On Race Pride
I have been told the word “racist” is itself a type of propaganda word, because it conflates two distinct ideas, namely, racial patriotism — being a European wanting to live among Europeans, or being and English-speaker and wanting to live among of Anglos — and racial hatred, particularly Jew-hatred, which is an ongoing mental disease afflicting all of history. The Devil hates the Chosen People, and his children adopt his works and ways.
I see nothing wrong with the racial patriotism or racial pride. If Black Pride is fine, so is White Pride.
We — and here I mean, my family, the Wrights — invented the airplane.
My race — and here I mean the Pennsylvania Dutch, whom I regard as the master race — invented the moonrocket, after all.
Technically, the Nazi rocket scientists captured after World War Two and brought to American to compete with Nazi rocket scientists captured by Soviets were not Pennsylvania Dutch by blood, but for the purposes of racial pride, I consider them to be distant cousins.
As a science fiction writer, I regard all human progress merely in terms of aerospace engineering advances.
Other things like monogamy and abolition of slavery and the invention of the Scientific Method, naturally, I regard as particular to Christians, and to be regarded as aiding “progress” only insofar as it aids the Space Race.
So I have no problem with family pride or race pride or taking pride in something the long dead have done.
Indeed, I feel rather good about myself because Hammurabi wrote his laws on a monument that time did not destroy. I am sure, by some version or another of bat-logic, Babylonians count as Pennsylvania Dutch.
The Tower is Babel was also something of an engineering feat! I am allowed to take pride in this tower, as a remote descendant of Nimrod the Mighty through Scaefa, the fourth son of Noah not mentioned in Genesis. (Noah’s other unmentioned sons include Bith and Yam, who decided to climb mountains or colonize Ireland rather than enter the Ark, and so drowned.)
Ah! I remember how my grandpappy used to regale me with stories from the post-antediluvian days! The world was still damp, and the whole population of the Earth was living in Ur. We were of one tongue then, one tribe, one people. Globalism perfected!
The builders of the Great Tower of Pride (as we called it then) were devoted to the work, and devoted to our master, Nimrod the Mighty, whom we worshipped as a god greater than God.
Many, many years were passed in building the tower. It reached so great a height that it took a year to mount to the top. A brick was, therefore, more precious in the sight of the builders than a human soul. If a man fell down, and met his death, none took notice of it. We just bricked him up in the wall and kept working. But if a brick dropped, we wept, because it would take a year to replace it.
And, as the prideful men celebrating pride month do today, we of the Tower of Greatness flew a flag adorned with a rainbow! We laughed as we flew the rainbow flag from a pikestaff from each rank of the tower as it was built, daily growing higher, because we knew heaven could do nothing to dislodge, hinder, or stop us!
After all, the rainbow was a sign of a promise from God not to use a flood to destroy us.
So we were safe! There was nothing heaven could do! We were immune from divine retribution! Pride is wonderful thing! Pride! Pride! Fierté! Superbia! υπερηφάνεια! гордость! שטאָלץ! गौरव! 自豪!
So I do not see the problem with race pride.
What I do not get is the concept of racial shame for things not just my family or tribe or nation did, but all men everywhere and forever, and only my people put an end to it.
By “my people” of course, I mean William Wilberforce. Since Wilbur Wright is a family name in my family, we get to claim anyone of that name as one of ours, including the pig from Charlotte’s Web.
What I do not also get is the idea of collective guilt or collective innocence.
Consider: if the Black Africans of Gao or Zanzibar, or of the Songhai or Asante or who enslaved their foes and sold them to Arabians or Portuguese merit blame and condemnation for all the evils currently suffered by the Negroes in North America and North Africa, then, by the same token, all the Englishmen or Republicans or Spanish Friars who freed slaves and spared nothing to abolish the international slave trade, including shedding blood on the battlefield to do it, merit an equal amount of praise and gratitude.
No one has yet heard a single word of this praise and gratitude from anyone who believes in the collective guilt of the slavers for the collective merit of the abolitionists.
The Wright Brothers hailed from Ohio, and this was a Union state. The 114th Regiment, Ohio Infantry was organized at Camp Circleville, which was the Wright Brothers’ home town. So they fought on the side which abolished slavery.
Am I allowed, as a Wright, to feel racial pride for the sacrifice in blood and treasure needed to end the abominable institution of slavery among the dread and dreaded Virginians? They are a ferocious people! The Virginians fought the British Empire to secure the independence of the colonies, aided in some trifling way by lesser colonies whose names I forget. Merely the rumor of Virginians on the field of glorious battle would send pasty-faced Yankees skirling and pelting away on their trembling, spindly legs!
Wait is moment. To which race, precisely, do I owe my race pride? As a Virginian, do I sneer at the savages and Boeotian of Ohio, California, and among the Pennsylvania Dutch? Or, as a Pennsylvanian Deutschlander, do I glance with fleering and supercilious glance at the Ohionese and Californimen as hoi polloi?
The matter is complex. I must consult a geneticist.
Or if my race is European, on which grounds are Spanish and Portuguese or Irish to be considered a different and inferior race to mine? How do I take pride in the Glory of Rome while sneering at the racial sub-humanity of the garlic-eating Italians? Can I regard the Saxon as wonder-forebears of the Master Race, when they ere Rome civilized them, were painted with woad and running nude through the northern pines, worshipping rocks? And what about the Aryans? Are not Norsemen from India a race as fictional as the Atlanteans and the Narnians and Hyperboreans?
If my race is Caucasian, does this mean I am one and the same race as the Kurds and Slavs and Greek, who inhabit the Caucasus mountains? Am I allowed to take pride in collective ancestral accomplishments in Greek philosophy and art, or am I required to despise them as racially inferior Brown Folk? I find the concepts confusing.
As a descendant of Adam I believe I can take credit for the invention of knowledge of good and evil, so that my eyes are opened and I can be like a god.
I also trace my ancestry through Noah’s wife Naomi to Tubalcain, the inventor of swords and spears and slave-chains and all instruments of pain, to our great common ancestor, Caine. Caine was also a singular innovator in his field, and is famous for being the “first” in his own way.
Which leads me to a final question:
Will any grandchild or greatgrandchild of a freed slave donate funds to my kick-starter? I want to get enough funds to be able to afford to free any slaves I happen to inherit from my antediluvian ancestors, including Nimrod the Mighty, once their estates are settled.
Surely if the Wright family is due blame for the blameworthy acts of my collective ancestors that harmed your collective ancestors, by the same logic, we are owed collective praise for the praiseworthy acts of my collective ancestors that aided your collective ancestors.
What is that you say? Chattel slavery has not been legal in any state in the Union for a century or more? That it was never legal in the state where I was born?
How odd. I thought it was the main issue in the recent elections.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
