Today we often hear pronouncements about "ethnic pride." Numerous events--such as the "Black Pride Day" to be held in Washington, D.C., over Memorial Day weekend--seek to celebrate people's racial or geographic origins as a source of pride. In keeping with this trend, there are even neo-Nazi organizations calling for "white pride."

All such claims promote the same false view of the nature of pride.

Pride is the result of only one thing: achievement. And it can be earned by only one type of entity: an individual human being. An individual is entitled to be proud, for example, of graduating with honors as a result of hard study--or of exercising the conscientious effort that gains him a promotion at work--or of engaging in the endless hours of practice that enable him to lead his athletic team to a championship. It is the person of accomplishment who experiences genuine pride.

Pride is a result of working hard and reaching positive goals. For it to have any significance, it must represent a reward, an emotional payment for one's attainments. As such, pride belongs properly only to the individual achiever. It does not redound to others who merely happen to be members of the same ethnic group.

"White pride," no less than "black pride," is an illegitimate concept. It is true that many human beings who happen to be white have reached exalted goals. From Aristotle, who formulated the laws of logic, to Shakespeare, whose poetry is filled with the most beautiful language, to Newton, whose genius made possible many of the scientific advances of the modern world, there have been many white men proud of their glorious triumphs. But I, who happen to be white, have no basis for pride in what they have done. I--like all human beings--do benefit from them, but I am in no way responsible for them and therefore deserve none of the credit. Pride rests not on racial membership, but on individual accomplishment.

Real pride is based on a philosophy of individualism--on the idea that only individuals choose, act, achieve and create values. The group as such--i.e. apart from the work of the individuals it comprises--does nothing. The bogus claims of ethnic pride are based on collectivism, on the view that the group is primary, that an individual is merely a splintered fragment whose essential identity comes from being part of the whole, and that the individual--like some worker ant in a colony--lives solely to enhance the existence of the collective and to bask in its reflected glory. This is the same collectivist view that underlies all forms of racism--white or black--by judging the individual prejudiciously, not by his objective value, but by the "value" of his tribe. This view, by attributing any individual achievements to the collective, makes the experience of true pride impossible.

Concomitantly, it deliberately fosters false pride. There are countless blacks, for example, who are great achievers and who should be admired (by people of any race). But their successes should not give an Al Sharpton or a Louis Farrakhan reason to feel proud. A corrupt person gains no credit merely because he belongs to a racial group that includes illustrious individuals. Pride requires the acknowledgment that an individual's achievements are his alone, not communal property.

It also requires the recognition that it must be earned. Since pride is a consequence and a reward, it does not apply to something outside one's volitional control. One can feel pride in one's thoughts and actions; one cannot feel pride in such non-volitional attributes as skin color. Yet it is this false view that is typically taught to our young.

It is true that members of a persecuted minority can draw inspiration from the achievements of another member of that group. An achiever shows how much is possible--he demonstrates the human potential. Others can then find motivation to seek their own successes--but they have no justification for experiencing actual pride in another man's deeds.

We should stress the link, particularly to our schoolchildren, between pride and individual accomplishment. Everyone should be encouraged to strive to be the best he or she can be--in education, in career, in moral character. We must make sure that our young understand that they should feel proud--not for being born into a certain ethnic group, but for exerting individual effort and attaining individual goals.
 
Dr. Bernstein is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.