Black Lives Matter Education: The Anatomy of White Guilt
The Anatomy of White Guilt
WHAT IS GUILT?
In its simplest form guilt is our response to doing something wrong.
Willard Gaylin writes, “Guilt is the emotion that shapes so much of our goodness and generosity. It signals us when we have transgressed from codes of behavior that we personally want to sustain. Feeling guilty informs us that we have failed our own ideals.” At its best guilt means we care for one another and are responsible for one another.
Guilt implies that our relationships are somehow broken.
Guilt involves an inner feeling which we express when we say “I feel guilty.”
But our inner feeling arises in a social context where a community shapes what we believe to be right or wrong. The Taliban in Southeast Asia have one sense of what is right and wrong. Liberals in the United States have a different sense of what is “politically correct.”
Guilt can be experienced by individual persons. It can also be felt by whole societies. A good example is the collective guilt of the German people for the Holocaust of the Jewish people.
Guilt is an important part of having a healthy moral community. Without guilt there would be no sense of responsibility for one another. We would be living in world of sociopaths. Archibald MacLeish writes in his play JB “Guilt matters. Guilt must always matter. Unless guilt matters the whole world is meaningless.”
Different disciplines view guilt in different ways.
In the criminal justice system guilt is a crime. The lawyer is not concerned with feelings of guilt, but with what constitutes a criminal act. The focus is not on what a person feels but what they did. If they did something unlawful, they will be punished. Watch CSI.
In the therapeutic model guilt is more of a sickness than it is a moral problem. Guilt is an expression of inner feeling – an interiorized self concept – an experience of repression. Guilt is caused by rigid authoritarian moral systems. Going to therapy helps us overcome our neurotic guilt.
In theology guilt is related to sin. Guilt is separation from God and estrangement from people. We are not what we might be or ought to be. God forgives our fallen ways. But we need to repent and seek redemption. Through redemption we are reconnected to God and to one another.
GUILT CAN INCLUDE OTHER RELATED FEELINGS:
I want to argue that what we call guilt actually embraces a variety of different feelings. We use the word guilt when we may actually be referring to a wide variety of painful feelings.
There is an exercise that we do in racial justice training where we ask people to construct a wall of history. During the training people write on the wall of history examples of racial oppression and resistance. At the end of the training the participants reflect on what has written on the wall. We see countless examples of oppression and injustice. We learn of wonderful stories of resistance. During that time of group reflection I feel pain, horror, remorse, and sadness. Often times I am in tears.
How do we feel when we contemplate the injustice of our time today? If we as white people are true to our feelings do we say “O this is terrific? I am so glad that people of color are being oppressed” Of course we don’t! We say I feel outrage, anger, sadness, and betrayal.
What I experience includes guilt but it is more than that. It also includes pain, horror, despair, confusion, uncertainty, and feeling overwhelmed. In brief, I don’t feel good about racism. How could I? I feel bad about it.
We have these feelings because we experience the pain of living in a racist society. We see the suffering, violence, and the disorder it creates in the lives of all our people. We may even feel empathy and compassion. I believe that what we call white guilt is actually shorthand for all these complex feelings.
Other whites passionately declare their innocence of the crimes of their ancestors. They will say “Yes, my ancestors were involved, but I personally didn’t force people to come from Africa.” “I didn’t enslave people.” “I didn’t kill the Native Americans.” “I wasn’t born then.” “I didn’t have anything to do with what happened back then.” “I am not responsible for what my ancestors did.” “I can’t apologize for them - that is their responsibility.” “I don’t feel any obligation to do anything today.” They may even see themselves as victims feeling they are accused of being racists.
And then there are those who still participate in white supremacy groups, Confederate Army memorial gatherings, and states rights organizations as a way of honoring their white ancestors. There is no remorse or moral reckoning among these folks – only anger, bitterness, and the desire to keep white power in place.
SINS OF COMMISSION:
For some whites guilt is a response to our actually acting and doing racist things. In moral theory acts of commission are actions that people actually take. So here we are talking about racist acts. People feel “bad conscience” or real remorse.
I have heard dozens of white people confess their sins of commission. For example, there was a man who participated actively in George Wallace’s presidential campaign who expressed his regret. A man who threw rocks at busses transporting African American students during school desegregation in Boston who expressed remorse. And a woman who refused to date an Asian man because of his race who shared her feelings of shame.
SINS OF OMISSION:
While some white people feel guilty for racist acts they have committed other whites may feel guilty because they have not acted! Sins of omission occur when we fail to do the good things we should do and stop the bad things that go on around us. We feel guilty for not speaking out and for not doing more to work for justice.
Here we are talking about our response not simply as people who commit individual acts of racism. Here we are concerned about the collective sins of our whole racist society.
I once had a discussion with a white woman at the end of a two and a half day anti-racism training. She told me “I dreaded coming to this training I know these terrible things are going on. I have felt so helpless and powerless to do anything. And this inaction makes me feel even more guilty!
