Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one’s situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn’t a decision nor an accomplishment.
Pride should stem from good personal decisions or accomplishments given one’s situation and life circumstances. Being born somewhere isn’t a decision nor an accomplishment.
I think the problem is that people conflate being proud of others with themselves. They take on the achievements of others as their own.
This dude was from my place and was great so therefore I’m great.
This is what nationalists, fascists, racial supremacists and other extremists do on the regular. They have no achievements of their own to be proud of so they have to steal somebody else’s.
There are two sides to it.
If a childhood friend of yours grows up to be a skilled athlete, you can be proud that someone with a shared downtrodden background as yourself has excelled: it’s a shining example to the world that it can’t oppress all of us, and there is a sense of genuine communal solidarity in it.
That being said, if you come from a pretty majority background with plenty of opportunities, and you take communal pride in your friends achievements, then there is nothing really won. The world was never trying to keep your community down, your friend just did well and you should be happy for him and that’s about it.