What? I don't get any of either those assertions. People should be comfortable with who they are. I don't think pride is necessary, but also unnecessary and probably detrimental is to feel uncomfortable with yourself, be that anything, in this case ancestry.

How can you not understand black pride? The story of the Negro that survived the racist horrors of white oppression, the voice of the enslaved person that became La Marseillaise sung at the Haitian revolution, that became jazz, that became hip hop. The impossible resistance against the whitewashing and cultral genocide, the freedom and liberty earned by wielding the spirit of the Enlightenment channeled through the black experience. Black identity is more American than America. Freedom from taxation against the freedom to exist. There is no comparison. It's worthy of pride.

There's dignity in guilt, and it's essential for growth. You really don't seem to understand the human condition.

perhaps you were a bit too ready to bask in some romanticism to really speak to what they were saying.

No, that's not what happened here.