I find it fascinating that people take pride in matters that have nothing to do with their participation or achievement. Things like race, gender or culture are notions of an ascribed status which is a status given to each individual upon birth (whether they like it or not). At some point, there are two ways people deal with what they’ve been socialized into – either they accept it or rebel against and some develop pride in their racial, gender or cultural characteristics. I get that that’s part of forming one’s identity and that it certainly functions to bond you with others and to reinforce your ‘group,’ so to speak, but I literally cannot relate to anyone making claims to pride based on these things. Sometimes, my students scream that they’re proud to be men and I say ‘why would you be proud of something that you didn’t do anything to get?’ and then there will be someone saying something about how they’re proud to be Black and, while I understand the urge given racism and oppressive experiences, I still don’t see why there is anything to be proud of…

I know people come up with all kinds of explanations and it’s tricky to talk about…how can you tell the daughter of Holocaust survivors not to be proud of something her family survived…same for Blacks who connect to their ancestors’ struggles during slavery…so I get it, I do…but that’s just a coping mechanism and I don’t mean to take away people’s agency because of course I believe people can formulate their own identities (even if sometimes others do tell them what they are in a repressive manner) but they’re basically responding to something horrific that happened or to problematic times in their lives and patterns they feel holding them back…

We hear ‘I’m proud to be a human being’ a lot less…I want you to theorize why.

Topics: people, culture, ethnicity, society, gender, pride, socialization