Proud of our nat'l/ethnic heritages; should we equally be ashamed of the BAD stuff??

The ongoing Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver got me thinking about this.

I am of the belief that everyone–everyone–should know, understand, and celebrate his/her own ethnic or national background(s). I come from a strong Anglo-Saxon background on my father’s side, and have strong French roots, on my mother’s. I appreciate (read: am proud of) and celebrate them both. (My screen name, Cyningablod [KOO-ning-ah-blohd], means “blood of kings” in Old English/Anglo-Saxon, btw.)

I suppose the “ought” contained in that first opening sentence is debatable in and of itself, but my actual question is this:

Without letting ourselves get bogged down in the peripherally-related but topically-irrelevant issue of racism,

If we are going to celebrate and take pride in our ethnic/national heritages, does that mean we must also “carry the guilt” for our ancestors’ wicked deeds? Is there a kind of logical “carry-over” of sorts, from our respective “bragging points” into the things that we really would prefer not to acknowledge?

Does my pride in the accomplishments and culture of the English people, for example, logically entail that I should also be ashamed of their traditions of imperialism and slaveholding? Is it inconsistent to uphold and praise certain aspects of one’s people/culture, while downplaying or ignoring the negative aspects?

I could provide other illustrations, but you get the idea.

I suppose in the interest of beginning an actual debate, per se, I should take a position. So I’ll argue for the affirmative; I do in fact think that we need to acknowledge and possibly in some way “atone for” our ancestors’ evil behaviours, for two reasons:

First, acknowledging, accepting, and understanding history–allhistory–helps to ensure that the bad parts won’t be repeated; and second, it’s just more intellectually consistent to take the bad with the good.

Have at me!

Who are you going to atone to? The victims are all dead.

Why are you going to atone? You did not set up any empires or hold any slaves.

My take exactly. If I see an imbalance that I can correct, I’ll do so, but not out of any guilt. Likewise, any accomplishments by my ancestors are theirs and theirs alone-interesting to read about, but nothing to take personal pride over.

Allow me a brief parenthetical aside to explain how I view my nat’l/ethnic ancestry, lest I be accused of racism or of some sort of crass, supremacist nationalism:

I view my ancestral national and ethnic groups in much the same way as I view my immediate family. That is, I love them, and I’m proud of them, but I don’t for one second think that we’re better than anyone else, at anything.

There is NOTHING AT ALL inherently “better”, “smarter”, “stronger”, or whatever, about the English or the French (or the Caucasian Europeans in general) than anyone else, anywhere in the world. Those who carry their cultural pride too far, into the area of supremacism, are only discrediting themselves and their peoples.

I am staunchly anti-racist, and a committed multi-culturalist. (I kinda have to be; I’m a linguist by training, albeit not by vocation.)

Jus’ sayin’. Thanks.

Holy Signs of the Zombiepocalypse, Batman!

The Saints have won the Super Bowl, and Czarcasm agrees with Oak in a GD thread?

Surely the final hours are upon us…
:smiley:

That’s a valid point. And a sensible one.

But doesn’t that by logical extension mean that we can’t really be proud of the good deeds of our ancestors, either?

That’s kinda my whole question here: Why are we justified in being proud of our Constitution and our Emancipation Proclamation, for example, if we had nothing to do with those? Isn’t it hypocritical to “pick and choose” which parts of our past, we acknowledge and talk about?

You had to do something right eventually-I mean, nobody’s perfect! :smiley:

The Constitution remains in effect today. Slavery does not, due to Constitutional Amendment. We’ve moved on.

I have a hard time understanding ethnic pride except as a response to actual experiences of disrespect for one’s ethnicity. I’m pretty sure that if I were a member of a discriminated against or disparaged ethnic group, I would feel some satisfaction in the successes of any member of that group. As an all-American mutt (German, Irish and Polish ancestors), I haven’t experienced any negative toward my various ethnicities, though there have been some historical problems for all of them.

I subscribe to Mark Twain’s view on this. When he was asked by an interviewer a question whose aim seemed to be to get Twain to say something racist about a black man, he said “It’s enough for me to know that he’s a man; he can’t be any worse than that.”

Out of curiosity, do you have a cite for this? I’d be interested to read more about it.

