Thinking lately about how abhorrent is the notion of “ethnic pride”, regardless of the ethnicity of the people who exhibit it. “National pride” is equally objectionable. We all need to have a sufficient presence of personal dignity and self-love. But group identi-inflation makes me ill. Is this because I as a Jew am too wholly (by some people’s estimations) assimilated? Or because it is very difficult for me to think of identity as other than costume?

At the same time I can’t deny that sex and race are more or less givens.

Or that one ought to struggle for justice and fair representation for one’s group(s). Just… can we not do it out of “pride”? It’s perhaps just a question of semantics — I think I just don’t like the word.

The context I perhaps most like it in is “gay pride” — because there “pride” sounds like an ellided cockney pronunciation of “parade” — and I LOVE a parade.