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Ethnicity is an irrelevant characteristic. What really matters is the individual and what he or she does with his or her life.
Having "pride" in one's ethnicity makes no sense whatsoever. Ethnicity is a biological accident. It is NOT an accomplishment.
While I enjoy certain familiarities and comforts of my ethnicity, I do not have any pride in being Italian. That would be absurd. Being Italian is not something to be proud of, or ashamed of, or anything of.
Pride should be reserved for something that you do, not the random race you happened to be born into.
There is too much killing and senselessness in the world that results from identification and personal surrender to irrelevant groupings and ethnicities.
We all know what overt racial pride has resulted in over the past 75 years. I think it is something we need to be rid of. Individual responsibility, achievement, and integrity are rational goals. Love of one's race is not.
-Marc
Wow Marc, I literally could not agree with you any more. Well said!
Why is it ok for someone to say "I'm proud to be Italian", and yet every single one of us would cringe in horror if we heard someone say "I'm proud to be white"? And yet those two statements are fundamentally no different. You can be proud of your ancestors for their accomplishments, values or other qualities, but to be proud of them simply on account of your race or other accidental characteristic over which no one has any control is absurd.
Last in. Last out. Still hangin on?
Not the point at all.
I don't really get the ethnic pride thing either.
Not because I think you should hide it. I think you should be secure with your heritage and be humbly prideful to a point but it's really more about being secure within.
If all your greatgrandparents were American born as mine were- this issue is sort of a non issue. I have never been a hypenated American.
Non Europeans often have very different views on this. But I have never heard anyone under 60 go on and on like this and make it such an issue.
Why is it ok for someone to say "I'm proud to be Italian", and yet every single one of us would cringe in horror if we heard someone say "I'm proud to be white"? And yet those two statements are fundamentally no different. You can be proud of your ancestors for their accomplishments, values or other qualities, but to be proud of them simply on account of your race or other accidental characteristic over which no one has any control is absurd.
One's whiteness has another sort of significance. Race classifications are part of a larger social construct that was conceptualized and put into practice to categorize and control the population.
Some people do not agree that all Europeans are white.
I get the point that being proud of an accidental characteristic is similar in both cases.
Italians have themselves to blame with "white flight", no?
Big, bad, brown people started moving into the city by the lot (see: ANY CITY) & whites started to flee.
That's the way it goes.............. You can't have everything.
As a result, tax revenues were extracted from cities, racism kept many brown types from fulfilling their potential, which in turn made many in community frustrated & NJ's cities deteriorated.
Wow Marc, I literally could not agree with you any more. Well said!
Why is it ok for someone to say "I'm proud to be Italian", and yet every single one of us would cringe in horror if we heard someone say "I'm proud to be white"? And yet those two statements are fundamentally no different. You can be proud of your ancestors for their accomplishments, values or other qualities, but to be proud of them simply on account of your race or other accidental characteristic over which no one has any control is absurd.
how is saying you are proud to be white wrong? If someone said they are proud to be black would you find that wrong?
Italians have themselves to blame with "white flight", no?
Big, bad, brown people started moving into the city by the lot (see: ANY CITY) & whites started to flee.
That's the way it goes.............. You can't have everything.
As a result, tax revenues were extracted from cities, racism kept many brown types from fulfilling their potential, which in turn made many in community frustrated & NJ's cities deteriorated.
can you blame them when within a decade the neighborhoods they lived in became garbage with drug dealers and prostitutes walking the streets after minorities (mostly black people) moved in?
how is saying you are proud to be white wrong? If someone said they are proud to be black would you find that wrong?
Actually yes, I do think it's wrong. Just take any black organization and replace black with white, and see how it sounds. My high school had a "Black Student Union". Imagine someone creating a "White Student Union". Doesn't sound right to me, so why should the black one be ok?
Wow Marc, I literally could not agree with you any more. Well said!
Why is it ok for someone to say "I'm proud to be Italian", and yet every single one of us would cringe in horror if we heard someone say "I'm proud to be white"? And yet those two statements are fundamentally no different.
They are very different. "White" is a color. "Italian" is a culture and heritage. You can be proud of your heritage, whatever that may be (American, Irish, English, Italian, Ukranian), without being racist. Being "proud" of your race is obviously racist.
Actually yes, I do think it's wrong. Just take any black organization and replace black with white, and see how it sounds. My high school had a "Black Student Union". Imagine someone creating a "White Student Union". Doesn't sound right to me, so why should the black one be ok?
Since "sound right to me" is the gold standard now, does "black student union" "sound" wrong to you in the same way that "white student union" does ?
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