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Pride in where you're from

Started by Banana Woofwoof, April 19, 2007, 01:17:22 PM

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Do you have pride or national pride and do you feel that where you're from is part of your identity?

I'm Irish, my whole family is Irish and my family stretches back to time immemorial as...Irish.

But we live in the North of Ireland and if I say I'm Irish to the wrong people, I get my head kicked in. My Irish identity matters to me because I love Irish culture but because I was born in the north and not south, I am not allowed to call myself Irish.

It's not exactly pride but in Belfast you have to fight for the right of identity. I'm classed by the government as British which annoys me because I was raised with Irish as a very prominent second language.

I guess when you see your family members being shot just because they want the underhand Act of Union reversed, it reinforces your identity a bit. Being Irish where I'm from is a political act of rebellion.

It also reinforces the little known disparity between Republican areas and Unionist areas.  I'm from the most republican area of Belfast and the living conditions were a bag of shit.  Shankill Road is the most deprived area in Belfast and it's a loyalist area but most I've never visited an affluent Republican area.  I'm not sure if it's just numbers, being that West Belfast is the Republica n stronghold and most of the rest of Belfast is Unionist.

If I had children I wouldn't really know what to teach them.  I'm also not sure I'd raise them back home.  Belfast is culturally and politically fascinating but if I moved back to my home area, it would be resigning myself to a life of being poor.

Anyway, how do you feel?

thewomb

I couldn't give a shit. Where you were born means nothing.

Pepotamo1985


Shoulders?-Stomach!

I find it impossible not to want my immediate surroundings to enjoy some level of success, so yes, I do have pride in my area. Both where I come from and where I am at the moment.

Quote from: "thewomb"I couldn't give a shit. Where you were born means nothing.

If you were born in a watery suburb in England, yeah.  Tell it to be people living in Iraq.  Conflict reinforces (or smashes) identity.  If I was born into a more stable, prosperous area I'd doubt I'd feel the same as I do.

Suttonpubcrawl

I'm really proud of being from E13, I'm signing up to join the postcode gang when their recruitment roadshow comes to my street.

Santa's Boyfriend

I'm fortunate enough not to have been born in an area where its identity and so on is under dispute or under threat, and as such where I'm from means very little to me.  I'm from the west of England, and I love this part of the country, but being from here is not a source of pride or anything else - it's just the luck of the draw.  However, if I was born in Basque, Turkish Kurdistan, Somaliland, or probably even Wales, it would be a big issue.

buttgammon

Well, I don't have a boring London postcode. I'm special - LL13!

I'm always a bit torn about being Welsh because I was born in Wales and I've never lived anywhere else, but I'm half English and where I live is only about five miles from the border so people round here tend to have a "we're all British - not Welsh or English" view of it all. I do agree to an extent, but I like being able to consider myself Welsh even if I talk like a Cockney trying to imitate Mark E. Smith. I only ever feel patriotic about being Welsh when either the Welsh football or rugby team has won an important match (hardly ever happens) or when somebody has insulted the Welsh, but I will usually say I'm Welsh and British because a Welsh person is British. A British person isn't necessarily Welsh, though.

I like the idea of us having a national assembly and I like it when I hear people speaking Welsh (not that anyone does round here), but I wouldn't like Wales to have independence, somehow. I think Scotland could manage it and possibly become a prosperous, progressive nation but we're a bit too small here and still very dependent on Westminister. Our assembly probably couldn't handle any more powers, either. I don't think the national assembly is as bad as people claim but I think it has enough powers as it is. Full lawmaking should be decided in parliament.

Kersal is where it's at. True home pride there. Check out YouTube if you don't believe.

Suttonpubcrawl

As a Londoner I can read this thread and look down on all of you who aren't from London. I don't have pride in where I'm from, just the sure and certain knowledge that it's better than anywhere else.

Heh.  I live in London.  I read my Upmystreet profile earlier- fucking hell, my dad would turn in his grave.  If he wasn't dead, like.

Neville Chamberlain

Quote from: "Suttonpubcrawl"As a Londoner I can read this thread and look down on all of you who aren't from London. I don't have pride in where I'm from, just the sure and certain knowledge that it's better than anywhere else.

Pah! You've clearly never been to Yeovil then.

Suttonpubcrawl

Quote from: "Banana Woofwoof"Heh.  I live in London.  I read my Upmystreet profile earlier- fucking hell, my dad would turn in his grave.  If he wasn't dead, like.

Tsk, go away. This thread is about where you're from, not where you live, non-London scum!

Captain Crunch

In a couple of weeks I'm getting a version of this:



tattooed on my left shoulder, only with flames and stuff coming out of it.



Ok I'm not really but I think it answers your question.

Jemble Fred

It does depend on your background. If you just happened to grow up somewhere your parents moved to for work or whatever, I can't see it mattering that much. I've got many centuries' worth of clod-hopping ancestors in Shropshire, probably going back to the fucking Flood, so it's entirely wired-in to my DNA to love the place.

thewomb

Quote from: "Banana Woofwoof"
Quote from: "thewomb"I couldn't give a shit. Where you were born means nothing.

If you were born in a watery suburb in England, yeah.  Tell it to be people living in Iraq.  Conflict reinforces (or smashes) identity.  If I was born into a more stable, prosperous area I'd doubt I'd feel the same as I do.

Pride in something you had nothing to do with is meaningless, wherever you're from.

