White Guilt

[BoSoxGal]

Discuss:

I’m With Condoleezza Rice About White Guilt
Oct. 29, 2021

By John McWhorter
Opinion Writer

Condoleezza Rice, the first Black female secretary of state, who now heads Stanford University’s Hoover Institution — and who, by her account, attended segregated schools in the Deep South — was a guest last week on “The View.” When asked about the critical race theory debate, she said, “One of the worries that I have about the way that we’re talking about race” sometimes these days is that “somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past.” She added, “I don’t think that’s very productive.” Of course, as she and we know, there’s more to the critical race theory debate than that. But about the strain of educational philosophy that looks to raise students’ awareness of racial injustice, she said that for Black kids to be empowered, “I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”

Writing for The Grio, the longtime cultural critic Touré offered a piercing reply, calling Rice a “soldier for white supremacy” and saying that white people today, including children, “should cringe at what their ancestors did.” If school curriculums include the harshest aspects of America’s history, he argued, “I really don’t care if learning this makes white kids feel bad — and if it doesn’t, then they are too heartless.”

I can see how someone arrives at that perspective, because white guilt can seem so central to what Black progress needs to be about — emphasis on “seem.” We’re increasingly encouraged to dwell on “white privilege” and “systemic racism” as key impediments, if not the key impediments, to Black progress. But we must ask just what purpose fostering white guilt serves.

Of course, there is a visceral sense of power in fostering white guilt: One has made people realize something and made them see you as deserving of recompense, as harmed and therefore owed. There can be a sense of accomplishment in just demanding that white Americans sit with past wrongs.

But presumably, the goal is to make America “a more perfect union,” as the Constitution has it. And if that’s the goal, our collective efforts to reach it presumably would be about addressing societal conditions rather than these more soul-focused endeavors. One might argue that a realer, not to mention healthier, manifestation of Black affirmation would come from more concrete markers of progress than the dutiful hand-wringing of well-meaning white people about their forebears’ sins.

A compelling reason for fostering white guilt would be that if doing so led white Americans to go out and foster change in society. And sometimes it can — but is white guilt necessary to or the best way to effect societal change?

For the civil rights victories of the 1960s, it wasn’t. We tend to forget how seismic the changes were during that one decade: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were undeniably huge advances, even if they did not (and they did not) end racism or completely level the societal playing field. In any case, all of this did not happen because white people became guilty nationwide.

America’s white majority, and with them America’s political leaders, got behind tangible change because segregation as policy, and the violence required to maintain it, was pragmatically inconvenient on the world stage during the Cold War standoff. Technology was the accelerant, in that television illustrated the civil rights movement in a way that radio and newspapers could not.

Certainly, the televised struggle, and the sympathy of a white countercultural movement that rapidly grew in the ’60s, created a sense of guilt among a certain contingent of, especially, younger white Americans questioning the establishment. But these white kids, for all the fascination they elicit in hindsight as preludes to us moderns, were a relatively fringe element at the time. The mid-20th-century American (white) Everyman tended to lack the visceral sense of revulsion at racism that we now take for granted as at least a courtesy norm.

In his classic “An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy,” Gunnar Myrdal observed that “even the white man who defends discrimination frequently describes his motive as ‘prejudice’ and says that it is ‘irrational.’” In other words, the Everyman acknowledged racism but felt no need to disavow it. For example, Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson harbored no special guilt about the challenges faced by Black America but eventually saw it as politically prudent to court the Black electorate.

Thus, in the 1960s, civil rights leaders were able to take advantage of chance configurations. We might take a page from them. The gradual legalization of marijuana could be the start of a general reanalysis of the war on drugs that ravages Black communities. Beyond the current fight over President Biden’s legislative agenda, a new and more targeted demand on infrastructure could and should undergird a focus on training or retraining underserved working-class Black Americans for solid, well-paying vocational jobs. White guilt would be of little relevance amid such on-the-ground developments.

In that light, it bears mentioning that over the decades since the 1960s, when the idea that white Americans need to be guilty settled in among a contingent of Black thinkers, it seems that somehow, no matter what we say or do, white people are never guilty enough and white guilt is supposed to go on in perpetuity. Might it be that the effort to make white people any guiltier than they are is a Sisyphean effort? The dream that white people will, en masse, shed their “fragility” and embrace feeling really, really guilty is about as likely as Schoenberg’s ever being brunch music for more than a rarefied few.

