White pride

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Members of the Aryan Guard display 'white pride' banners showing a logo loosely based on the Celtic cross.
Members of the Aryan Guard display 'white pride' banners showing a logo loosely based on the Celtic cross.

White pride is a slogan used primarily in the United States to agitate for a white European racial identity and is closely aligned with white supremacy, white separatism, and other extreme manifestations of white racism.[1] Organizations advocating white pride are collectively referred to as the white pride movement. White pride activists claim that white pride is equivalent to "black pride" and similar terms that express no more than ethnic self-affirmation.

Contents

[edit] History

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Carol M. Swain and Russell Nieli state that the white pride movement is a relatively new phenomenon. They argue that over the course of the 1990s "a new white pride, white protest, and white consciousness movement has developed in America".[2] They locate the reasons for this "new white racial assertiveness" in three factors: an immigrant influx during the 1980s and 1990s, resentment over affirmative action policies, and the growth of the Internet as a tool for the expression and mobilization of grievances.[2]

[edit] Beliefs and criticism

Defenders of the term claim that white pride is equivalent to "black pride" and similar terms that express no more than ethnic self-affirmation. Some defenders of white pride argue that "the United States government is biased against white people" because it views phrases such as "white pride" as offensive, but not "black pride" and the like.[3] Advocates of white pride argue that white people should be recognized as a cohesive and legitimate cultural group, with the right to promote their sociopolitical interests. According to a University of Minnesota study, 77% of white Americans believe "their race has a distinct culture that should be preserved."[4] There are claims that there exists a cultural double standard in which only certain ethnic groups are permitted to openly have pride in their heritage, and that white pride is not inherently racist, being roughly analogous to positions such as black pride or gay pride. Thomas Jackson writes in the journal American Renaissance that "what would surely be called racism when done by whites is thought to be normal when done by anyone else".[5]

Many opponents of the white pride movement argue that movements such as black pride differ from white pride. Philosopher David Ingram argues that "affirming 'black pride' is not equivalent to affirming 'white pride,' since the former—unlike the latter—is a defensive strategy aimed at rectifying a negative stereotype".[6] By contrast, then, "affirmations of white pride—however thinly cloaked as affirmations of ethnic pride—serve to mask and perpetuate white privilege".[6]

[edit] A white minority?

White pride is often tied to the notion that white people can represent, or will someday represent, a minority group in historically white countries. Advocates of this notion point out that non-Hispanic whites now comprise less than half the population of California and Texas, and that some models predict that white people will become a numerical minority in the United Kingdom by 2100.[7] This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the minority-majority effect.

However, simple numerical minority status is not how most sociologists or economists define a minority group. To avoid confusion, some writers prefer the terms "subordinate group" and "dominant group" rather than "minority" and "majority".[citation needed] In this context, sociologists argue that white people—specifically white men—would remain the culturally and politically dominant group in historically white countries, even if they came to represent a numerical minority.[8]

[edit] Usage

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The term "white pride" is widely used by groups that are also sometimes called white separatist, white nationalist or white supremacist. Sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L Shanks-Meile state that the slogan White Power! White Pride! is "a much-used chant of white separatist movement supporters".[9]

The slogan "White Pride, World Wide" appears in the logo of Stormfront, a website owned and operated by Don Black, who was formerly a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.[10] Other extremists also use the term, such as the North Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who described themselves as "a patriotic, White Christian revival movement dedicated to preserving the maintenance of White Pride and the rights of the White Race".[11]

According to Joseph T. Roy of the Southern Poverty Law Center, white supremacists often circulate material on the Internet and elsewhere that "portrays the groups not as haters, but as simple white pride civic groups concerned with social ills".[12]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Dobratz & Shanks-Meile 2001
  2. ^ a b Swain & Nieli 2003, p. 5
  3. ^ Moritz 2005
  4. ^ Lee-St.John 2006
  5. ^ Jackson 1991. Jackson writes as assistant editor of American Renaissance, a journal that describes itself as "America's premiere publication of racial-realist thought" (“About American Renaissance”, American Renaissance, <http://www.amren.com/siteinfo/information.htm>. Retrieved on 22 May 2008 ). Others, however, describe it as a journal of white supremacism: see "A Convocation of Bigots".
  6. ^ a b Ingram 2004, p. 55
  7. ^ For Texas, see “Texas White Anglos Become Minority”, Fox News, August 11, 2005, <http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,165395,00.html>. Retrieved on 22 May 2008 ; for the UK, see Browne, Anthony (September 3, 2000), “UK Whites Will Become a Minority by 2100”, The Observer, <http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,6903,363750,00.html>. Retrieved on 22 May 2008 ; and for California as well as the "developed world" as a whole, along with a commentary on rising white separatism, see Browne 2000.
  8. ^ Brasel 2000
  9. ^ Dobratz & Shanks-Meile 2001, p. vii
  10. ^ Faulk 1997
  11. ^ Hilliard & Keith 1999, p. 63
  12. ^ Roy, Joseph T. (September 14, 1999), “Statement of Joseph T. Roy, Sr. before the Senate Judiciary Committee”, <http://judiciary.senate.gov/oldsite/91499jtr.htm>. Retrieved on 22 May 2008 

[edit] References