Political and social scientists commonly argue that the idea of "white pride" is an attempt to provide a clean or more palatable public face for
white supremacy or white separatism and that it is an appeal to a larger audience in hopes of inciting more widespread racial violence. According to Joseph T. Roy of the
Southern Poverty Law Center, white supremacists often circulate material on the internet and elsewhere that "portrays the groups not as haters, but as simple white pride civic groups concerned with social ills". Philosopher
David Ingram argues that "affirming '
black pride' is not equivalent to affirming 'white pride,' since the former—unlike the latter—is a defensive strategy aimed at rectifying a negative stereotype". By contrast, then, "affirmations of white pride—however thinly cloaked as affirmations of ethnic pride—serve to mask and perpetuate
white privilege". In the same vein, Professor of Education at
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, Cris Mayo, characterizes white pride as "a politically distasteful goal, given that whiteness is not a personal or community identity, but has been a strategy to maintain
inequities of privilege and power."
Political scientists Carol M. Swain and Russell Nieli, in their text on white nationalism, identify the idea of "white pride" as a relatively new phenomenon in the United States. They argue that over the course of the 1990s, "a new white pride, white protest, and white consciousness movement has developed in America". They identify three contributing factors: an immigrant influx during the 1980s and 1990s, resentment over
affirmative action policies, and the growth of the Internet as a tool for the expression and mobilization of grievances. According to
Janet E. Helms, founding director of
Boston College's Institute for the Study and Promotion of Race and Culture, a white person "must become aware of his or her Whiteness, accept it as personally and socially significant ... Not in the sense of Klan members' 'white pride' but in the context of a commitment to a just society." Sociologist Luigi Esposito of
Barry University writes that "the emphasis on white pride or white identity resonates with supporters of the
alt-right because racial tribalism is regarded as an antidote to the
neoliberal emphasis on competitive individualism and self-serving behavior that presumably threatens the interests of whites." == Racist context ==