We seek for enlightened white people to acknowledge that they are complicit — to use a term especially popular in recent years — in a system constructed for the benefit of whites. Note that even that word is a strategy to shake white people by the collar, in that telling them they are complicit is a fresher way of saying that they should be guilty. Because many white Americans have a way of resisting feeling guilty about things racial that they know are bad but that they themselves didn’t do, using a euphemism such as “complicit” is a way of trying to make the case without eliciting those typical objections: “I’ve never discriminated against anyone”; “I didn’t own slaves.”

But even phrased as complicity, the charge requires not just the occasional acolyte but the white populace as a whole to feel guilty about things people did not individually do, that were often done in the deep past rather than by their parents and that were done within a vast societal system, the operations of which even experts disagree on. That’s a lot. Recall also that most human beings are not, and will never be, dedicatedly history-minded — we live in the present.

What’s more, I don’t completely trust white guilt. It lends itself too easily to virtue signaling, which overlaps only partially, and sometimes not at all, with helping people. I recall a brilliant, accomplished, kind white academic of a certain age who genially told me — after I published my first book on race, “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America,” two decades ago — “John, I get what you mean, but I reserve my right to be guilty.” I got what he meant, too, and did not take it ill. But still, note that word “right.” Feeling guilty lent him something personally fulfilling and signaled that he was one of the good guys without obligating him further. The problem is that one can harbor that feeling while not actually doing anything to bring about change on the ground.

So, I’m with Secretary Rice. Especially because people can actively foster change without harboring (or performing?) a sense of personal guilt for America’s history. Black America likely will not overcome without some white assistance. But I’m not convinced that the way this happens is with white people’s cheeks burning in shame over their complicity. Maybe they can just help.

[Burning Petard]

I believe inherent in the line of argument exemplified by Dr. Rice (which is a very fuzzy answer typical of politicians) is the holding that 'the American Dream' is a zero sum game and for blacks to get more, whites must get less.

Which is consistent with the general rejection by many politicians of acting for the greater good.

snailgate

[Joe Guy]

Systemic racism, white privilege, white guilt. They are prejudice terms used often by people of color when describing today's white people. I'm being reminded often that equal rights don't really exist and the only rights anyone ever exercised were created and are exclusive to white people.

I'm visually white and I'm sure that my whiteness is what is causing it to take me a such a long time to fully realize what a privileged life I've led.

I once worked with a large amount of black people and became friends with many of them (some of my best friends were black ). If I had only known then how guilty I was for being white, I would have apologized to people of color daily. Especially my supervisor.

It's well documented history that many people of color in the U.S. have experienced terrible and painful discrimination and worse. That's why I've decided to find a typical underprivileged 30 something black woman to marry so I can do my part in improving white vs colored people's attitudes and raise my lucky bride's standard of living.

Me: Hey wifey! Let's go out and par-tay! We can groove to the vibes of some of our favorite Hip-Hop music.

Wifey: I'm down wit dat!

Me: We can go as soon as you're done washing the dishes, unplugging the sink, mopping the floor and finish cleaning my bathroom. You can clean yours later.

Wifey: I love you!

Me: Thanks, wifey!

[Gob]

Painfully funny.

“I don’t have to make white kids feel bad for being white.”

Don't worry, the snowflake generation will do that to themselves for you.

[Sue U]

First:

[ ...] about as likely as Schoenberg’s ever being brunch music for more than a rarefied few.

Schoenberg's what???? There are few pieces in the modern repertoire more sumptuous, more beautiful and more captivating to the ear (and more popular!) than Verklarte Nacht (Transfigured Night). Even if you don't know the underlying story, it's a breathtaking and deeply emotional musical journey. Take some time and listen to this; I promise you will be a better person.

Now, back to the actual topic.

"White guilt" (and for that matter "complicity") is a bullshit premise that allows white people -- and particularly the white racists who are constantly flogging it -- to ignore the actual racism that persists in American society, law, and public policy. "Why should I have to feel guilty about slavery? I didn't own slaves. My people didn't even come to America until after the Civil War." When this distraction is the focus of the conversation, it is easier to reject serious consideration of the ongoing systemic racism that is the legacy of slavery, from segregation and Jim Crow through red-lining and housing discrimination, familial wealth accrual disparity, employment discrimination, educational disadvantage, racial profiling, over-policing, mass incarceration, political disenfranchisement and a host of other social ills. White supremacy is so baked into American society that whiteness is the baseline normative descriptor, whether or not with malevolent intention or even with any consciousness whatsoever.

