Pride and power movements are about reconstructing, as legitimate cultures, identities which have been historically denigrated or marginalized. Gay, Latino, black (etc.) pride movements reclaim a particular identity from a mainstream culture which has established that identity as something negative, or at best permanently excluded from the mainstream. The problem with trying to create a movement which mirrors that process for empowered or majority groups, regardless of its actual associations (e.g., like the fact “white pride” is invariably not-so-subtle cover for vicious bigotry) is that the necessary preconditions don’t exist. The idea of “white pride” isn’t to reclaim an identity which has been obscured by an intervening, dominant cultural narrative—the classic example I always think of is Franz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, wherein he recounts the story of black kids who grow up on comic books whose protagonists are invariably white, and whose villains are black, typically depicted in pretty racist faction. The fact that these stories (which are only one example of a broader cultural process he’s talking about) demand the kids sympathize with the people not like them, and force them to see people like them as bestial and inhuman, leads to a distressing cognitive dissonance. At best, they’re stuck with the understanding that society, at least as the mainstream culture presents itself to them, does not want them, and is not for them. White people pretty obviously don’t have that problem, certainly not when conceived of as a group; trying to create a specific “white” identity to be proud of isn’t, then, reclaiming one’s place in society, it’s saying, in effect, “Yeah, we’ve been running things since, like, forever, and we’re pretty much OK with that.” “White” really only exists as an identity created in opposition to “black,” which is an identity created to exclude what is historically a very heterogenous group of people. Celebrating that whiteness doesn’t end a process of exclusion, it just celebrates a history of oppression. To put it another way: some people, fancying themselves witty and original, like to trot out the old rhetorical question, “How come there isn’t a White Entertainment Television?” There is—it’s called every other channel on the TV. Hence the reason why someone might need to create a BET in the first place—because the production of mainstream media is targeted at the dominant social groups, not the subordinate ones. Likewise, the creation of women-only spaces is much less problematic than male-only spaces—since male-only spaces have existed for centuries, have tended to be at the heart of society (for instance, all of politics before women got the vote; even now, political leadership in the U.S. is dominated by white men), and have not ever really had a big problem justifying themselves to the rest of society. Tanadrin - Why White Pride is an Issue
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 20:26:33 +0000