jeudi 7 mars 2013

"Race pride"

Je vais poster un autre article à ce sujet en français plus tard. Comme je l'ai expliqué dans un autre article, "penser la race" en français n'est pas la même chose que la penser en anglais... I am going to post another article on this later in French. As I have stated it in another article, "racial thinking" in French is different from "racial thinking" in English...

"Race pride" is a very problematic concept, for several reasons, that I won't even be exploring here, because this would require a whole book. I'll just give my thoughts on this.

The first reason for its problematic aspect is that it relies directly on the idea of race. It takes it for granted. It accepts "race" as a fact.

Not only sociologically, but also biologically, which is where the core of the problem is.

For Europeans, "race pride" is extremely problematic, because it is viewed as the engine of "white power". It is what Hitler, his predecessors and inspirators (like Gobineau) posed as a postulate to develop their politics (that's a very brief summary).

For Americans, it can sound quite differently, because in the American context, "race" is already a social "fact" that is accepted as such by the majority. So "race pride" becomes a sub-categorized affirmation of self-pride based on the pre-acceptance of "race".

Thus, it renders the analysis of pride extremely complicated, since rejecting it as "racist" implies that one at the same time rejects the attempts at affirming oneself in the face of white supremacy.

In addition to that first level of explanation, the complexity becomes more intricate when one hears others say "I'm black and I'm proud" or "I'm proud to be white". Both do not convey the same message at all. Understanding their meaning requires a minimum of historical, sociological and biological knowledge. They do not translate as simple self-pride. They are loaded.

In the European context, and I will speak more precisely of the French one (because I don't know the other ones well enough), things are different too.
Someone saying "Je suis fier d'être noir" (I am proud to be black) is not necessarily consciously referring to "race", because "noir" is not thought as "race" by most people, but as simply "physical description". It is of course not only "skin color"; the real meaning is "race", but it doesn't appear as such. However, someone saying "Je suis fier d'être blanc" (I am proud to be white) will definitely and without hesitation be recognized as a racist, and he or she knows it before hand. So that affirmation is deeply and directly the mirror of a political statement of belonging to "white power" organizations, or wishing to, and a conscious or unconscious affirmation of "power".

Aucun commentaire:

Enregistrer un commentaire