Originally Posted by DanaC

I'm not particularly proud of being white. I am proud of my northern heritage though. The reason I am proud of my northern heritage is tied up with northern culture and the sense of class pride which that usualy encompasses. Pride in your home town (as evidenced by people's tendency to support their home town in sports even if they're not a sports fan) is something which every community tries to engender in its citizens. Pride in, love of, one's home town helps to promote civic responsibility and a sense of belonging. What colour you are, to me, is irrelevant. Where you were born is not irrelevant, it speaks of where you have come from. Where you live is not irrelevant, it speaks to who you are. I identify very strongly with the town I was raised in and the town in which I now live. I identify very strongly with the class I was born into and the culture that prevailed within that class. I idenitify very strongly with my region, possibly to an even larger extent to my identification with my country. That said I identify very strongly with my country (England) and also Europe. All these things matter to me because they dictate the culture in which I was raised.

I also feel a strong sense of 'pride' in my heritage, my family's past, my class's past, my gender's past. All these things matter to me. I feel a sense of pride in the women who fought so hard so that women of my generation would be able to take part in our democratic institutions. I feel a sense of pride in those working class lads and lasses who made it possible, through their struggle, for me to have an education and access to healthcare and employment rights.

To me, class and gender are of much greater importance than skin colour...but then again the battles in my country were primarily based on class and gender, not skin colour. Although skin colour has been an issue in my country (Rivers of Blood speech and all that) and continues to be, it has never been as wide an issue as that of class. Perhaps in a country where colour was the major dividing line, those descendents of colour will look to the battles their grandparents fought and see pride in their achievements, in much the same way I look at the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists and the General Trades Union in my history.

A little under a thousand years ago, William the Conqueror razed the North to the bare soil. Remembered to posterity as The Harrowing of the North, the destruction was such that twenty years later, most of Yorkshire was still counted as 'Waste'. Well over 100,000 people were slaughtered, many more died of starvation. Animals, crops, villages, towns, all suffered. Like the Anglo-saxon kings before him, William based himself in the South. That's where the money flowed. Even when King Cotton strode the Pennines in the 18th and 19th centuries, the work may have been done in the North, but the finance flowed South. We still have something known as the North-South divide. The North is significantly poorer than the South. Opportunities for wealth creation are fewer in the North and the culture of the North is primarily working-class. I identify myself as a Northerner. These things are important to me.