I have always found taking pride in belonging to a certain group that one did not have to work to get into useless. Now if you had to achieve something to become a member of said group then you should have pride in it because you had to accomplish something yourself in order to hold said title.
Hmm...maybe pride is the wrong word for what I'm talking about. There's nothing wrong with being proud of something that makes you who you are. If you have native american ancestry for example, there's nothing wrong with celebrating said ancestry and learning about that culture and being proud of that culture. The issue is letting it define you more than your own actions do.
I have a friend who is of Irish decent, his last name is O'Brien if that tells you anything. He is FULL of Irish pride. The issue that I take with it is that he often times limits himself by that and forces himself to fit this mold that he sees as Irish. He once discovered that while his name is Irish his ancestry is actually more strongly German. He started freaking out and having some near existential crises. That makes no sense to me because literally nothing about his life changed. He also once discussed with me how much he loved Norse mythology but felt that he couldn't follow it too closely because he was Irish and should probably follow Irish mythology if he were to follow an old pantheon.
What sense does any of that make? I don't get it. There's nothing wrong with him learning about Irish history and culture, but there is something wrong with him limiting himself and his life because of his last name, and it's not like he's first generation American. His family has been here for at least four generations I think he said. I'm getting mildly off topic, sorry.
The issue here is that all people want two conflicting things: to be seen as a unique individual, and to belong to a community. Those two don't have to conflict entirely, but at some level they do. To belong to a community you need to share some characteristic with that community meaning that in at least one way you are like everyone else there and not like the people not there. Both of those things are ok.
Everyone seems to think that creating groups and defining ourselves in any way leads to terrible things. It doesn't have to. We can celebrate our differences without hating each other for them. Saying "these people are Irish" and "these people are German" doesn't mean that they have to fight about it. There will ALWAYS be groups, in and out. That doesn't matter, what matters is how we treat the people in the groups that we aren't a part of. Treat them with respect, like all human beings deserve to be treated with because that is one group that we all belong to.
