Topics Race

Question I recently had a discussion about racial pride. It is my belief that circumstances of birth are random and just as they should not be a source of shame, cannot be claimed as a source of pride. One has nothing to do with being born Irish, therefore how can they claim this as a source of pride? We all sneer at white supremacists for claiming a sense of pride in their race, yet people all over are doing essentially the same thing. Pride implies achievement. You did not achieve anything in being born, it's just something that happened to you. I was born in America, I didn't do anything to be born here, so I can only claim that I'm proud to be an American so far as I haven't chosen to move elsewhere. I think you all get the idea here. Everyone loves to say they're proud of their ethnicity or heritage, but is this logically correct? I would say no.

Accepted:
January 28, 2010

Comments

I think you are right, I always thought it was strange for someone to claim to be proud of something one did nothing to achieve. One could be pleased, certainly, to discover that one was a member of the master race, but proud, no. Unless of course it was something one managed to achieve through talent and/or effort but then race is not an objective in that sense. I suppose though that many Americans could be proud to be American if they were something else initially and then acquired US citizenship. But then nationality is not equivalent to race, fortunately, in most countries.

By the same token one shouldn't be proud of say one'smother if she discovered a cure for cancer. It also depends upon what you mean by pride. A warm, postive feeling about the connection. I don't see any problem with that.

I don't think our emotions follow the dictates of reason. There are all sorts of feelings that we have that would not seem to be "justified."That is the way that we are put together. Some philosophers seem to imagine that we can talk/ reason ourselves out of such feelings. For the most part, i don't think so.