The bullshit manufactured hysteria about "teaching white guilt" has derailed the general public's understanding of what critical race theory (and critical legal studies as a whole) actually is: an approach to analyzing the disparate impacts and outcomes that are obvious but whose causes may not be, because they are obscured by the bias inherent in the law, program or social structures on which they are based. Nattering about "white guilt" is how you avoid talking about the violence inherent in the system.

[Big RR]

Sue--:ok

Both for the Schoenberg piece (one of his best IMHO) and for your discussion of the failings of white guilt.

[rubato]

Writing for The Grio, the longtime cultural critic Touré offered a piercing reply, calling Rice a “soldier for white supremacy” and saying that white people today, including children, “should cringe at what their ancestors did.”

Holy shit.
All people today should cringe at what their forebears have done. All cultures all races, all religions, all languages have committed unspeakable atrocities. Everything awful done is part of my inheritance and everything noble and brave is as well. An honest person would have to admit that if they lived in Nazi Germany the odds are greater than 99-1 that they would have gone along with it. They would have gone along because they were hate-filled Nazis, they would have gone along because they are cowards, they would have gone along because of expediency, they would have gone along because they resented [Jews, intellectuals, communists, homosexuals, Romani &c.]. There is a common fantasy that they would have stood up, it's a lie. They never had or will have the courage to stand up and die. It is a rare trait.

There were only two countries who saved most of their Jews; Denmark (my people!*) who saved 90% and Bulgaria who saved 100%. What is interesting is that in both cases people knew that they had the support of most of their neighbors. A huge bolster to resistance. Whereas uncertainty trends to cowardice.

If the Griot were honest, and he appears not to be, he would admit that he as culpable as any white person for what is our common human past. Perhaps he has not thought this through very well.

yrs,
rubato

*I do not delude myself by thinking I earn some credit by their acts. I don't.

[Sue U]

An honest person would have to admit that if they lived in Nazi Germany the odds are greater than 99-1 that they would have gone along with it.

Pretty sure I'd have been against it.

[Scooter]

Unless you had a death wish.

[BoSoxGal]

An honest person would have to admit that if they lived in Nazi Germany the odds are greater than 99-1 that they would have gone along with it.

Pretty sure I'd have been against it.

Doesn’t it depend on the meaning of ‘gone along with it’?

Some Jews in Germany survived the Holocaust by hiding in plain sight - pretending to be German.

There were thousands of Jews (some full heritage, others partial heritage) in Hitler’s army, whose families were exterminated while they continued serving Hitler.

There were Jews in Germany (and presumably other countries invaded by the Reich) and in the camps who collaborated with the Nazis.

[Burning Petard]

Scooter, you need to read more about the White Rose Society. You need to read more about the command conspiracy to kill Hitler. You need to read more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer who hid in plain sight as a spy (intelligence clerk) , while trying to negotiate with the allies. (Who would only accept total destruction, a repeat of the WWI surrender, which was modified out of fear of the Russians)

The scholarly book "The Authoritarian Personality" puts the number who would go along as about 80% in any human society. Trotsky theorized that he only needed 5%, loyal to him and disciplined to do anything asked, to control any nation.

snailgate

[Sue U]

Some Jews in Germany survived the Holocaust by hiding in plain sight - pretending to be German.

There were thousands of Jews (some full heritage, others partial heritage) in Hitler’s army, whose families were exterminated while they continued serving Hitler.

There were Jews in Germany (and presumably other countries invaded by the Reich) and in the camps who collaborated with the Nazis.

Under the Nuremberg laws, to be a "mixed-race Jew" in Nazi Germany meant that one of your grandparents was Jewish, but you could still be eligible for citizenship in the Reich if up to two of your grandparents were Jews. As I understand it, it was these "mixed-race Jews," who generally did not consider themselves Jews at all, who served in German armed forces in WWII. And there are always collaborators in any conflict, but collaboration for self-preservation or even personal gain is different than joining up as a believer. And even if there were as many as 50,000 actual Jews who served the Reich, that would be a little more than 0.5 percent of the Jewish population of Europe before the war; considering that two out of every three Jews in Europe were murdered by the Nazis, it is an insignificant number.

My mother's family was from Germany, where they had run a successful bakery for generations. Her cousins walked 1000 km, mostly at night, from Frankfurt to Marseilles to escape the Nazis and board a ship to America. My father's family in Poland was never heard from again after the German invasion. Except for those individuals who actually participated in crimes against humanity, I do not think it necessary or particularly useful that Germans today on the whole feel "guilt" about the Holocaust, but understanding how Nazism affected their society is an important part of history to know and reckon with. The U.S. should take a similar approach.

