I Hate the word Hate

Pride Culture in relation to Love and Hate

Sara Ahmed talks about the close relationship between love and hate. She explains how they are not opposites but instead compliment each other, like the famous song phrases “a hate the I love you” and “I hate you I love you.” She basically argues that the white community is angry not because they hate minorities but because they love themselves and want to keep their community intact.

Their is nothing wrong with loving your roots and having an urge to protect them. If you are not capable of being proud of where you came from and who you are then how can you be proud of anything you accomplish at all. However, their is a large distinction between protecting your culture and undermining others cultures in order to have yours shine. If we all had the same beliefs, traditions, languages yes the world would be a simpler place but it will also not be as amazing. Therefore we should let diversity grow in a safe environment.

However white people are not the only group that have love toward themselves and celebrates their culture. It seems as if the more our government points angry fingers at a group the more their pride as a group rises. Pride culture has been a strategy used by many when feeling attacked for who they are and to have a stronger unity with their group. By having minorities become proud of being who they are they demonstrate love for their culture. They love being non-white and just like the white community they are doing what they can to protect their culture.

While researching pride culture I came upon many who asked why it is that black pride, gay pride, Asian pride etc. are all viewed positively while white pride is not. The difference is that white pride is used, specially with the Trump administration, as a means to elevate whiteness more than what it has already been. Additionally white pride protects the white community buy protecting their privileges and stopping privilege from being shared to other groups. In contrast things like Latino pride and gay pride use pride as a strategy of union to fight together. It is a way to bring awareness to the fact that being who you are is not bad like society portrays it to be. For example they are saying “Yes I am an immigrant, and I am proud of it so what?” showing that the thing they are being put down for is not a negative thing.

Neither of these are the correct way to show love towards your group of people (or hate towards other groups). Being proud of who you are should not mean to degrade the life of others in order to protect your comfort or to use pride as a protection from degrading your life because of the comfort of others. One should love ones group and be proud of ones group because one has truly fallen in love with ones culture, language, sexuality, skin tone, etc. Not because of fear. Additionally one should not be scared of others pride culture. Instead one should embrace other peoples being and have love for humanity as a whole. However this can not be done with hierarchies of race, sexuality, income statues, among others that have already been put in place.