeckel:History of Creation Volume 2

    Even many Christian missionaries, who, after 366 long years of fruitless endeavours to civilize these lowest races, have abandoned the attempt, express the same harsh judgment, and maintain that it would be easier to train the most intelligent domestic animals to a moral and civilized life, than these unreasoning brute-like men. For instance, the able Austrian missionary Morlang, who tried for many years without the slightest success to civilize the ape-like negro tribes on the Upper Nile, expressly says: “that any mission to such savages is absolutely useless. They stand far below unreasoning animals; the latter at least show signs of affection towards those who are kind towards them, whereas these brutal natives are utterly incapable of any feeling of gratitude.”

    Now, it clearly follows from these and other testimonies, that the mental differences between the lowest men and the animals are less than those between the lowest and the highest men; and if, together with this, we take into consideration the fact that in every single human child mental life develops slowly, gradually, and step by step, from the lowest condition of animal unconsciousness, need we still feel offended when told that the mind of the whole human race has in like manner gone through a process of slow, gradual, and historical development?

    © Copyright Original Source



    Does the underlined sound familiar? Oh, and there is this too.

    Source: Ernst Haeckel

    “All these five [speaking of an earlier classification than Haeckel’s own] races of men, according to the Jewish legend of creation, are said to have descended from ‘a single pair’—Adam and Eve, and in accordance with this are said to be varieties of one kind or species. … The excellent paleontologist Quenstedt is right in maintaining that, “if Negroes and Caucasians were snails, zoologists would universally agree that they represented two very distinct species, which could never have originated from one pair by gradual divergence.”

    © Copyright Original Source



    I think that Darwin's buddy certainly adds some context to this. Don't you?

    Yeah, I'll admit right now, this topic upsets me greatly. When I see a few of Darwin's "nicer" things said without the contrast of the other things he said, which he backed up with scientific citations, and in the case of eugenics, stated that the scientific case for it was 100% accurate(you won't see people admit that, but he did do it). It sickens me to my core.

    This is going to be my last post in this thread, I only wrote this because I had to get this anger out of my system.

    Leave a comment:


  • fm93
    replied
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    So black pride is basically OK...
    This is slightly divergent from the OP, but I believe this is an essential point to understand. The terms "Black" and "White," in regard to race, don't simply refer to skin color. There's also a social aspect of it.

    Throughout American history, people with dark skin have frequently been denigrated by a white majority who tried to destroy them and portray blackness as something shameful and evil. So when they speak of "black pride," they mean that they refuse to feel the shame that oppressors tried to cast upon them, that they'll instead view themselves with honor and esteem, knowing that to the contrary, it's not at all shameful or evil to be black. When they speak of black pride, they mean that they're grateful and content to be part of a racial group that kept persevering against oppression despite all the obstacles. Though some extremist groups may try to twist it into something different, that is the historical meaning of and reason for the term. Unless one is a relatively recent immigrant to America, to be black in this nation is not only to have dark skin, but also to be a member of that which was societally viewed as inferior, evil and powerless, the historic underdog. That sort of pride isn't "Look at what other black people did hundreds and thousands of years ago!" but rather "I share a characteristic with many other people who have been horrendously denigrated and oppressed precisely because of that characteristic, but I will not let myself be shamed and thereby continually oppressed by this characteristic. I will instead view myself and my fellow people who share this characteristic with esteem and honor."

    Meanwhile, white people in America have never been an oppressed minority group; they were never counted as essentially only 3/5ths of a person or told that they're naturally inferior to other races and that their skin color is something shameful and evil. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason for them to have "white pride." An important distinction here is that there have been some people in America who had white skin and were legitimately mistreated, such as the Irish, but as crazy as it may sound, the Irish weren't considered "white" back then. By "white people" I don't simply mean "people who have light skin tones," but rather people who are considered to be the default of a nation, the "pure" setting, the majority that holds the power. When speaking of race, "white" never simply means skin color, but also power. It's perfectly legitimate for descendants of oppressed groups who happen to have light skin tones to have Irish pride or German pride or Italian pride, but never "white" pride. To be Irish or German or Italian in America didn't always mean to hold power and be lumped into the default group, but being considered "white" has always meant that.

    As Zymologist pointed out earlier, there's no rational reason to be proud of one's race in the sense of having certain physical features or skin tones. After all, you didn't choose or "achieve" those features. You were simply born into them; it was essentially a genetic accident. There's also no rational reason to be proud of one's race in the sense of boasting that people who aren't related to you and lived hundreds of years before you did achieved great things. There's no inherent feature in Europeans that made them capable of achieving all those things. As with most great works, they had to build off the prior accomplishments and discoveries of people from all over the world, many of whom weren't light-skinned. And as I've explained, that's not what black people mean by "black pride."
    Last edited by fm93; 10-16-2014, 03:58 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • whag
    replied
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    So black pride is basically OK...
    Read what I said again.

    You can't possibly be proud of achievements you've admitted being skeptical of. You're a transparently angry white guy trying to make a lame point. It backfired on you.

    Leave a comment:


  • Christianbookworm
    replied
    Originally posted by Zymologist View Post
    What do you mean by "ancestral endurance?"
    That sounds racist! Dunno, the out of Africa theory?

    Leave a comment:


  • Cerealman
    replied
    Originally posted by Jedidiah View Post
    Skin pigments do not exhibit much in the palms of hands, so no big deal.

    And have you really never experienced sunburn? I have black friends who have indeed experienced fairly severe sunburn, folks with pretty dark skin.
    Nope not really then again I don't go outside as often as I used to.

    Leave a comment:

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