White pride

Aryan Guard members protest against an anti-racism rally in Calgary on March 21, 2009^[1][2]

White pride is a motto primarily used by white separatist, white nationalist, neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations to signal their racist or racialist viewpoints.^[3][4] Sociologists Betty A. Dobratz and Stephanie L Shanks-Meile identified "White Power! White Pride!" as "a much-used chant of white separatist movement supporters",^[5] and sociologist Mitch Berbrier has identified the use of this phrase as part of a "new racist... frame-transformation and frame-alignment by (a) consciously packaging a 'hate-free' racism, (b) developing strategies of equivalence and reversal–presenting whites as equivalent to ethnic and racial minorities, and (c) deploying ideas about 'love,' 'pride,' and 'heritage-preservation' to evidence both their putative lack of animosity toward others as well as their ethnic credentials."^[6] Anti-racist critics argue that the idea of "white pride" is an attempt provide a clean or more palatable public face for white supremacy and white separatism; it is an appeal to a larger audience in hopes of inciting more widespread racial violence.^[7] 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".^[8]

White pride advocates say they believe there is a cultural double standard in which only certain ethnic groups are permitted to openly express pride in their heritage, and that white pride is not inherently racist, being roughly analogous to racial positions such as black pride, Asian pride, or non-racial forms such as gay pride. Steve Sailer argues that White pride has a negative reputation because white people are expected to be at the top of the societal ladder, and that pride movements are associated with lack of social status. He says that this stigma affects blue-collar whites in particular.^[9] Justin J. Moritz wrote that he tried to trademark the phrase "White Pride Country Wide" but it was denied for being offensive, despite that phrases like "Black Pride" and "Black Power" were trademarked.^[10] 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". By contrast, then, "affirmations of white pride—however thinly cloaked as affirmations of ethnic pride—serve to mask and perpetuate white privilege".^[11] In the same vein, Professor of Education at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Cris Mayo, identifies white pride as "a politically distasteful goal, given that whiteness is not a personal or community identity, but has been a strategy to maintain inequities of privilege and power."^[12]

Political scientists Carol M. Swain and Russell Nieli, in their text on white nationalism, identify the white pride movement as a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. They argue that over the course of the 1990s, "a new white pride, white protest, and white consciousness movement has developed in America". They identify three contributing 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.^[13] As an alternative, Dr. Janet E. Helms, founding director of Boston College’s Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture, writes “The task for whites is to develop a positive white identity based on reality not on assumed superiority... Not in the sense of Klan members’ ‘white pride’ but in the context of a commitment to a just society.”^[14]

The slogan "White Pride Worldwide" 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.^[15] The North Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan describe themselves as "a patriotic, White Christian revival movement dedicated to preserving the maintenance of White Pride and the rights of the White Race".^[16] The slogan was chanted by neo-Nazis rallying in Manchester, United Kingdom,^[17] and in an exposé from The Week, James Poulos warned that "Europe is on track to rediscover what looks to us like a highly unsettling form of white pride."^[18]

A white power skinhead wearing a patch that says "white and proud" in German

References

Bibliography

• Dobratz, Betty A.; Shanks-Meile, Stephanie L. (2001), The White Separatist Movement in the United States: White Power, White Pride, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0-8018-6537-9 .
• Faulk, Kent (October 19, 1997), "White Supremacist Spreads Views over the Internet", The Birmingham News .
• Hilliard, Robert L.; Keith, Michael C. (1999), Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical Right, Amonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, ISBN 978-0-7656-0131-5 .
• Ingram, David (2004), Rights, Democracy, and Fulfillment in the Era of Identity Politics: Principled Compromises in a Compromised World, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, ISBN 0-7425-3348-4 .
• Swain, Carol M.; Nieli, Russell (2003), Contemporary Voices of White Nationalism in America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-01693-2 .