GUEST,Martin Gibson,

you wrote:
".. you have to be so obsessed with your own blackness that you would have to write and start a thread like this? Should we all write and start threads on what offends us?"

I do reject the premise that I am obsessed with my own blackness or anyone else's blackness.

If you are the real Martin Gibson, you have started threads on what offended you.

I believe that it is important to know one's roots & culture [to use a Bob Marlyish phrase]. Knowing about the accomplishments of people who look like you is part of building a healthy self-esteem. It is also important to learn the bad things members of your race/ethnic group did in the past and are doing in the present.

I don't think it necessarily racist for a White person to have White pride-it depends on the amount of that pride a person has and what other beliefs that person has [for instance, are they a multi-culturalist-after all, it seems to me that person can have pride in their group and still be a multi-culturalist-for instance they can believe that there are many different definitions of physical beauty..

And it seems to me that its not just the amount of racial pride that a person has but what he or she does with that pride..
for instance does the person go around wearing white sheets and burning crosses or beating up & harassing people who are of different races or religions then they are?

If so- well then their pride has become negativity.