This kind of white guilt nonsense just proves
Shelby Steele is correct when he says that white guilt is about whites going to any length to prove they are not racist. That is why we see whites who take it upon themselves to shut down white people, white privilege conferences and white people who state that whiteness is a problem. It's not about feeling guilty about past tragedies to blacks, it is all about going to absurd lengths to display how you are not a racist.
"You are, in fact, stigmatized as a racist, because, after all, you have know acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for four centuries. And, now, since the '60s, white Americans have been grappling with the stigma, trying prove that they are not racist, to prove the negative."
'White Guilt' and the End of the Civil Rights Era
...white guilt is not a guilt of conscience; it's not something that you get up in the morning and say, my God, I feel guilty about what happened to black Americans. Rather it is the fact that in relation to black Americans you lack moral authority.
You are, in fact, stigmatized as a racist, because, after all, you have acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for four centuries. And, now,
since the '60s, white Americans have been grappling with the stigma, trying prove that they are not racist, to prove the negative.
A good example is when people say one of my best friends is black. Well, why do you say that? You say that because you're really trying to say I'm not a racist. I'm not what I'm stigmatized as. And the point of the book is that
this pressure that comes to whites from this stigmatization has had a tremendous impact on our culture, our politics, our public policy in many, many ways.
So
we've never had a President of the United States ask anything of black citizens. And I think the reason for that is they've all felt that if they presume to do that, that they would be stigmatized as racist. They don't feel they have the moral authority to speak to us. And that's, I think, one instance where white guilt has worked against us, because it's important for a nation to speak freely and honestly with all of its citizens.
I think one of the great mistakes black Americans have made in our long history here in America was to begin, in the mid-60s, to sort of
rely on the manipulation of white guilt, the manipulation of this stigma; and our leadership has basically been a leadership that's applied this stigma. We call it different things, the race card and so forth.
But
what we are really saying is that if you want to not be seen as racist, you have to do thus and so. And so it's a kind of manipulation of the moral power that blacks have over whites.
Blacks...are very quick to see racism in situations, even many where it's not there, because
racism is our power over whites. And so we tend to embrace it and see it.
