I am proud to be white. -- LiveWire Teen Forums

Simply because you have no justification to be proud of something you did not control.
Please, KR, justify to me why one should feel proud of something they have no control over.

I do have control over it.

I'm not necessarily proud that I was born into a race - but that I chose to contribute to it, to love it, and to cherish it.

I am proud that I am loving for what it gave me.

Should I be proud that the sun shines? It certainly influences my mood in that it the sunlight influences my brain chemistry in a positive way, making me feel a little happier and thereby potentially influencing some of my decisions. Would it make sense to be proud of the fact that the sun shines?
Honestly, it makes as much sense to me as saying that you're proud of being white.

You can't help the sun. You can't give back to it.
You CAN for your race. You can be a large part of your race - as many Whites have. Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Tacitus, Julius Ceaser, Napoleon, William the Conqueror, Marco Polo, Washington, Jefferson, Hitler, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Magellan, Columbus, Cabot, Edison, GrahamBell, Pasteur, Leeuwenhoek, Mendel, Darwin, Newton, Galileo, Watt, Ford, Luther, Devinci, Poe, Tennyson, Lindbergh, and thousands and thousands of other Whites HAVE contributed to their race. THEY shaped their race - and they have every reason to be proud of it.

Who on earth says that?

YOU.
"Simply because you have no justification to be proud of something you did not control."
It isn't 100% my fault - if it is even 1% my fault.

My teachers, my classmates, luck, and many other things I have NO control over helped me accomplish that.

Yet your effort to accomplish the work and achieve the grade is certainly worth something. You had help, and you had influences, but you also made good use of that and brought yourself to accomplishing it.
Unless somebody gave you all the answers and whatever you needed, having help to get a good grade does not and should not reduce how proud you are of it.

That effort grew inside of me because I was TAUGHT to put in effort - and that, genetically, I can do so.

I don't deserve all of the credit.

Exactly. He should not feel pride in this, but how he personally makes use of this. He can be glad that he had it, but he should not be proud of it. You see the difference?

Bud, you're implying that there is something inside of every human that something - their genetics, other people, luck, and random instances haven't influenced at all.
I don't believe this.

A human is identified by many things that he doesn't choose.

Obama is a president - he became that because OTHER people liked him and chose him. He may have had good ideas - but they were strongly influenced by his teachers, friends, mentors, and the like.

I am proud that the sun shines. I am glad that the sun shines.
I am proud that I am white. I am glad that I am white.
It's a good idea not to personalize the attribute, thereby mixing it up with being a part of your identity (as in, being who you are instead of what you are), and thus proud of it as opposed to being glad for it. We often persoalize our race and heritage - something which we are typically proud of - but we usually do not do such with the sunshine, despite it having a great deal of influence on each of us personally.

The fact that they are alive is something they had no control over.

Therefore, everything I can be proud of is due to my parents - and their parents - and their parents - and I can trace it back to the first life form, who can trace it back to the big bang or whatever theory you believe in.

Nah, you should be proud of how you made use of what you were given.

How I made use of it is due to how others influenced me.

If someone gives you a hammer, nails, and a bunch of wood - you can make a birdhouse.

But, if you never learned how to make one FROM OTHER PEOPLE, you can't make that birdhouse.

Therefore, that birdhouse itself is something, according to you, you can't be proud of.

Even if you learned it yourself, someone else invented the hammer, created the nails, and chopped the wood.

You used their effort to be proud of yourself - and that is against your code.

What are you on here?
Effort is simply a matter of striving for something despite the obstacles and costs. Anybody can have effort, but you make it sound as if effort is easy to come by. Effort / motivation / determination / a clear vision of what one wants is not necessarily that easy, and being able to achieve something that took quite a bit of effort did take something, hence one should feel proud of their efforts.

But the effort they have can't be traced back to only THEM (if it could, it would be genetic).

Effort is something you come by, from being born with it - to being taught to put it in to everything.

YOU may use effort in whatever way you want - but that doesn't mean it's your effort... If that makes sense.

What defines YOU is something you have no control over.

You keep missing the part where the individual makes their own choices.

Bud - YOU keep missing the part where their choices are fuelled by factors they can't control - such as their past.

They were taught to do many things - and they use THAT to make a choice.

Their choice isn't 100% THEIRS - but a reflection of teachings of others.

o one's denying that Obama and everybody else does not have their influences - what we're all trying to tell you is that he made use of these influences to achieve what he has achieved and become what he is today. There is nothing collective about that.

He made use of them because he was taught to do that.

Bud - if Obama never went to school, his parents never cared for him, and he just played around all day - would he make the same decisions as he would today?

The answer is no. Any decision he makes isn't of his own doing - but all of the other people and things that make up HIM.

Also - Bud, define yourself for me.

And tell me a few things that make you proud of yourself.

For example parents can be PROUD of their kids if they raised them good and they made sacrifices and the kids succeed.

Maybe they raised them well because they COULD. The parents had money, let's say. What if an influx of more experienced workers came? The mom and dad would have to work extra to get the same amount of money - and they couldn't raise their kids the same way.

How they raised their kids isn't their doing necessarily.

And still being proud of your ancestors is not as bad as being proud of something so broad and vague like race.

Silly Jakelong...
My ancestors are of the White race.

They are my family.

I love them and are proud of what they've done.

-------
"One of the Germans... would frequently snatch a child from the
woman's arms and... tear the child in half... Such incidents...
occurred all the time." - A Year in Treblinka, Yankel Wiernik,
Treblinka's "most authoritative eyewitness"

324 users online 222902 members 308 active today Advertise Here