White guilt

"White Guilt" redirects here. For other uses, see White guilt (disambiguation).

White guilt is the individual or collective guilt felt by some white people for harm resulting from racist treatment of ethnic minorities by other white people both historically and currently. White guilt has been described as one of the psychosocial costs of racism for white individuals along with empathy (sadness and anger) for victims of racism and fear of non-whites.

Judith Katz, the author of the 1978 publication White Awareness: Handbook for Anti-Racism Training, is critical of what she calls self-indulgent white guilt fixations. Her concerns about white guilt led her to move from black-white group encounters to all-white groups in her anti-racism training. She also avoided using non-white people to re-educate whites, she said, because she found that this led whites to focus on getting acceptance and forgiveness rather than changing their own actions or beliefs.

A report in The Washington Post from 1978 describes the exploitation of white guilt by con artists: "Telephone and mail solicitors, trading on 'white guilt' and on government pressure to advertise in minority-oriented publications, are inducing thousands of businessmen to buy ads in phony publications."

Shelby Steele, a conservative black political writer, discussed the concept extensively in his 2006 book White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era. Steele criticizes "white guilt" saying that it is nothing more than an alternative interpretation of the concept of "black power":

Whites (and American institutions) must acknowledge historical racism to show themselves redeemed by it, but once they acknowledge it, they lose moral authority over everything having to do with race, equality, social justice, poverty and so on. [...] The authority they lose transfers to the 'victims' of historical racism and becomes their great power in society. This is why white guilt is quite literally the same thing as Black power.

George F. Will, a conservative American political columnist, wrote: "[White guilt is] a form of self-congratulation, where whites initiate "compassionate policies" toward people of color, to showcase their innocence to racism.

Commentator Sunny Hundal, writing for The Guardian, stated that it is "reductionist" to assign political opinions to a collective guilt such as "white guilt" and that few people on the left actually hold the views being ascribed to them by the conservative writers who expound on the concept of "white guilt" and its implications. Hundal concludes: "Not much annoys me more than the stereotype that to be liberal is to be full of guilt. To be socially liberal, in my view, is to be more mindful of compassion and empathy for others."

One academic paper suggests that in France, white guilt may be a common feature of management of race relations – in contrast to other European countries.

In 2015, when American civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal was revealed to have been passing as African American, Washington Post journalist Krissah Thompson described her as "an archetype of white guilt played to its end". Thompson discussed the issue with psychologist Derald Wing Sue, an expert on racial identity, who suggested that Dolezal had become so fascinated by racism and racial justice issues that she "over-identified" with black people.

Uses in Psychology, Sociology, and Cognitive Science

• Nobody is responsible for the actions of others, particularly for events which occurred prior to their own existence
• Even if such guilt were applicable, the vast majority of white Americans' ancestors were not involved in the purported wrongdoing
• The actions for which the guilt is assigned was legal and acceptable behavior at the time
• Those people that were exploited were not "innocents", i.e. blacks sold other blacks into slavery, indigenous peoples frequently warred with each other [as]much as Europeans did.
• Amalgating crimes by genetics (i.e., transfereing ancestral blame to progeny) is, in itself, an assertion that race exists, further propogating the likelihood that one "race" (in this case, Black or African-American) is perceived to have been injured by another "race" (white/European/Caucasian).
• If one looks at world history, he will see that every racial, ethnic or religious group has perpetrated atrocities against fellow humans. For example, the Muslim slavers captured and sold an estimated 11 to 18 million African slaves between 650 and 1900 AD and between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by North African Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa and Ottoman Empire between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Many see no reason to be guilty because some ones grandfather may of had a hand in enslaving some one of a different race. Also, many see no reason to be guilty because one's continued benefit from past racial oppression and inequality.

See also

• Black shame
• Colonial mentality
• Cuckservative
• German collective guilt
• Reverse racism
• Self-hating Jew
• "The White Man's Burden"
• White privilege
• Jane Elliott

Further reading

• White Guilt: Its Antecedents and Consequences for Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action
• White Guilt and Racial Compensation: The Benefits and Limits of Self-Focus
• Teaching White Students About Racism: The Search for White Allies and the Restoration of Hope
• White Guilt: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Emergent Racisms in the Contemporary United States