David Duke And The Problem With White Pride
David Duke has announced he is considering entering the race for the GOP nomination. David Duke is a former Grand Wizard of the KKK. Yes, THAT KKK. He is unrepentant of his involvement with White Supremacists and still a proponent of what he calls “white civil rights.”
Recently, I was asked the following: “Justin, I want your honest opinion on this. Why is it that society in general is usually ok with people saying they are proud to be everything else other than white, but people usually frown or raise eye brows when someone who is white says they are proud to be white. I know there is the whole KKK and White Nationalist in our past, but why do you think this is such taboo? As a Mexican woman, I am curious to know what you and others think. I think this is a good conversation we need to have.”
What follows is the answer I gave to that question but is just as applicable to David Duke about the problem with white pride:
Well, I think there are three main answers: White Privilege, White Guilt and unavoidable racism.
White privilege, for those not familiar with the concept, is the fact that being white in America (and throughout the world to varying degrees) automatically conveys a higher status that is completely unearned. A less qualified white candidate will often be chosen over a more qualified black one. A white person will not be stopped and questioned by the police as often as a black or Hispanic person. That sort of thing. I was unfamiliar with the concept until a few years ago myself but I was aware of its effects. Despite being half Puerto Rican, I am, as I have mentioned before, unmistakably white. Not just white but WHITE. There is not a person on the planet who would think I had a drop on Hispanic blood in me. Because of this I have been treated with a deference by customers at my retail jobs that baffled me at first. My first few jobs were with almost all white co-workers and there was nothing noticeable. Once I went to work for EB Games though, my manager (and almost all of the staff) was black and suddenly I started to see a peculiar pattern. Despite being older than me (not a lot but enough to be obvious) and a much sharper dresser, customers would approach me, the assistant manager, first with questions for the “manager” and ignore the actual manager. It didn’t matter the race of the customer. Black, white and Hispanic would all assume I was in charge. The look on their faces when I pointed out the actual manager was always the same: eyes would widen followed by a quick sheepish glance over at my boss. Fortunately, Steve was very graceful about it.
Another disturbing example was the night several years later when my (Hispanic) boss, my (Hispanic) co-workers and I (Whitey McWhite) worked a late shift at the store and they were giving me a ride home at 3 AM. I was stuffed into the back seat and was not visible from the outside. A car full of Hispanics at three in the morning caught a policeman’s attention and we were pulled over. As the officer started to grill my (nervous) boss, I poked my head out and said “Good evening, officer! Is there something wrong?” I quickly told him that we had been working and they were dropping me off and I swear to you, he nodded, told us to have a good night and let us go without another word about why he pulled us over. Everyone in the car was staring at me as I sat back and said only half-jokingly, “That’s why you should keep a white boy on hand. Cops don’t bother us.” Now THAT’S privilege!
So that’s White Privilege in a nut shell. We live in a country where being white is the “norm” and we are conditioned to look “up” at Caucasians. Most people are not even aware of this on a conscious level. Chris Rock said it best: “ain’t a White man in this room who’d trade places with me, and I’m rich!”
Now, what this has to do with “white pride” is that it is kind of gauche to declare how awesome it is to be white in a country where not being white is a handicap. It’s kind of like a rich person talking about their gold plated toilet bowl in front of a soup kitchen. There’s tacky and there’s tacky and then there’s white pride in America. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being white but, for God’s sake, we don’t have to remind everyone who isn’t how much better we have it!
After White Privilege comes White Guilt. White Guilt is the shadow of White Privilege. The basic idea is that white people were responsible for slavery and various other kinds of oppressions in the past and we should feel terrible about it into perpetuity. This is total bullshit by the way. I used to think like this when I was an angsty teen-ager but then one day it occurred to me, what the hell do I have to feel guilty about? My father came over on a boat from Puerto Rico when he was five (no bananas onboard thank you very much) and my Jewish grandparents came to America from Russia. I think it’s safe to say my ancestors didn’t oppress anyone. It also occurred to me that blaming descendants for actions they would find personally abhorrent is ridiculous. I might as well blame Italians for the Romans throwing Christians to the lions. Mind you, a redneck down South whooping and hollering about how the Confederacy will rise again is entirely deserving of the scorn they receive but the rest of us? How many of the white people in this country even know if they had an ancestor that owned slaves at this point?
But still, guilt is a powerful emotion and easy to manipulate. After the onslaught of political correctness was done, there was a distinct feeling that being white was tainted by history. On top of this, it’s almost impossible to celebrate being white without coming off as racist, which is the third main issue with white pride. How does one celebrate being “white” (as opposed to Irish or Australian) without make it very clear that the alternative is “not white”? “White” is not a single ethnic group, it’s a mish-mosh of different cultures so it’s hard to celebrate it without contrasting it to something else. Once you start contrasting you inevitably drift into the “I’m better than you” zone so it becomes racist even if you’re trying NOT to be.