WHEN OUR FEELINGS OF GUILT AS WHITES BECOMES THE FOCUS AND NOT THE INJUSTICES OF RACISM:
For me there is healthy white guilt and unhealthy white guilt. Healthy white guilt leads to change, transformation, and new life. Unhealthy white guilt leads to paralysis and inaction.
What is unhealthy white guilt?
For some white people their primary concern is how they feel about the issue of race and racism not the injustices of a racist system. These white people will not engage in discussion or action about race because they don’t want to feel bad. They say that people who are working for racial justice are trying to make them feel guilty.
But let’s notice what happens here. The focus becomes how we feel as white people and not on racism. If we focus simply on our feelings then it becomes about us and our feelings and not about the injustices of a racist society. As whites we don’t want to feel bad do we? And so we don’t deal with racism. This becomes another part of our amnesia, our anesthesia, and our denial. It is another dynamic that stands in the way of our making change.
There is another form of unhealthy white guilt. Our guilt feelings may be so strong that we feel overwhelmed with guilt. We can be so overwhelmed with guilt that we become paralyzed and unable to act. Surely this is an unhealthy form of white guilt.
Theologian Letty Russell writes “The poor do not ask us to feel guilty, for they can’t eat guilt. What they ask is that we act to address the causes of injustice so they can obtain food.” (Inheriting Our Mothers’ Gardens: Feminist Theology in Third World Perspective) Letty Russell helps us to see this distinction between our guilt feelings and action in the world.
If we are feeling bad about racism we need to ask ourselves does our guilt lead to change or is it simply self absorption. If it is all about how we as white people feel then it is unhealthy white guilt
WHEN GUILT CAN LEAD TO POSITIVE CHANGE:
The experience of guilt can also be healthy in that it leads to change. Through an experience of guilt we can become empowered to break out of our socialization in white supremacy to create new and positive ways of being white.
In Janet Helms’ theory of identity development of white people there are six stages: contact or pre-encounter (2) encounter or disintegration (3) reintegration, (4) pseudo –independence (5) immersion-emersion and (6) autonomy.
In the second stage – encounter or disintegration - white people experience guilt, shame, and anger.
In this second stage a white person has an encounter - an experience that shows us the reality of racism. We realize that race does matter, that racism does exist, and that we are white. This experience shatters the white Person’s ego structure – he or she feels they are falling apart- hence the term disintegration. There is a loss of innocence. There is recognition that whites are part of “the system”. This leads to feelings of guilt, shame, and sometimes anger.
Following an encounter experience a white person can respond in one of two ways. Whites can go into denial or withdrawal convincing themselves that racism doesn’t exist and people of color create their own problems.
In addition, if we as white people begin to speak out about racial injustice in the white community other whites will put on pressure to conform. We may be rejected by other white people. This can lead to stage three which Helms describes as reintegration with the white community. We go back to where we were before we had the encounter. And we refuse to deal with the moral dilemma of white power and privilege.
DIFFERENT KINDS OF GUILT CALL FOR DIFFERENT KINDS OF RESPONSES:
SINS OF THE FATHERS AND MOTHERS:
In dealing with the sins of the fathers and mothers we have to ask ourselves how much responsibility do we have for the sins of our ancestors? That is certainly a complicated question. In the Nuremberg trials it was determined that the children of Nazi war criminals could not be punished for their crimes.
Yet, in his book Born Guilty: Children of Nazi Families Peter Sichrovsky describes the moral pain of these children and how guilty they feel about the crimes of their parents. I believe there is a similar dynamic here in the United States for descendants of Americans living in colonial times. For me it is powerful that the members of the De Wolf family can attempt to come to terms with their family’s involvement in the crimes of the past.
SINS OF COMMISSION:
How do we address our white sins of commission- the racist acts we do against people of color? We can use the methods of our religious heritage: confession, repentance, asking for forgiveness, and seeking reconciliation.
SINS OF OMMISSION:
In dealing with white sins of omission we need to take some action. We need to find small ways to act and hopefully those small steps will lead to meaningful change. As individuals we can’t dismantle the whole huge system of racism. But we can create anti-racist personal relationships, anti-racist families, anti-racist religious communities, and anti-racist communities. Let’s remember the millions of people who took action in their communities to end legalized segregation in the United States. All of the small changes that we make start to add up to big changes in our world.
THE PAIN OF BENEFITING FROM AN IMMORAL SYSTEM
As whites, we feel immoral because we benefit from an immoral system. The only way to become moral in the context of our racist society is to change this immoral system. Let’s get organized. Let’s use the best methods we can find to change the ways racist institutions operate. Let’s work in our schools, congregations, and work places to develop anti-racist identity and practice.
HEALTHY WHITE GUILT
Reinhold Niebuhr observed “the conscience of a Christian should always be uneasy.” I would say similarly that the conscience of a white anti-racist activist also should always be uneasy. But we have also noted the dangers of getting stuck in how we feel as whites rather than how racism is destroying everyone in our racist society. A healthy white guilt keeps us focused on ending racism and not simply on our feeling bad about it. A healthy white guilt empowers us to see that the small steps we take –working persistently over time – can bring substantial change.
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