Pride

Except that the whole concept of "southern pride" and the South's regional identity was invented to explicitly justify and protect slavery. This was true before the civil war, during Reconstruction, and is still true today.

Slavery wasn't just the peculiar institution, practiced discreetly, it was the whole basis of what was "the south" and its cultural foundation, which they vigorously fought to export and propagate.

Basically, you're just a 1940's German military enthusiast, it has nothing to do with Nazism. No wait, it doesn't work like that.

 

Not really. Southern pride has to with a lot more than just slavery. It's why a civil rights activist like Andrew Young has talked about his pride at being a southerner. He has spoken about how he and his wife were shocked and his wife ended up in tears on her first day in NY when he was Carter's UN ambassador. It was a culture shock. He was talking about a Southern culture that wasn't justifying and protecting slavery. There is a genteelness, hospitality, and honor to the South that exists with or without slavery. When William Faulkner wrote about being a 14 year old Southern boy and everything that it implied it was more than just an invention to justify and protect slavery.

I'm not talking about the civil war which was undoubtedly to justify and protect slavery. But the idea of Southern Culture goes beyond that.

That being said, Southern Pride can be an excuse to justify racism and slavery. So it's kind of a double-edged sword. But it doesn't have to mean that.

 

Not really. Because when you break it all down and examine the roots of it, it ALWAYS has to do with slavery. The bullshit about nobility and gentility in a romantic feudal society - was invented by slavers, because guess who got to be the serfs in that society?

 

A black person who has overcome racism to become a doctor is proud of his personal achievement; a bit of a different thing. Being proud more generally of your people because of their perseverance in the face of oppression is more like it, and I think that's healthy in a lot of ways. But, I still consider that an American heritage more than a black heritage. Yes, whites played the role of oppressors, the originators and beneficiaries of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, and discrimination. But whites also fought for emancipation, fought alongside for civil rights, for desegregation, and equal opportunity. Whites mostly didn't carry the burden of the suffering but they're part of the story and share the heritage. So, I say wary because black pride can be benign, but there's a temptation to say, 'black oppression is the African American heritage and I'm not going to let you white folks co-opt this thing too.' I don't intend to co-opt, but I think I have a stake in it all the same. It's shaped my life too. Its too facile and it's unhelpful to say blacks are the progeny of perseverance and whites are the progeny of oppression. If black pride is just to defy the accusation of being less worthy, I'm down with that, blacks should not be ashamed; but black pride that wants to wall off black community/culture/heritage from whites isn't much different to my mind than the white pride trying to do the exact same thing. For the white or Southern pride folks, I'd say the same -- don't be ashamed of our heritage. But don't let it lead you toward exclusion.

 

being a multi-ethnic myself, racial pride means one ugly fight awaiting to happen

 

I identify with me of 1 hrs ago.

I identify with my heritage, but accept some of it and reject other.

Don't identify with anything. No need for pride based on identity.

I guess to avoid confusion, you would have to state exactly what you are proud of, and what you aren't proud of. Seems like lot of work. Maybe no identity is the best approach, but not too easy to do.

 

You have prosperity and progress, and it's well chronicled enough to pinpoint individual nationalities and subcultures. Imagine if some black guy started telling you he was part Basaa, part Creole, then Wolof and Kikkuyu, your eyes would roll unless you were an anthropologist or worked for an NGO. But go to the upper midwest and hear someone rattle off Swedish, Danish and German, even minorities who are at least marginally educated can feign interest through cultural references like Volvos, Vikings, Hamlet, Beethoven. Explicitly tacking on pride and using a category that was specifically created to distinguish against colonized and indentured contemporaries is just too obviously stratifying, even to other whites.

 

I think we can all agree that American society works better when its citizens become knowledgeable of other ethnicities and cultures they're unfamiliar with. This is why there has been efforts throughout the country to integrate classrooms and diversify curriculum. Unfortunately, there have been equal efforts to undermine and demean this movement (over 60 years now) and in many places they have succeeded, one way or the other. While using a word like "pride" is problematic and stratifying, the rejection of any kind of cultural ownership of identity allows many to identify themselves primarily by skin color only.

As you indicated in your post, skin color is not equal to heritage; it doesn't tell the whole story. These days, many white children are only exposed to the most positive aspects of their culture from a person who looks like them. Too many people's education is comfortable and this won't help them when having to face people of different backgrounds in the real world. This is true in higher education as well. I don't know how to implement these changes but it's counter intuitive to ignore each other or "put it off" because we don't wish to discuss past.atrocities. It should be obvious to most reasonable people that after the Obama years, the U.S. can't put a band-aid on these problems, we must work through them, and it will be difficult.

It's a common refrain in our public discourse but Its important to reaffirm: Education has to improve in this country for the benefit of not only racial relations but a laundry list of various tangential problems that deepen the racial divide.

 

Blue shirt pride!

 

It was real enough that Civil Rights activist and MLK Jr. associate, Andrew Young and his wife feel an appreciation of Southern Culture. I guess everyone has different experiences.

For some people it is real and goes beyond just slavery. For others they may only be able to associate it with the slavers etc.

 

Oh for ****'s sake, I know post-truth is in, but the truth, whether or not you or Andrew Young wants to face it is that the South and Southern Pride and all of that sh-t has as it's foundational element not geography, but the enslavement of african-americans and entire culture and cultural myths built around the veneration of this enslavement, the "tragedy" of it's fall, and the like. It's simply not possible to divorce it from that, that's how it defined itself, and now it shall reap what it sows.

Hey man, when I say I have southern pride! I just like bourbon and pulled pork and football though! That's just not how it works; if you want to have a grown-up view of history, you take the good with the bad and most of it was REALLY BAD - whether or not Andrew Young was homesick is a mug's game, and you know it.

 

Actually, that'd be pretty fascinating because most people wouldn't be able to track that sort of lineage. I'd be interested to know how he learned his history.

 

I'm not denying slavery's role in the South. I'm saying that Southern culture has other elements to it. That is also history whether you wish to recognize that as well is up to you. But William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, and others have recognized it as well.

 

I'm proud to be an American mutt.

 

This will be known as the Appamattox post

 

The culture and history are inextricable.

 

Texas was sort of halfway a slave state geographically, but the other half also did some terrible things in the Indian Wars (as did the Indians), just like every state/territory in the West. One of my relatives killed a Sheriff in Oklahoma, but he was not charged or prosecuted, because "he needed killing". Another was a Texas Ranger who fought the Comanche, and that was not a pretty thing. My German ancestors helped settle the Hill Country, one of my Cherokee great-greats rode the Chisolm Trail. Read up on Confederate General Sibley, who tried to invade New Mex/Colorado, his campaign was a disaster but he did invent the Sibley stove, which was in use through WWI.

And again, this has nothing to do with the Stars and Bars "Wish I was in a Land of Cotton...." Dixieland bullshit, yet the Texas Revolution was predicated on keeping slavery, despite Sam Houston and others not wanting to keep it as an institution.

At some point, many points, all people were incredibly racist towards other people: blacks, mexicans, indians, germans, irish, just about anybody who was different.

Am I allowed to have some sort of Texas Pride?

 

I am proud to be an America... very proud to be Southern... and even prouder to be a Texan....