It makes no sense to me. It's like saying "I'm proud I was born." Where, when, to whom we were born are merely facts.

George Carlin had something to say on this topic.

I laugh a lot when I hear a person saying "I am proud of being British / Italian / Irish / Polish...." when their passports -if they have one- and birth certificate clearly state they were born in USA. Add to this the fact that in most cases their great-grandparents were the ones born overseas.
To mix heritage, nationality and religion as if the three were synonyms is wrong.

Oh, do we ever agree on this one! My guess is that you acquired the awareness because of being a person with a nice appearance by popular standards. Mine came about earlier in adult life while working as a professional model, among other models who were almost all females.

Being told by others that we're beautiful/handsome etc. can be so beguiling. Discomfort from it seems almost ungrateful on the surface. After all, isn't it better than being told you're ugly? Don't we all work on optimal grooming, adornment and attire with the sole purpose of appearing attractive? So the reward for such dedicated service to superficialities is welcomed on one hand but still feels undeserved if we're honest with ourselves.

Saying thank you in response to praises by others for how we look sometimes feels like taking a bow for somebody else's song; a bit like stealing. I think it becomes clearer when we are applauded for our own song or other creation. There isn't discomfort at all! We can do a happy dance in the open or all alone, savoring the fulfillment.

This seems to be prima facie evidence supporting the notion that 'we are what we do'. It is tragic to see the growing sense of desperation in those clinging to false belief that they are what is superficial and diminishing in the eyes of others.

The greater part of beauty cannot be perceived by the eyes alone.

I'm gonna quote Robert A. Heinlein here. If a lizard tells me that his great grand daddy was a T.Rex. I'll let him think I believe him. It does me no harm, and it's probably the only thing he has to be proud of. Heinlein probably stole it from someone else anyway.

Yup, I'm with you. The idea of pride in being from a particular place is crazy. I can get my head around loving the place - it's very beautiful here and I enjoy being here

Kind of like saying your proud to be gay. Might tick some people off, but think about it. I’m not proud to be streight, just am.

Erm... It annoys me when someone proclaims to be proud of them-self, full stop, be proud of others, not yourself you self-centred...

Quite right @GoldenDoll. Being born in NW Lancashire I often was disparaged by southerners ... The Yorkshire lot were another matter.

However I never used the expression "proud".

Oh no, I was not ashamed to have been born in NW Lancashire and never will be.

My wife and I are going to get tested for our genetic markers to find in generic sense of who our extended kin are. I know I am part Cherokee, and who knows what European lineage I have, and my wife is half German. I think I might be a tiny bit proud of that DNA.

I totally agree and often argue with patriotic types over this. I feel no pride at all in having been born completely by chance on one particular bit of mud and rock sticking out of the ocean.

Are you contributing to the body/life of your community? That little bit adds up to your heritage, team etc so to some extent it is good in that it fosters team and sense of belonging. It is so easy to take it to the extreme and to forget the bad that your country or others in your group have done.

I think it is part of what helps us to be successful social animals.

I agree and understand a lot of what George Carlin goes on about in the video and have felt that for a long time.

I guess there is nothing wrong with having an actual or perceived connection to a specific group, I guess it's just a little bit of Tribalism. At least, as long as you feel pride for only the truly positive things that have come from your lineage

I completely agree. I can't help where I was born or what colour.

It is a big problem. I spent time in Rome and got the feeling many Romans were hanging on to their ancestors coat tails. We are great because we were once great. My family is mostly French (from the Perigord region). They are famous for Truffles and torturing Geese (Foi Gras).

BTW I love England. I lived in Germany for 15 years and often went to England to get Cider and Bangers and traveled extensively. I had a friend whose brother was a professor in Newcastle (he specialized in Roman history and Hadrian wall is there). We traveled there several times. An former partner's heritage was Apple Cross Scotland. We made a trip there once and it was scary (the roads) and great. My closest friends on my (sort of English shaped) island are from Norwich. And no one makes historical documentaries like the Brits. The Crown, Victoria (My late wife and I were mesmerized by the "Larkrise to Candleford series" ) and others are my favorite things to watch.

I agree. It's like saying I'm proud that I still have all of my hair at 57. I'm not proud. I'm just lucky.

Two thoughts for you:

1. In many cases, nationalistic identification points to the noble ideals of a particular polity or culture. For instance, we Americans in the United States can point to the high ideals of democratic participation that were a motive force in our Revolution, our rejection of monarchial autocracy, and our ongoing efforts to perfect the universality of legal rights for all humans.

We've been far from perfect about that over history, and things are not headed in a great direction at this precise moment, but over the arc of history, we're definitely improving and I firmly believe our current state of political affairs will prove to be a single step back from which we will take two steps forward in the near future.

In any event, our national ideals and achievements in pursuit of those ideals are worthy of pride.

2. There are people who are from oppressed or denigrated groups. They've been told that their ethnicity or their origins or even, yes, their religions are cause for shame. This is unfair and wrong, and saying "I'm proud to be ___" is a way of rebutting and rejecting that shame.

We non-religious people are among that number in quite a few places in the word. Who among us hasn't been told that our rejection of religion is a cause for shame? Yet my non-belief is not a thing I've done, it's simply a part of who I am. I'm not ashamed of being an atheist. If someone were to challenge me by trying to shame me for my atheism, I very well might say, "I'm not ashamed. You know what? I'm proud to be an atheist."

I can see your point, but have to say I am proud (for example) of what my father did during WW2.

If guilt by ancestry is a logical fallacy than so is merit.

As John Lennon would say, imagine there's no country... the world will be a better place. just human beings sharing the world.

I understand the use of the word when people use it with heritage or bloodline as a means of saying they are not ashamed of their lineage or wanting to identify with it, but that's pretty much the end of it for me. They say, "I'm proud of my Italian 'roots'," thinking that Italy was made up of people like Galileo Galilei, Leonardo Da Vinci and Marco Polo, while displaying total amnesia for Nero, Caligula, and Benito Mussolini. But I'm all right with that. I don't do it, but they don't bother me.

Otherwise, "I'm proud of..." had better be connected to some accomplishment or achievement, personal or in relation to someone else. I have better things to do with my time, and I'm proud of that.

I try to stay away from pride entirely. To me it smacks of "I can do this and you can't, so I'm better than you.". That is of course pertaining to the "pride is for what you've done, not what you are" model, which I wholly endorse. I'm not "proud" to be American, or female, or intelligent, or anything else I didn't have a say in.

I'm not even "proud" to be talented or creative, or of the fruits of such foregoing labors, because I feel such pride is unnecessary, unskillful, and encourages a sense of division from and superiority over others. There are so many beautiful, skillful feelings to have--im not missing out. Pleased, grateful, gratified. But not "proud".

"Proud" is (in my view, as it applies only to me) a way of putting youself above others, and I try very hard not to do that. When I play a piece of music or write a poem or draw a picture that people enjoy, I can feel many pleasant feelings that don't reinforce the idea that I'm separate from and better than.

I can see that if the person believes it gives them special credit

So we all evolved from monkeys, why not to be proud of being cousins of monkeys. lol

What bothers me is when an American born says "I am Italian, Irish, Polish, Ecuadorian....." basing his / her answer on the ancestors' nationalities.
Now, when somebody says "I am proud of being blonde." I CAN'T HELP BUT TO LAUGH.