Shameful Pride

To hell with "pride".

It's one of the cardinal sins, according to traditional Catholic teaching, and despite my misgivings about a lot of Chrisitian theology, I've come to agree with it. Pride is one of the biggest stains on humanity. National pride, racial pride, ethnic pride, school pride, gay pride... all just a bunch of people trying to make themselves feel better because of some superficial connection they have to somebody else who did something good. And feel superior to people who aren't part of that group.

I don't make this statement lightly. Going to a "gay pride" event was one of the biggest positive steps forward that I've ever taken, and for a few years I helped organise the gay pride celebrations here in town. But the more I see of this kind of collective pride - of various sorts - the more I have to see that it's ultimately destructive.

Anti-gay people sometimes spit that being gay is nothing to be proud of. Now, their argument is that it's something to be ashamed of, and I don't agree with that. But I do have to agree with the statement on the face of it. It wasn't anything in particular that I accomplished; I turned out gay with no special effort on my part. And it doesn't automatically make me a better person; I can point out any number of gay people who are horrible role models: deceitful, abusive, selfish, lazy, etc. Not because they're gay, but because they're... bad people. There are some really swell gay people too, but that has nothing to do with what shape bones they want to jump. It's just how they were raised.

The same thing applies to any other group that people take pride in. White people are admirable people, and white people are despicable people. Nothing to do with them being white, which is why the Ku Klux krowd are so full of shit. Same with Aryans. Sure, Nazis in general were/are a pretty contemptible bunch, but not all Aryans were/are Nazis, and as an ethnicity they're a pretty mixed bunch. African-Americans too. Make no mistake: Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, and so on were people to emulate. But you don't have to be racist to see some pretty lousy role models with similar skin color.

What all of these come down to are groups who feel (correctly or not) that they've been oppressed, so they draw together and build up some kind of collective pride to fight back. "Don't feel bad about being a ____," they tell each other. "____s are good people. We're ____ and ____ and _____. Just look at ____: he was a _____ like you, and look what a great person he was." I can confirm from the inside that this is where "gay pride" came from, and I can see how it developed in other groups (though it takes a little creative paranoia to see where the Klan got the notion that they were being oppressed by black people asserting their rights as... people).

That's not a horrible phenomenon by itself. Again, I speak from experience that seeing "proud" gay people like Harvey Milk and Harry Hay and Barbara Gittings ws good for me in rebuilding my self-esteem. But if I ever started taking pride in them, that was going too far. That's like taking emotional credit for their accomplishments, which I had no part in.

And I do see people who take "gay pride" further than just believing they're as good as other people, to the point of thinking they're better than other people. That's the whole premise of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, isn' it? These five queer guys are more savvy, sophisticated, and tasteful than their straight makeover subjects because... they're queer, and that makes them fabulous. Anyone seen my apartment, kitchen, and wardrobe? It's fabu-lousy.

I'm sure I've ruffled some feathers already, but I'm not saying anything here that hasn't been said a hundred times before by a hundred other commentators. I might get booed off one stage for saying some of it, but I'd get applause from another. Not to get shooed from the whole country:

"American pride" is just as bad.

I have absolutely no reason to be (as so many bumper stickers proclaim) "proud to be an American". Nor do I have any reason to be ashamed of it. It's a just a fact of where I'm from and where I live. It says nothing about me, personally. I didn't choose to be an American; I was born into it. That means I didn't do anything to become one; I just stayed here. So it doesn't say anything about my decision-making or my accomplishments. If I'd been born a few hundred miles due east of here, I'd be a Canadian. Or a few thousand miles, and I'd be an Italian. And have just as much reason to be proud.

But what if it were several thousand miles to the west, and I was a North Korean? Still no different. Sure, it's a very different country, and it has neither the great accomplishments of America, nor - perhaps more importantly - the humanitarian ideals of America to be proud of. But that wouldn't be my doing. I didn't write the U.S. Declaration of Independence or its Constitution. I didn't cultivate the plains, build the railroad, or mine gold in California or Alaska. I didn't establish the legal principle of one man - or one person - one vote. I didn't build modern industry. I didn't liberate Europe and the Pacific from the Axis powers. I just showed up here. Or there. Nothing to be proud of.

Sure, there are American contemporaries of mine who are doing great things or showing exemplary attributes. To cite the most obvious example right now, most of the men and women in the U.S. military are doing their jobs with honor and deserve our admiration. They should be proud of themselves. But they don't make me proud. Why should I be proud of what they are doing? That's no different from being proud of what other white people are doing, or what other gay people are doing. That kind of nationalism is fundamentally the same as racism or some other -ism: taking pride in one's membership in a group that happens to have some admirable people in it... even if that has little or nothing to do with me.

We see the same thing on a smaller scale with schools. It's especially prevalent with sports teams. When I was in college, the whole campus would be abuzz when the football or basketball team was doing well, and we'd expected to go out and cheer for them, and celebrate when they won? Why? I didn't even know anybody on the team? I understand the players' friends being happy for them, and their parents being pleased to see them doing well. But why should I be happy that a bunch of strangers who go to my school scored more than a bunch of strangers at some other school?

Now, if I were actually on one of those teams, it'd be a whole different ballgame. Then it would make sense for me as a player to take pride in how my team did. If I sat on the bench the whole time, that might be a little dodgy, but you could argue that I still had an influence on the outcome, by how I trained with the team and presumably helped the first- and second-stringers become as good as they were.

Likewise, I don't think it's out of line for the players' families to be proud of their successes. Their parents are indirectly responsible for the games' outcomes, because they're the ones who created and shaped the athletes on the field. Their siblings and friends can take some credit - and pride - as well.

But the ones who really ought to be proud are the players. That's taking pride in themselves, and that's not a sin... it's a virtue. I'm not proud to be gay; I'm proud to be a gay person who overcame the difficulty of growing up with the pain of being different, the fear of being discovered, and the consequences of being open about it. I'm not proud to be white; I'm proud to be a white person who is conscious of his prejudices and strives - usually successfully - to overcome them. I'm not proud to be an American; I'm proud to be an American who actively supports freedom of expression, exercises freedom of religion, and consistently employs the power of his vote to elect candidates who'll try to make the world a better place.

None of these are essentially gay/white/American things to do. They're the kinds of things that people of many countries/races/sexualities do, and the kinds of things that others would do if given the chance. Group identity is meaningless; individual identity is what counts.

So stop taking pride in the accomplishments of others, and start taking pride in your own character and deeds.