Brief Thoughts on Superiority and Self-Doubt (White Racial Edition)
Just received a fascinating e-mail.
Literal word-for-word, as follows:
“I’m very proud of being a white male, and I don’t care what you say! White people are the BEST!”
I have long wondered, amid such declarations of presumed superiority, exactly whom are these folks trying to convince? Surely they cannot expect that such a missive is going to awaken me to the “best-ness” of the Aryan tribe. I mean, I’m not likely to see such an e-mail and then think to myself, “Oh, holy shit, YES, I totally FORGOT that we were the best!” So if they’re not trying to convince me, why the need to repeat the mantra of superiority? For whom does it serve a necessary psychological purpose? Hmmm?
See, it strikes me that people who actually have done anything of substance with their lives, anything for which they were truly proud or felt a sense of accomplishment would likely do two things:
1) They would not need to ascribe that accomplishment to their racial identity (for which, after all they are due no credit, and which if anything diminishes their individual effort, sacrificing it on the altar of inevitability); and
2) They would just allow their “superior” actions to speak for themselves, without the need of cheerleaders at all (even if those cheerleaders be only themselves).
In other words, if you go around telling people how awesome you are, or how awesome others of your “racial group” are, it’s likely because you doubt it quite strongly. You are attempting in such a case to serve as your own pain reliever, blocking the self-doubt receptors in your brain, which continually are sending your body signals that you are quite a bit less impressive than you insist.
It is sad. Sad that our society pits us against each other in such a way as to make such self-delusion as this “necessary” in the minds of some; that it makes it “necessary” for one to feel superior to another. In a society based on equity and compassion such a need would not exist, and the person who wrote this e-mail could have done something better with the thirty seconds he spent composing it.