I understand that regional identity might mean something to you, but that doesn't mean it's a meaningful concept that I should acknowledge or respect.

I was born in Hackney. If a new group of terrorists decided to ethnically cleanse everyone that was born in Hackney, it wouldn't make me any more proud of being born there. Pride in random circumstance is still meaningless, and a dangerous personality trait.

I surrender all forms of national, continental or regional identity. The legal status of this is irrelevant.

Ciarán2

Nationalism bothers me a bit sometimes. But I like borders. I'm into internationalism really. I don't especially want to live in a One World Nation. A world comprised of different but equal nations is what I'd prefer. So I don't have a great sense of national pride, exactly - or even local pride. But I enjoy cultural exchanges of any kind.

Quote from: "thewomb"
Quote from: "Banana Woofwoof"
Quote from: "thewomb"I couldn't give a shit. Where you were born means nothing.

If you were born in a watery suburb in England, yeah.  Tell it to be people living in Iraq.  Conflict reinforces (or smashes) identity.  If I was born into a more stable, prosperous area I'd doubt I'd feel the same as I do.

Pride in something you had nothing to do with is meaningless, wherever you're from.

I understand that regional identity might mean something to you, but that doesn't mean it's a meaningful concept that I should acknowledge or respect.

I was born in Hackney. If a new group of terrorists decided to ethnically cleanse everyone that was born in Hackney, it wouldn't make me any more proud of being born there. Pride in random circumstance is still meaningless, and a dangerous personality trait.

I surrender all forms of national, continental or regional identity. The legal status of this is irrelevant.

You do have something to do with it.  Communities are made up the people in them.

thewomb

That doesn't mean you had anything to do with it, other than a physical consequence of your birth.

Pride should be reserved exclusively for actions of moral worth. Pride in anything else is claiming credit that isn't yours.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Pride in belonging to a community to you contribute towards the value of is perfectly justified.

Morrisfan82

Quote from: "Captain Crunch"(picture)
That's not a sword, you know.

Yeh, I don't like the chanting, boorish, side-taking interpretation of pride, but there's also nothing wrong with liking where you're from. Or indeed refusing to be ashamed of it (usually when some snooty cunt's trying to take you to task for having the audacity to come from whichever prong of the compass they've decided is gay).

thewomb

Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"Pride in belonging to a community to you contribute towards the value of is perfectly justified.

No - pride in contributing actions of value is justified. Whether or not this is within the border of a community is entirely irrelevant.

thewomb

Quote from: "Muteki"
Quote from: "Captain Crunch"(picture)
That's not a sword, you know.

Yeh, I don't like the chanting, boorish, side-taking interpretation of pride, but there's also nothing wrong with liking where you're from. Or indeed refusing to be ashamed of it (usually when some snooty cunt's trying to take you to task for having the audacity to come from whichever prong of the compass they've decided is gay).

A very important point - there is absolutely nothing wrong in liking where you're from. Problems arise when people confuse liking something with taking pride in it.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Quote from: "thewomb"
Quote from: "Shoulders?-Stomach!"Pride in belonging to a community to you contribute towards the value of is perfectly justified.

No - pride in contributing actions of value is justified. Whether or not this is within the border of a community is entirely irrelevant.

i'm sorry, I do dispute this. Taking pride in your community isn't by default wanting other communities to fail, so I see no problem with being proud of contributing to an area in which you live. I agree that any competitive element between communities usually results in some negative by-products but it doesn't have to be this way. If you spend a lot of time in the same relatively small area, it is natural to me that you'd take pride if you'd in some way improved it as the area plays a significant part in your life. It's the area you live in, and look around. To be utterly indifferent to it is something I don't understand.

thewomb

I'm not saying you have to be indifferent or saying that you should wish other communities to fail.

I'm just saying that it makes sense to take pride in an action, but makes no sense to take pride in an area. It might be natural, but that doesn't make it right.

Love the area. Take pride in the action. Don't take pride in the area.

Famous Mortimer

I have no pride whatsoever in where I'm from. I like it, I suppose, but I find national pride, or even regional pride, an odd concept. Unless people from my area had done something spectacularly brilliant, but they haven't.

Neville Chamberlain

Ah yes, well that's why I'm proud of coming from Yeovil because we've got Ian Botham.

duckorange

I can't say I'm particuarly proud of where I come from, because that's Hammersmith and I haven't lived there in years.

Now that I live elsewhere, I've got a lot of pride in my adopted home town.

We gave England the Black Death, you know.

buttgammon

Quote from: "Jim"Ah yes, well that's why I'm proud of coming from Yeovil because we've got Ian Botham.

And we've got the bloke that founded Yale University, some fellow that used to be on Blue Peter and Russ Abbott. Wrexham's the best place in the world!

squinky

Having completely failed to fit in at school, I always kind of resented Liverpool for producing children who were clearly evil and couldn't wait to get out of the place. All of a sudden, when I'm living away from the family home and people recognise my accent as scouse and I no longer live in a city with, y'know, architecture, I'm still not proud of Liverpool but I've come to terms with it a lot more.

Pride isn't something I associate with my city or my country or anything else. But, at the same time, I feel guilty for being British and therefore associated with England's history of colonialism, wars and other bad shit that's gone down. Also nothing to do with me, but still something that I feel bad for. There's not much logic to it but I tend towards the apologetic rather than the self-congratulatory.