I get the sentiment, and it’s not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people saying “pride” mean “There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from” and some people mean “the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash”. And “white pride” has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
Pointing out that “white pride” COULD also mean the former doesn’t remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
Just to clarify, I’m not asking about the implication of “white pride”, just the semantics of pride in general.
It reminds me of “Black Lives Matter” - of course they do, but too many people heard “only black lives matter”, when what they’re trying to say is “black lives matter too”.
These twits responded with “All Lives Matter”, which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, “defund the police”, “all cops are bastards”, “math is racist”.
We can’t expect the Right to read between the lines, it’s up to the Left to use better language so we don’t give them more ammo.
The right will often purposefully misrepresent whatever the left uses as a slogan. So only so much can be done there. As for the use of racial pride, I find that often those who can claim no accomplishments in themselves will often claim pride by association. They could claim pride in race, but really any group. This could be considered a defense mechanism for their own ego as they are not okay accepting their own short comings.
Deliberate misrepresentation can only be employed if one understands the original intent.
If a malicious person wants to try to convince others “Black Lives Matter” means “only black lives matter”, they may have a pretty clear shot (assuming they’re trying to convince someone Right of Centre).
If it was rebranded to “Black Lives Matter Too”, then they would have a harder time trying to be deceitful.
I’m convinced there are more people in the camp of failing to read between the lines.
In either case, language games are important; playing poorly will lead to catastrophic outcomes. The worst part is this is so easy to correct for - a little bit of imagination will illustrate predictable backlash, or lack thereof.
Fair enough. My conservative family is on the side of purposefully misunderstanding, but I can understand that some may just misunderstand and we should mitigate that when we can.
I get the sentiment, and it’s not a black and white (sorry for the pun) answer I think. And yes, celebrating your culture should be good for everyone.
Unfortunately, some people saying “pride” mean “There are great things in the culture and people where I emigrated from” and some people mean “the culture and people where you emigrated from are trash”. And “white pride” has historically been used by people meaning the latter.
Pointing out that “white pride” COULD also mean the former doesn’t remove the implication it comes with for the latter. If I wanted to express the former, I would pick different words. A person doing otherwise usually either expresses ignorance, callousness to the second implication, or them just trying to get away with saying it meaning the second thing by hiding behind the first.
Just to clarify, I’m not asking about the implication of “white pride”, just the semantics of pride in general.
It reminds me of “Black Lives Matter” - of course they do, but too many people heard “only black lives matter”, when what they’re trying to say is “black lives matter too”.
These twits responded with “All Lives Matter”, which, of course, is also true, but the implication is the discreditation of the suffering of black people.
I think a lot of these issues, unfortunately, are a failure of the Left. There are so many slogans which are either poorly thought out, or intentionally inflammatory. For example, “defund the police”, “all cops are bastards”, “math is racist”.
We can’t expect the Right to read between the lines, it’s up to the Left to use better language so we don’t give them more ammo.
The right will often purposefully misrepresent whatever the left uses as a slogan. So only so much can be done there. As for the use of racial pride, I find that often those who can claim no accomplishments in themselves will often claim pride by association. They could claim pride in race, but really any group. This could be considered a defense mechanism for their own ego as they are not okay accepting their own short comings.
Deliberate misrepresentation can only be employed if one understands the original intent.
If a malicious person wants to try to convince others “Black Lives Matter” means “only black lives matter”, they may have a pretty clear shot (assuming they’re trying to convince someone Right of Centre).
If it was rebranded to “Black Lives Matter Too”, then they would have a harder time trying to be deceitful.
I’m convinced there are more people in the camp of failing to read between the lines.
In either case, language games are important; playing poorly will lead to catastrophic outcomes. The worst part is this is so easy to correct for - a little bit of imagination will illustrate predictable backlash, or lack thereof.
Fair enough. My conservative family is on the side of purposefully misunderstanding, but I can understand that some may just misunderstand and we should mitigate that when we can.
God damn, I don’t envy you.
Having a family which is consciously malicious must make for some very frustrating conversations.
I, on the other hand, have a right-of-centre family who are mostly just too dull to extrapolate, and spend too much time on FB.
At least in my case I can sometimes dispel misconceptions.
Besides my severe trust issues I am fine, life is better now that I have mostly cut them all off.