Time For Whites To Wake Up

[Faith No More]

On the margins, telling people to be proud of something that is not the result of their own purposed personal accomplishment, such as their ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, is always capable of generating a bad situation where none existed, and worsening a bad situation where one already exists.

However, this has to be balanced against the fact that prejudices almost by definition targets attributes of the victim that is not the result of their own personal accomplishment. Prejudice has the effect of making people feel debased by attributes which are not of their own doing.

In a society with continuing inequities stamming from from past and present prejudices, motivating people to be proud of a specific attribute which had been at the root of the prejudices directed at them, may be on the whole a necessary corrective for that debasement.

Yeah, I understand that it's more of a reaction to the marginilization they've suffered, and I don't deny that in the past it was definitely beneficial to be proud of a trait that others held against you even though you are not responsible for said trait. I think now, however, it's gotten to the point where being proud of your race can be detrimental to the cause of equality. Instead of being proud to be black, I think it would be more pragmatic to say that being black is inconsequential to your self-identity. I do realize, however, that is hard when society is constantly identifying you by your skin color, but I think if we want to prevent that from happening, the best course of action is to downplay the importantance of race as a trait.