The Pitfalls of Black Pride

If you're white, you're right. If you're brown, stick around. If you're black, stand back.

For generations, that philosophy was accepted by black Americans. Today Negro children proclaim, 'I'm black and I'm proud," and Negro adults send cards like the one that shows a little black girl exclaiming "It's your birthday! I'm just tickled black." Expressions of pride are a good thing when they are genuine, say black Psychiatrists Alvin Poussaint of Harvard and James Comer of Yale. But, they caution in the current Redbook, rote teaching of black-dignity slogans may foster not pride but self-hatred.

The danger arises when a child senses that his mother protests too much; if she finds it wonderful to be black, why press the point? Besides, children acquire self-esteem not from words but from love expressed in actions. "No black-pride program," the psychiatrists write, "can repair the damage should we neglect our task of being good parents." That job requires controlling the parents' anti-black prejudice, which is strong in Negroes who are secretly ashamed of their blackness. Poussaint and Comer cite the case of a Government official's wife who preferred her light-skinned son to his darker brother and sometimes told the latter, "You act just like a nigger."

Being a good parent also requires preventing anti-black feelings in black children. When parents counsel "Never be ashamed of your color" and then speak of only light-skinned Negroes as pretty, they "plant seeds of self-doubt, conflict and identity confusion." To promote racial dignity, parents should "emphasize a spirit of community with all black people" so that children will know that they are not alone.

To enable youngsters to cope with the reality of white racism, say the psychiatrists, parents must first admit that it exists. Children must be helped to "develop that delicate balance between appropriate control and appropriate display of anger," for "anger excessively suppressed leads to self-hatred."

Poussaint and Comer stress that sound efforts to foster black pride can help black children stay emotionally healthy —but they can only help. The rest is up to society, since, in a racist America, even genuine black pride is of limited value.