White pride: it's just racism.

So you're white and you're feeling left out of the race discourse. Maybe you just don't understand what's going on, maybe you've seen other people talking about it, or maybe you're just plain bored. In a moment of inspiration, you log onto Facebook and type a new status: "White pride! I love my heritage and nobody can take that away from me!" Maybe you add a few emojis, like the smug smiling one. You log off and feel satisfied with the significant change you've made in the world.

But let's get one thing straight: your whiteness is not your heritage. It is, simply and solely, your race.

"But black pride!" You cry. "Why do they get to be proud of their race and I don't?"

Because for black people, our race is an inextricable part of our heritage and culture. It's an easy explanation, but it involves the S word, Slavery. Not too many generations ago, black people were taken from our people, our cultures, and our heritages. For the majority of the families that descended from those original enslaved Africans, there are no records of where we came from. Some may have word of mouth or even connections to distant African relatives, but that's very rare. So the culture that we embrace and celebrate today began en masse with those ancestors who were ripped from their homelands and the heritage that they had to be proud of. The descendants of those people then shared culture with the only people who they had something in common with — the color of their skin.

I am black and I don't know where my ancestors are from: Nigeria? Senegal? There's no way for me to trace that lineage. The culture I identify with is one of the only ones I have.

Now, I personally am both black and Irish. Those are both my culture. If you're white, your culture is not your whiteness.

Are you Swedish? German? Then that's are where your culture comes from. It doesn't originate with the color of your skin.

If you have "white pride," then you are proud that your skin is white. That's it. White isn't your culture or your heritage. Race should not be the defining factor that you are proud of — and that isn't what black people mean when we celebrate black culture. Black culture, and black pride, has nothing to do with skin color, and everything to do with shared experiences, culture, and heritage.

Race is just a hierarchical social construct invented by Europeans a long, long time ago so that they could establish themselves as higher or more evolutionarily developed than other people. It isn't biologically real.

Now, if you're actually racist, this article probably meant nothing to you. But if you've just been a little confused about what all of the pride in black culture is about, and maybe you felt a little left out, hopefully this helped you understand a little better.