It seems to me that pride was the dominant structure of feeling for pre-capitalist ruling classes, now only residual -- perhaps obsolete -- in the age of ressentiment:
***** [10.3] One should not overlook the almost benevolent nuances that the Greek nobility, for example, bestows on all the words it employs to distinguish the lower orders from itself; how they are continuously mingled and sweetened with a kind of pity, consideration, and forbearance, so that finally almost all the words referring to the common man have remained as expressions signifying "unhappy," "pitiable" (campore deilos, deilaios, poneros, mochtheros, the last two of which properly designate the common man as workslave and beast of burden) -- and how on the other hand "bad," "low," "unhappy" have never ceased to sound to the Greek ear as one note with a tone-colour in which "unhappy" preponderates: this as an inheritance from the ancient nobler aristocratic mode of evaluation, which does not belie itself even in its contempt ( -- philologists should recall the sense in which oïzyros, anolbos, tlemon dystychein,' xymphora, are employed). The "well-born" felt themselves to be the "happy"; they did not have to establish their happiness artificially by examining their enemies, or to persuade themselves, deceive themselves, that they were happy (as all men of ressentiment are in the habit of doing); and they likewise knew, as rounded men replete with energy and therefore necessarily active, that happiness should not be sundered from action -- being active was with them necessarily a part of happiness (whence eu pratrein takes its origin) -- all very much the opposite of "happiness" at the level of the impotent, the oppressed, and those in whom poisonous and inimical feelings are festering, with whom it appears as essentially narcotic, drug, rest, peace, "sabbath," slackening of tension and relaxing of limbs, in short passively....
[10.5] To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long -- that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mould, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modern times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he -- forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine "love of one's enemies" is possible -- supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! -- and such reverence is a bridge to love. -- For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honour! In contrast to this, picture "the enemy" as the man of ressentiment conceives him -- and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived "the evil enemy," "the Evil One," and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a "good one" -- himself!
(Nietzsche, _On the Genealogy of Morals_, <http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem16/>) *****
Racists have no reverence for their enemies. Unlike noble men in the feudal ages who could take their nobility for granted, priding themselves in their codes of honor, racists couldn't take racism for granted even at the height of chattel slavery, much less now. Today, after the partial victory of the Civil Rights movement, the dominant mode of the racist structure of feeling is probably ressentiment: "[T]he man of ressentimenf is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble" (Nietzsche, _On the Genealogy of Morals_, <http://www.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/History/teaching/sem16/>). -- Yoshie
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