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.