Personally, I think a lot of harm has been done by people thinking that they were doing good by promoting racial pride. Today is Pączki day. I'm mostly of Polish heritage. I made it a point to eat one this morning. However, no matter how much I enjoyed it, I take no pride in being Polish. Pride should be reservered for accomplishments, not matters of birth. IMO whites in the US often make exceptions for minorities expressing racial pride, probably due to feelings of guilt due to being socially privledged. However, I think it is misguided. Racial pride is arbitrary and devisive. It keeps people apart and ignorant of each other.
Racial or Cultural pride is not about taking something that other people have done and claiming it as part of your identity. It has much more to do with looking at what people in your circumstances have accomplished and saying yes, I can do great things. But we have groups of people - often dictated by their skin color - who have historically gotten the impression that there are limits on what they can do, and those limits are dictated by race - imaginary or not. I take pride in some of the great things the people in this country do because, to me, it's a symbol of what I can do, coming from that culture. The problem is that minorities are very often segregated from "white" culture, which is treated like the default America. Thus, we're forcing this thing where races are treated like different cultures and therefore their pride has to be racial because that is their culture. As an Anglo-Saxon male I don't need reminders of the great things I can do - I see it every time I read a 'classic' book or watch a hollywood movie. Racial pride might be divisive, but Cultural pride is a much more fluid matter. We all come from different cultural backgrounds, and we can all bring great things from our histories, but we are all (or, should be all) part of one culture now. No need to abandon things that make up our history if you want to hold onto those tokens, but nor should that separate us. But as long as people are being handicapped by institutionalized racism, racial pride is a needed thing for minorities, because they haven't been allowed into the wider cultural narrative.
I can understand what you are saying here, but I think this is a distiction that is not only extremely subtle, but it is rarely made. If you lose the use of your legs, you can look to other paraplegics that have accomplished impressive things despite their handicap. However, it would be strange to claim 'paraplegic pride'. There is little doubt that having a certain skin color or cultural background can bring social handicaps, however IMO there is no benefit in responding to this condition by promoting a pride specific to those with the same circumstances. I agree that cultural pride is much more fluid. My wife is Chinese, and I was raised Catholic. As a result, we celebrate Christmas and Chinese New Year with our families as part of our holiday traditions. Every passing year, celebrating Chinese New Year is more a part of me, and celebrating Christmas is more a part of her. Funny thing is, they are basically the same thing with different trappings. I don't take pride in our Christmas traditions, but I enjoy them.Racial or Cultural pride is not about taking something that other people have done and claiming it as part of your identity. It has much more to do with looking at what people in your circumstances have accomplished and saying yes, I can do great things.
See, here is where I personally disagree. I am of Polish heritage, and I was born in Poland. Half of my family is of Jewish heritage and from Warsaw, so most of my relatives fought in the Warsaw Uprising and/or died in labor and concentration camps during World War II. The rest of my family, which was from villages in western Poland, were conscripted by the Soviets and pushed into labor camps, or fought the Germans in woodland rebel groups. I am proud to be Polish and I consider my Polish heritage important to me for a few reasons. Poles traditionally have a strong sense of nationalism, due to the unique history of Poland, particularly the Partitions of Poland, which effectively wiped it off the map for over 200 years. During that time when Poles had no country, they developed a powerful nationalism, based on common cultural and linguistic heritage, which was reflected in the arts and literature of the time (much of which came from Poles who emigrated to France). Chopin, for example, who was one of these Polish nationalists in France, composed extensively about Poland. Look at the first lines of Pan Tadeusz, another product of the Polish emigrates in Paris, published in 1834 and set in the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: Roughly translated as: Consider also the Polish National Anthem itself, written two years after Poland was partitioned: March, march, Dąbrowski,
From the Italian land to Poland.
