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How is it possible to ignore the positive things white people have done for society? This argument is flawed because, as a majority (in America that is), there are countless positive examples of the behavior of whites, current and historic, that are praised by the entire nation daily. This is a good thing, and whites benefit inadvertently from this positive imagery. As a black guy, its an enviable problem to have.

That being said, your frustration is misplaced. Instead of incorrectly spinning a legacy of slavery into a positive attribute, understand that there were some events that set minorities down negative paths that have repercussions to this day.

Rest assured that everyone in America knows the myriad of positive things that white people do. But, as they are minorities, other races don't have the outlet for such positive slants.

I sometimes reflect on pride in being a member of the White race.

I know such thoughts aren't considered PC the way saying "Black Pride" or "Latino Pride" is, but I think it's kind of cool that I share a similar heritage with the inventors of calculus or linear algebra or the transistor.

I think it depends how you use it. Ultimately, all pride other than human pride and pride in yourself is bullshit. But if taking pride in people who share a superficial similarity with you helps with motivation, and you do so with full awareness that it's just a cognitive trick, and ultimately bullshit, there's nothing wrong with it.

Human pride is pretty bullshit too.

I tend to drill down to more specific category more often - being proud of being Irish seems to be more respectable than saying, "hey, I'm happy to be White".

> but you're also part of a race

Not really, since the concept is meaningless (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1998-10/WUiS-GSRD-071...)

You may or may not be part of cultural group with another white person, but the idea that there is any shared heritage among races is simply untrue. You aren't any more related to most of them than anyone else.

You sound awfully silly saying that race is a "meaningless concept" and then knowingly talking about a "white person" the very next sentence.

Your own mind subconsciously knows the nice ideas you want to believe are nonsense. Interestingly, that is analogous to the otherwise open-minded subjects of the study at hand who subconsciously favour their own.

Just because the concept is meaningless in the real world doesn't mean it's not a concept who's definition is widely understood.

Should I have put "white person" in quotes? Should I had phrased it like "what would commonly be called a "white person"".

I felt that would be overly pedantic of me and besides you are missing the point: "white people" do exist, it's just wrong to assign any shared attributes to them other than "looks like a white person". And by the way, I don't mean "wrong" in any kind of moral sense, I mean wrong in terms of "factually incorrect".

If he had talked about ghosts instead of "white people" would I have sounded awfully silly if I had said "ghosts don't exist. Ghosts are frequently just photography artifacts or sleep paralysis hallucinations." because I used the word "ghosts" in the next sentence?

So you think that the pre-scientific idea of categorizing people by skin colour and nose and eye features is valid and that the scientific understanding from genetics is "nonsense" that I "want to believe"?

That's both ridiculously presumptuous and ... well, stupid.

>You need to shake that PC bullshit off. There is nothing wrong with freedom of association, nor with feeling good about being "white". Neither of those things is discrimination (or evil).

Meh, you look in the mirror, really examine yourself, and the thing you come back with to make yourself feel better is your skin color? That... is kinda sad.

I mean, I'm not going to feel bad when other people give me an unfair advantage. I don't have the time or emotional reserves. I tell myself that it's on them, not me. But it's certainly not a source of pride.

> Meh, you look in the mirror, really examine yourself, and the thing you come back with to make yourself feel better is your skin color? That... is kinda sad.

And you're right. In a vacuum that would be quite sad and stupid.

But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.

Personally, myself, I don't have a source of pride in being white, I identify myself mostly as an individual caught up in this crazy thing we call existence.

But most importantly, I neither have a source of guilt in being white. And that was kind of what I was trying to convey.... That neither should he.

>But most importantly, I neither have a source of guilt in being white. And that was kind of what I was trying to convey.... That neither should he.

oh, well, sure. Guilt is... usually not very productive even when it was your fault, and collective guilt is out of fashion for good reason.

But there's a big difference between saying "I'm not responsible for the racism of others" (which, I think, is fine, even healthy for you.) and saying "I take pride in my race"

>But when someone is telling you that white people are the reason for all the wrongs in this world (and they need to make things right), or that you should be ashamed of your white-privilege, I provide another perspective.

Eh, I am not really getting this feeling that you seem to have that people blame me for the world's problems 'cause I'm white, or even that they begrudge me the advantages that could have had something to do with my race. (It's never 100% clear-cut) I mean, I didn't go to school, and I haven't worked for the government since I was sixteen or seventeen, so maybe that's where you see it, but I'm just not seeing a lot of this white-hate, you know?

To me? the important part of being aware of racism is making more rational choices; we've all got nasty little brain bugs that, if left unexamined, will cause our "gut" to make sub-optimal decisions. And it's not only about race; that's what the article was about, for most of us now, there are in-groups that resonate far more strongly than ethnicity.

> Eh, I am not really getting this feeling that you seem to have that people blame me for the world's problems 'cause I'm white

You've probably never watched a video of a race debate/relations type of meeting that's not designed to be PC or have white apologetic speakers...

You'd be surprised how many white people (that show up in the audience) are completely oblivious to everything positive the white race has done, while being hyper-sensitive to every negative thing they have done - and how many of the people in other race categories think that white people should be exterminated.

But I'm not talking about the general public of course. I'm mostly talking about people that expect you to feel guilty for being white... Which has been the context of everything I've said so far.

>You've probably never watched a video of a race debate/relations type of meeting that's not designed to be PC or have white apologetic speakers...

So there's a video that says bad things about people who look like you, and this upsets you? Is this video on the internet, where everyone can see it?

But in all seriousness, my primary point here is that identifying with your race? it's a class marker. A low class marker. Socioeconomic class matters more (in terms of how others treat you) than race. A lot more. (some would say that the two are related, and there certainly is a correlation, but in the end, green is the color that matters.)

My secondary point is that I've never seen serious real-world discrimination against white folk, so quit your whining. (I mean, yes, we're all a little bit racist. I'm just saying, I've not seen /serious/ discrimination against white people. Nobody acts weird when someone shows up for an interview, and turns out he's white.)

How about just feeling good for being a human? Tribalism is not a virtue.

Ideally? Sure, but...

The human condition is complicated, and the human brain is a pattern matching and association machine.

Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category... before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

The context to what I wrote was in relation to the current "white privilege" PC bullshit that has been indoctrinated into our collective. Nothing more.

Correct. Race and ethnicity represent real human attributes that are immediately discernable, understood instinctively by everybody, and have a degree of predictive value, and always have. It's completely asinine to pretend that race doesn't exist, or to make pedantic arguments along the line of "genetic similarity" of human beings. Human behaviour is not some geneticist researcher's data set.

>Humans have been identifying and separating themselves by color/race since the beginning of time, even before we could talk. It is the first category... before rich/poor, beautiful/ugly, young/old, etc. It's almost primial.

How exactly does proving that something has always existed also show that it is right?

Does it really have to fit in the right/wrong classification?

Can't it just be an evolutionary survival mechanism?... One of the things that primarily is designed to help people come together and stay away from danger.

I'd imagine at the core of it there is a neural network (that you're born with) that categorizes things into - "like me" - "not like me".

In of itself, it's not something that's right/wrong in a moral sense, but how it's further consciously used can be.

How exactly is that not also a form of tribalism? You're just breaking it down into human versus non-human groupings ("tribes", if you will).