[Scooter]

Scooter, you need to read more about the White Rose Society. You need to read more about the command conspiracy to kill Hitler. You need to read more about Dietrich Bonhoeffer who hid in plain sight as a spy (intelligence clerk) , while trying to negotiate with the allies. (Who would only accept total destruction, a repeat of the WWI surrender, which was modified out of fear of the Russians)

The scholarly book "The Authoritarian Personality" puts the number who would go along as about 80% in any human society. Trotsky theorized that he only needed 5%, loyal to him and disciplined to do anything asked, to control any nation.

snailgate

I think you misunderstood me. In Sue's case, as a Jew, "going along with it" would have meant acquiescing in her own death. Hence, unless she had a death wish, she would have had to have been against it.

[ex-khobar Andy]

I took Rube's 99% comment to mean that 99% of the non-Jewish, non-gay (etc) population would have gone along with it. While I am not sure about 99% there are indicators (e.g., the Milgram experiment) that most people do what they are told by authority figures. Maybe it should be 75% instead of 99% - I don't know - but I do not think that any of us (non-Jew, non-gay etc) can guarantee that we would not have gone along with it. Let's face it, the Germany of the 20s and 30s was well educated, relatively wealthy despite the Versailles limitations, and sophisticated - yet they still managed to elect Hitler.

[BoSoxGal]

Let's face it, the Germany of the 20s and 30s was well educated, relatively wealthy despite the Versailles limitations, and sophisticated - yet they still managed to elect Hitler.

Anybody living in a relatively prosperous United States coming off the economic gains under President Obama’s recovery plan that still managed to elected Donald Trump really can’t throw stones, but that said -

Are you really suggesting that there wasn’t widespread suffering and poverty in post WWI Germany? That is just not true. The post Versailles economic conditions of Germany are the one very real apology for that society’s willingness to eat up the kind of rhetoric Adolf Hitler was peddling in the 30s. https://www.borgenmagazine.com/german-poverty-30s/

Once they were in, they were like frogs in water slowly coming to a boil. I won’t excuse the small size of the German resistance, it was shameful - but Germans are notoriously obsessive about order and social conformity, and sometimes it gets in the way of reason.

eta: Just to clarify, of course there were plenty of still financially comfortable people in Germany who enthusiastically supported Hitler’s rise. Just as there are many solidly middle class and millionaires and billionaires in America who enthusiastically support Trump. Some people put the almighty dollar - and/or their bigotry - ahead of all else.

[Big RR]

I think the other thing was a fear of communism where the upper and middle classes would lose their advantages to the proletariat. This was a real fear, given the rampant poverty the Treaty and other economic conditions visited on the people. If the nazis could distract them and keep the communists at bay, then they would support them so they could retain their wealth and position, and that was all many cared about. So they looked the other way at the "excesses" and just went along. Even when it got very bad (and I think they damn well know what was going on) they just rationalized it and kept silent. And that is, indeed, shameful whenever it happens.

and FWIW, even the Danes are not exemt from this; yes, they did help shield the Jews from the nazis, but this did not extend to homosexuals. I recall hearing from many of my relatives in Denmark at the time that they were happy to send the gays to the concentration camp, and a Danish doctor did experiments on gay men to reverse their sexual tendencies; after the war the Danish authorities arrested him, but somehow he was "permitted" to escape. If I get a chance I will google it to see the name.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Are you really suggesting that there wasn’t widespread suffering and poverty in post WWI Germany?

Er, no. Massive inflation of course - I have some stamps that were billions of marks - and there was a little thing called a Depression going on with world-wide implications. During the middle years of the Weimar Republic, Germany saw a resurgence of business and cultural growth (partly fueled by the resistance to wartime reparation and even by inflation - if your savings were going to evaporate might as well spend the money on entertainment) and the new shoots of the economy were fragile and especially vulnerable to the cold winds of the Depression.

Germans are notoriously obsessive about order and social conformity, and sometimes it gets in the way of reason.

That's a very odd remark. German creativity between the wars in both arts and sciences was absolutely non-conformist.

Anybody living in a relatively prosperous United States coming off the economic gains under President Obama’s recovery plan that still managed to elected Donald Trump really can’t throw stones,

Er, yes. I didn't think that I needed to state the blindingly fucking obvious but OK, I will next time.

[BoSoxGal]

That's a very odd remark. German creativity between the wars in both arts and sciences was absolutely non-conformist.

What percentage of members of a society do you think are visionary artists and scientists?