Under your command
We shall rejoin the nation. Nationalism kept Poland together as a nation, even when it was without a country. It was so strong that even when Poland was finally given country status in 1918, and plunged into war just 30 years later, it would not let itself be taken under foreign forces (German or Soviet) willingly. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the Warsaw Uprising; pre-pubescent boys fought and died not for the 30-year-old country, but for the nation. Poland was one of the bastions of resistance in the USSR and led, in a large part, to its collapse. When I consider my heritage, I think not just of the fact that my relatives fought and died in defense of it. I think of the hundreds of years of history where people felt that Polishness - Polish culture, language, and nationalism - was worth preserving against difficult (and often deadly) odds. I feel a link to every other Polish person because we share these common bonds: a country that was a powerful force in history since the 10th century; that was more than once threatened by outside forces, which cemented a national identity due to risk of losing it; and which, against all odds, spared my grandparents so that I would be born. I posted the article in the OP because I do agree that racial categorization is imperfect and I am interested in discussions about whether classification is even useful and if so, how we should do it. However, I understand pride based on one's heritage and will continue to identify strongly with my Polishness and other Poles.Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie.
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie,
Kto cię stracił. Dziś piękność twą w całej ozdobie
Widzę i opisuję, bo tęsknię po tobie.
Oh Lithuania! My fatherland! You are like good health.
How much you are to be valued, only he will discover,
Who has lost you. Today your beauty in all its splendor
I see and describe, because I yearn for you.
Poland has not yet perished,
So long as we still live.
What the alien force has taken from us,
We shall retrieve with a sabre.
Thank you for that. It might be that I am naive because I have never been close to the history of a nation threatened. However, even if nationalism was at times a positive force in the past, wasn't it as many times a negative one? Wasn't it nationalism that also fueled the division of Poland by foreign armies? Nationalism has supported both offense and defense. You were born Polish, I was born American. What nationalism we have divides our interests. Should you favor another Pole over me? And yet, three of my grandparents were Polish, should you favor me over someone born in Mexico? These are not things that we earned. These are conditions that we were born into. It might sound cliché, but in this day I think it more pertinent that we consider our shared human condition, and look at place of birth as a matter of chance that says nothing about our quality or depth. I think it is good to have respect for what others accomplished, but to forego pride.
These are important questions. I have, over the past few years, been directly involved in hiring processes, twice having sole judgment on candidates to interview and hire. On three occasions, there were candidates who were either from Poland or of Polish descent. In the places I worked, hiring decisions were not made solely on one's qualifications: Because both offices were small, the ability of each candidate to get along with the office - and particularly how well his/her character meshed with that of their direct supervisor - were just as important. The candidates' Polishness was one factor that may have influenced our compatibility as coworkers. I prefer to be friends with introverts and intellectual/bookish types. Most of my friends are left-leaning, and I would - realistically - get along better in a work environment with someone who shared my ideologies. Similarly, if I were friends with, or worked with, someone with whom I could speak in my native language, who understood my food tastes and figures of speech, then they would, all else equal, have an advantage over identical candidates who didn't. But those are just some factors I would consider in our compatibility as friends and coworkers. (For the record, none of them ended up getting the positions.) By nature, humans tend to enjoy the company of those similar to them, and similar nationalities make two people, in aggregate, more likely to share certain similarities. However, nationality or background is just one of many traits that I may share with people, and is not the most important one. I completely agree, and I'm not arguing that Polish people are of higher quality than non-Poles. For me, pride in my heritage does not imply any sense of superiority. I do, however, recognize the struggles my ancestors had to overcome and I wish to pass along the language and culture that they fought for. I feel a connection to others who share this history with me. I would never use that feeling as a basis for judging individual people on their quality or depth. Friendship, yes. But not their value as a human. This seems to come down to the rights of cultures for self-determination. German and Soviet invasions, for example, explicitly aimed to deny Poles their language and culture and (in the short term, supplement, and in the long term) replace it with their own. I support - at least in theory - secessionist and autonomist movements where the group in question is being denied their right to express their culture. I do not support efforts to eradicate those.Should you favor another Pole over me? And yet, three of my grandparents were Polish, should you favor me over someone born in Mexico? These are not things that we earned. These are conditions that we were born into.
in this day I think it more pertinent that we consider our shared human condition, and look at place of birth as a matter of chance that says nothing about our quality or depth.
Wasn't it nationalism that also fueled the division of Poland by foreign armies? Nationalism has supported both offense and defense.