It don't matter if you're black or white

With Martin Luther King Jr. Day right behind us, the idea of pride and equality are fresh in the brain.

And some people are feeling a little left out.

In a conversation with friends right before MLK Day, we started talking about white pride. It was all brought on by an image floating around the Internet that says, “I’m proud to be black; said a black man. I’m proud to be Asian; said an Asian man. I’m proud to be white; said a racist.”

Besides the rough rhetorical structure, the argument seems just a little backward.But delving into the topic, it’s pretty convoluted.

I found myself originally agreeing with the core of the message just based on the principle that we should all be able to be proud of who we are.

Then I was horrified that I just agreed with something that sounds like it came straight out of “Deliverance.”

I finally came to this — white pride is a nice theory, but can never work in practice.
Yes, everyone in America should feel comfortable and proud to live his or her daily life.
But we can’t have white pride rallies, parades, film festivals or what have you because we have no grounds to do so, and we’ll screw it up.

So, white pride exists for the idea alone.

The reason that we could never demonstrate white pride — and the reason the topic is so uncomfortable in the first place — is because pride demonstrations are a reclamation and response to hate and discrimination.

This may be shocking news to some, but white people really aren’t discriminated against.

I’m sure the comments section below will flood with personal anecdotes about times when you felt uncomfortable being white, but that doesn’t cut it.

Black, Asian, and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender pride all stem from a massive amount of people experiencing a massive amount of hate — many including a sizeable death toll.

Sure, you might feel like a martyr because you were the only white kid in a black poetry course once and you felt uncomfortable.

But read that sentence again and realize how those sentiments aren’t valid. Because white has always been the “norm” in America, to demonstrate and assert that white people shouldn’t have to experience hate is just incorrect.

Yes, there is a double standard, and I’m advocating for it because white people haven’t earned the type of pride the ignorant quote above calls for.

I’ll never feel guilty for being white. There’s really nothing I can do about that.

But I’m certainly not going out to buy a white pride bumper sticker any time soon.

­— sjostrow@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Sam Ostrowski on Twitter at @ostrowski_s_j