“White Pride” is alive and well in Harrison, Arkansas, as Ku Klux Klan members have posted a cutesy billboard featuring a kitten and puppy along with the words, “It’s not racist to love your people.” This in turn is an advertisement for the Klan-sponsored White Pride Radio.

WPR further states that there is an “ongoing program of genocide against white people.”

“There are websites, newsletters, videos, and radio shows, but too many talk about family without including the family. It has always been our mission to not just promote the white family, but to make them a part of this cause of white Christian revival.”

While the KKK is often an easy target for media outlets, a Salon columnist has decided to go one step further and give his five reasons why being proud you’re white is “always racist.”

According to Matthew Rozsa, who also writes for the Daily Dot, history says that “‘whiteness’ has always been a construct used to exclude certain groups from equal rights.”

For Rozsa, being proud of Asian heritage or African heritage or German heritage is just fine. But if you’re “proud to be white,” you’re a racist, “always.”

His reasons?

For starters, he believes that whiteness “is an artificial sociological construct which has been used throughout history to exclude certain groups of people from the rights guaranteed others and to justify bigoted attitudes.”

“In a similar vein, it’s important to note that the term ‘white’ has not always meant the same thing. Although WASPs have always benefited from that term in this country, virtually every other European nationality has been considered lesser at some point, from Eastern Europeans (like Poles, Ukrainians, and Russians) and Southern Europeans (like Italians, Greeks, and Spaniards) to long-standing victims of Western persecution (like the Irish and the Jews).”

The fact that “white pride” is an idea backed by the KKK also makes it inherently racist, Rozsa claims. He then reminds readers about how the Klan used to not be such a “fringe” organization, and when it had power, it abused it to the max.

Some readers took exception to the idea that you were automatically racist if you were proud to be white.

“Actually today there is more racism coming from other races than from white people,” said one commenter. “I don’t claim to be better than anyone because of my race and I’m not ashamed of my race and shouldn’t be treated as if I should be.”

“Can everyone just be happy with who they are, white, black, etc.?” said another.

“The article is using the KKK and prison gangs as the model for whites in America? Just like we cannot assume all muslims are terrorists because of a small radical minority, we should not extend the beliefs of a very small group of whites to the entire white population…. Keep in mind that if it were not for white votes, we would not have elected the first black president.”

What do you all think? Is “white pride” and being “proud to be white” inherently racist, or is Rozsa wrong? Share your thoughts in our comments section.

[Image via ShutterStock]