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[–]lateralthinker 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Race might seem like a silly thing to feel superior about, but if you're the trashiest person in your community, what else are you going to latch onto?

This is the flaw of identity politics. It places all of your worth into categories that you cannot change. Or at least, not easily.

So what are you going to latch on to? If you're smart, you latch onto your competencies. These are what you use to measure yourself. The more you can do, the more you are worth, objectively.

[–]Alduin[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And what if you're not smart? Say you're in the bottom half for intelligence and not particularly good at anything? People take pride in all sorts of superficial things that they have little to no control over. Sports teams, nationality, hometown, whatever. There's no reason to feel pride in these things but people do it because the pride itself (and also the community) is something they crave.

It could also be that pride is like an addiction. The more you get the more you want. So maybe, given the opportunity to take pride in both meaningful and superficial things, people will more often than not choose both.

I don't know if any of that is true or not. But there's an awful lot of unearned pride in the world so I'm just guessing as to the reason for it.