Pride and Prejudice

Pride is something that should be reserved for accomplishments, not birthrights. Taking pride in things that you were born as, whether is is your ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, the shape of your forehead, or whatever means you feel as though you have somehow helped to give rise to it, create it, or that you are somehow responsible for it. Parents should be proud of their children. Sometimes I am proud of my friends-other times I just admire and respect them greatly for what they've done.

Taking pride in one thing also means it is preferable to another thing. Is one ethnicity really preferable to another?

Poverty is not a virtue, nor is wealth. What one can be proud of is making the best use of the resources one has. In this situation, I'll use the adage, "Success is not where you end up, but how far you are from where you started."

It might be then that pride is a defense mechanism, used by those who feel discriminated against or told to feel shame to take it back and use it to the opposite effect. In this sense then, pride becomes a crutch, and ideally will no longer be necessary as the issue the pride is taken over enters the mainstream and becomes neutral.

There are so many things to be proud of beyond things that we have no control over. We can be proud of the things we work for, and proud if we overcome obstacles that may be tied to a birthright, perhaps in overcoming a learning disorder or historical discrimination. We should focus our pride on the things we achieve because of the choices we make-not the choices that were made for us.

Alright, you caught me. I've never read that book.