Topics Ethics

Question I am recently disturbed by the claim of George Carlin's about race. He said that we should not be proud of our race or nationality because we did not choose them. It's like being proud of our sex, when we neither choose to be either male or female. It is something that was given to us, but something we have no option to choose. He further said that we should only be proud of those things which we have worked hard for. Is his claim correct?

Accepted:
September 30, 2014

Comments

I think part of the problem is that there isn't just one sense of "proud." Sometimes when we say we're proud of something, we mean that it's an accomplishment that we deserve credit for. One mark of this kind of pride is that it would make sense for someone else to be proud of us on this account. If someone wins a prestigious academic prize, for example, she might be proud of herself, but it would also make sense for her friends and family to be proud of her. On the other hand, if someone says he is (for example) proud to have been born in Cuyahoga County, it makes no sense for someone else to say "Benji, I'm proud of you for having been born in Cuyahoga County."

There's not much mystery here, but there are some distinctions. Think about Gay Pride. If someone says "I'm gay and I'm proud," at least part of what they're saying is "I'm gay and I'm not at all ashamed."

There's more to it than that. It's also a way of claiming an identity. Interestingly, in that sense there can actually be an element of accomplishment. Someone might struggle with their sexuality (or their race or their national origin...) But they might come out of that struggle comfortable in their own skin and willing to claim their origin or their race or their sexuality as part of their identity. The claim of pride in that case isn't exactly a way of taking credit for the psychological accomplishment, but it may reflect that accomplishment all the same.

Being of proud of having been born in Cuyahoga Country (or New York City or on a farm in Nebraska...) may seem a little sillier at first, but people do talk this way and rather than saying that they're confused, it makes more sense to say that if enough people use language this way, it tells us something about the things we actually mean by the word "proud." I may not have to struggle to feel proud of being from Canada, but if I think of Canada as a fine and noble place, then the fact that I'm from there might mean something special to me, and the kind of thing it means is something we find very natural to express using the word "proud." It's easy to come up with similar examples. Suppose someone in my department has publicly taken a courageous stand on some important issue. It feels entirely natural to say to her "That took guts. I'm proud to be your colleague."

Carlin's point is clear. We can't take credit for being black or gay or Armenian-born, and some ways of claiming pride are despicable. There's a lot that's disturbing in the phrase "white pride." It's a not-very-veiled way of saying one is superior to people who aren't white. We can agree with Carlin that we should steer clear of that kind of "pride." But pride isn't any one thing, and being proud isn't always a way of taking credit.