[Bicycle Bill]

Anybody living in a relatively prosperous United States coming off the economic gains under President Obama’s recovery plan that still managed to elected Donald Trump really can’t throw stones, but that said -

Are you really suggesting that there wasn’t widespread suffering and poverty in post WWI Germany? That is just not true. The post Versailles economic conditions of Germany are the one very real apology for that society’s willingness to eat up the kind of rhetoric Adolf Hitler was peddling in the 30s. https://www.borgenmagazine.com/german-poverty-30s/

Once they were in, they were like frogs in water slowly coming to a boil. I won’t excuse the small size of the German resistance, it was shameful - but Germans are notoriously obsessive about order and social conformity, and sometimes it gets in the way of reason.
he retard
eta: Just to clarify, of course there were plenty of still financially comfortable people in Germany who enthusiastically supported Hitler’s rise. Just as there are many solidly middle class and millionaires and billionaires in America who enthusiastically support Trump. Some people put the almighty dollar - and/or their bigotry - ahead of all else.

I know you claim you're not reading my posts, BSG, but what would you have had people do — either in Nazi Germany or the USA during the rule of the Drumpführer — rise up with cries of "Aux barricades!" (or whatever the German equivalent would be) and storm the Reichstag in order to prove that they were actively resisting, and were not collaborators, active participants, or "just going along with it"?   That would have gotten you a beating at the very least, if not shot dead on the spot or a one-way ticket to an unmarked grave in some 're-education camp'.    I contend that the average German during the 1930s and early 1940s did not actively support Hitler and his policies, any more than a large percentage of Americans during the past four years did not support Trump or his actions, attend his rallies, or actually vote for the slimeball, but had their own concerns ... like making it to work, paying their bills, trying to raise their family, put food on the table, and generally living life while ignoring all the ruckus around them, much as a rock on the shore remains steadfast while the waves break and roll on around it?

Or maybe they came to realize that they had no power against a fascist junta, that their actions as individuals were futile and would have no bearing or effect on what was happening in the halls of power until some outside force — like the British, French, and Americans and their allies — took up arms and waged a war to remove it.

In other words, apathy, lethargy, or coming to the realization that one is merely beating ones' head against a wall is not necessarily the same as "going along with it" — especially when one has been presented with a fait accompli and there is very little that can actually be done about it.

-"BB"-

[MajGenl.Meade]

In March 1933, the last "free" election in Germany for a long time to come, 17.3 million voted for the NSDAP out of a total of 39.3 million votes cast. Some 12 million voted for the socialist (SDP or KDP) parties.

Hitler had dissolved the Reichstag two months earlier and the "campaigning" largely consisted of organized assaults on the two rival organizations feared by the Nazis, the closure and repression of newspapers opposed to the Chancellor and his bully-boys etc. Voting itself was supervised by thousands upon thousands of "auxiliary police" who made sure the vote counters got it right. And probably they did, in the main.

So less than 44% of Germans "went along" in voting for the Nazis. And what did that mean to them anyway? They were not voting for annihilation of any people. They were voting against communism (they didn't mind seeing Reds beaten up) and a strong government that promised solutions (but not that final one) to economic and national disaster. Oh and that was the very last chance they had to vote.

There was no "Final Solution" to go along with at that time. Although Hitler had years before stated that annihilation of the Jews was his goal, no one believed it could ever happen in 1933. Not even Hitler really. And there's the "going along" thing. It wasn't until WW2 that he and his henchmen came to the knowledge that men and women, ordinary folks, could or would pull the trigger, release the gas, beat the weak to death and so on. In those six years, the state crushed all except the most determined resistance.

By that point, I don't find it at all impossible that the chances of me, or anyone else, resisting were 1 in 100 were we in the same place and period. I'd like to think I would have resisted. Or at least, escaped. But the odds seem to be against it.

Surely I would not have voted for Hitler in 1933 . . . really? 17 million did vote and they voted for Hitler as Chancellor and for the NSADP. He could not have done it without them.

For a brief period, the Führer and other Nazi leaders toyed with the idea of mass deportation as a method of creating a Europe without Jews (Madagascar and the Arctic Circle were two suggested relocation sites). Deportation still would’ve resulted in thousands of deaths, though perhaps in less direct ways.

When exactly Hitler settled on straightforward murder as a means of removal has been harder to pinpoint. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder writes, “It cannot be stressed enough that the Nazis did not know how to eradicate the Jews when they began the war against the Soviet Union [in the summer of 1941]… They could not be confident that SS men would shoot women and children in large numbers.”

-Smithsonian