I don’t think it makes sense to be proud or ashamed of things you had nothing to do with. I understand why people do it, but it really does not make sense. Many of us love searching the past for clues to our identities, but the reality is that our relationships to these people are mostly accidental. That’s particularly true when we branch out from families and start talking about things like ethnic and national identities.

National/ethnic/cultural pride, the way I see it, is stupid and nonsensical. I find it utterly ridiculous how people latch onto and defend the elements of their identity that they had no choice or hand in. I think we’d all be better off if we took pride in personal accomplishments instead of givens.

True. But I fear this still doesn’t address my point. (It’s also highly debatable that we’ve really “moved on” away from racism, at least on a non-official level!)

Let me pick a less ambiguous example.

Think of the Magna Carta. Signed in the year 1215.

We are taught in school that this was a great advancement in the history of the rule of law in Europe. I think it could safely be said that we are, in not so many words, taught to admire it and uphold it as a noteworthy accomplishment of our intellectual, political (and in some cases, national) forbears.

If we are in any way “proud” of the achievement represented by the Magna Carta, on what logical basis do we then excuse ourselves from the burden of historical guilt represented by, I dunno…the Salem Witch Trials?

I’m really curious about this.

That’s a reasonable position. And a fair argument to make.

But I really wonder how far you personally take it, for example. Are you really, totally devoid of national pride, of whatever nation or tribe you call your own? When you watch your country’s athletes on the gold medal podium and you hear your national anthem being played, are you truly completely unmoved? Do you shrug your shoulders and think, “Meh. Had to’ve been somebody.”? Do you not take any pride at all in your country’s thinkers, statesmen and women, artists, writers, leaders, etc.? In your national art, science, literature, or other cultural forms?

If you do (take even the slightest bit of pride in your nation’s achievements), then I think your statement that “national pride is stupid and nonsensical” would be a bit of a disingenuous overstatement.

Note that I’m not saying that yours is a wrong attitude to hold; I’m genuinely curious how closely your true, deep sentiments follow your stated intellectual position.

I wouldn’t say I am “proud” of the constitution (or Magna Carta) because of ethnic/national pride. I can say that i believe in the sentiments of those documents, though. I don’t see why a non-american can’t believe in the sentiments of the constitution either. It is not “ours”, it just is. The people who wrote the constitution can be proud of it, though. We had nothing to do with that.

This got me thinking. I wouldn’t say that I am ever proud of my nationality/ethnicity. If my sports team wins the big game, I am happy, but not proud. I always think pride is reserved for my personal accomplishments, but I realized that is not necessarily true. I have been proud of my wife, my brother, my mom and dad, etc. I am not sure how far that circle of pride extends…I am thinking outside of my close family. It certainly ends before the national/ethnic group point, though.

You pretty much nailed it. However I realize this is a difficult position to understand considering how much effort is made to instill such things in people from a young age, but I suppose I was just born a jaded cynic. I’ve always failed to grasp how one could take emotional satisfaction from the accomplishments of others, the same way I don’t understand the appeal of tabloids/celebrity magazines. How can people care so much about strangers? I’ll never get it.

Answer for myself and not DCnDC: Pretty much, yes. I’ll admit I feel some connection to people whose experiences are similar to my own, where I can put myself in their shoes, but based on flags alone? No.

And don’t get me started on the Olympics. I’m a sports fan, I watch them, and I don’t have any bias to U.S. teams. They’re competing for themselves and it’s enough to watch them do what they do. The international competition thing is mostly shtick (from top to bottom the whole thing is corrupt) and it does not do anything for me.

I’m not Crotalus, but I was curious too, I found the closest quote from Twain, he is not just referring to blacks specifically:

http://www.malaspina.org/twainm.htm

Not particularly flattering to white people, he was mostly an equal opportunity offender; he had a lot of criticism about humans in general.

“There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.”

  • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

Good find! My version of it is in one of several books on Twain that I have, so I would need to do some “optical scanning” to find it. I’m pretty sure that the author who quoted it in my book was trying to make a point about Twain in relation to black people. It would not be surprising for him to have used similar words in similar circumstances, or to have quoted or paraphrased himself in an interview. At the root of it is his general cynicism about humanity, regardless of ethnicity.