So that’s my thoughts on the matter. Am I utterly misguided? Did I miss something obvious? What do YOU think the problem is, fellow filthy liberal scum?
edited by Sherri Yarbrough
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Author: Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario
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8:45 am
I find it interesting that when talking about White Guilt, the author and many of the commentaries claim that their ancestors NEVER owed slaves or we came over as immigrants and were too poor. To me that doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, your family has historically benefitted from being perceived as White. Your family had access to jobs, housing, and education that families of color were denied and that still affects us today. Slavery didn’t just end and everything equalized. I don’t need you to feel guilty. I just need to see some recognition from White people that no mater where you come from/came from, you and your family still had it better.
10:08 am
I’m white. I grew up in EXTREME poverty. My family didn’t have it better because they were white, and the fact that you would even suggest that all white families have it better than all non-white families is ludicrous. It’s not about the color of your skin, it’s the fact that the POOR have been exploited for generations.
My family came here from Ireland, but I can’t say with 100% certainty that my ancestors didn’t own slaves. Can YOU say with 100% certainty that there’s not at least 1 slave owner in your bloodline? No, you can’t.
My family didn’t have access to housing, jobs, or education. Poverty is generational, THAT is what we need to fight. Not your borderline racist perception that all white people get handed a free pass in life.
9:21 am
I’ve always thought that reverse discrimination was incredibly interesting, considering that it’s normally perpetuated by people who would otherwise say that ANY form of discrimination is wrong and should be banned. Such as my last job, when I noticed that my black, Caribbean assistant manager NEVER, in nearly three years that I worked with her, hired a single white person for the bank branch I worked at, even though we were in a primarily white, Italian American neighborhood. I’ve never really understood why this sort of thing was considered acceptable.
And the whole affirmative action idea that black people, after having been systematically oppressed for centuries (at least until 1865) need some sort of helping hand up into normal jobs. Aren’t we (they) then implying that black people are incapable of doing this on their own? Not to mention that my great-grandmother was actually born a serf in the 1890s in Lithuania. While a slave was at least considered an individual, serfs weren’t legally thought of as people, or even property per se. They were legally considered to be part of the land that they farmed, the same as any rock or tree and had no legal rights to protect them from rape, theft, assault or murder. At least here in the US, black people can look back with pride and say that an entire country fought a civil war to win their freedom. My great-grandmother escaped in 1908 after watching half of her family slaughtered by a drunk Cossack and walked to Hamburg Germany to eventually make her way to the US. I’m about as white as can be and slavery exists more recently in my family tree than in that of any black person I know. If we want to get Al-Sharpton-type stereotypical, I’m also from a lower income family and my mother grew up on food stamps. Where’s my affirmative action, guys? Because if I don’t qualify for a full-ride scholarship at the University of Michigan based solely on that family history, then we know it’s really just plain old racism and the fact that you’ve been a victim of it in the past doesn’t excuse it any more than a pedophile may be excused for his actions provided that he was also victimized as a child.
Just saying.
9:28 am
I am White and am damn proud to be White! Does this mean I am better than non-whites? Of course not. But, when blacks raise their fist in the air and shout, “Black Power” they are stating they are superior to Whites (and others). It’s the same difference.
You are absolutely correct White-Guilt is bullshit! We have absolutely no reason to feel guilty. White people today never owned slaves. Black people today were never slaves. The black community needs to get over it! Slavery ended in 1865. We are nearing 2012. When is all the anti-White rhetoric going to stop??
Discrimination is wrong. Reverse discrimination is wrong!
10:30 am
He doesn’t have a snowballs chance in Hell of winning, thank God. Nobody in their right mind of any color would vote for him. I’m praying that Mitt Romney gets the nomination. For the record, I’m a southern, white Republican woman, and I’m very conservative.
10:49 am
I’m a white woman whose ancestors were not slave owners. My maternal side didn’t get here until 2 decades of the 20th Century had passed and the other side were poor German immigrants in upstate NY there weren’t any slave owners up there).
I believe White Pride is awkward at best and you described why perfectly. An opposite example to this is the comparison of men and women. If the male character in a TV show (usually husband and/or father) is portrayed as being stupid or mistaken in some way, it’s accepted as humorous. If the female character was portrayed that way, it would be insulting. This is because the male character doesn’t have a history of being deemed less intelligent or less able to do a task. It wouldn’t be funny to watch a scene where the male character takes over the repair of a broken down car and fixes it. What would be funny is if the female character were to remove the tools from the male and fix the car.
I have always found these scenarios interesting when I consider the characters being switched. I hope I didn’t bore you with my examples.
6:08 pm
Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum” Rosario
:-) I have quite a few relevant comments about your blog comments abut my comments would take the topic to another realm and depth. Thus, I cannot commit to comment. My comments should be in the form of another or connected blog but I do not know how this stie’s feels about such connections.
5:03 am
Congratulations on saying nothing. What a waste of bandwidth.
2:44 pm
I think you’ve sumed things up fairly well.
Though your last paragraph: “‘White’ is not a single ethnic group, it’s a mish-mosh of different cultures so it’s hard to celebrate it without contrasting it to something else.” I’m not enitrely sure what you mean by this. Are all Hispanics Mexican or all Asian people Japanese?