White Guilt

The Perversity of Attacking Oneself

Over the last five or so months I’ve had the opportunity to think, mostly stemming from the rarity of time that has been allotted to me as the result of a failed restaurant venture. I had used that venture to directly engage in the action I wanted to see more of in society. Upon failure, it was clear that that venture was the incorrect medium in which to spread my ideas. I had agreed to its physical location because it embodied the America I thought needed to change the most (what a terrible business decision!). I was not wrong. But that America was not, and is not, ready to support that type of venture, because it refuses to confront the reality that they are the problem, that their behavior aids and abets the evils of humankind, the evils they pathetically attempt to stand in solidarity against with empty gestures: the ubiquitous social media post and repost from their couch and easy chair. I must admit now how difficult it is to write a few lines without lashing out at that horrid group, that America I despise, the suburban (mostly) bourgeoisie.

     Here’s a line from Jack Templeton-Knight, an obscure Australian writer of words that I stumbled upon on the world wide web: Whichever monstrous cultural struggle you attach yourself to in order to obfuscate your own class and politico-economic delirium, it should be a part of your ethical reality to locate why it is you do it.

     Exactly. This brings up the popular notion of white guilt. Have we all not grown, at the very least, slightly nauseated reading or watching yet another hyper-woke white youth hysterically attacking their whiteness and straightness—as if they weren’t those things, as if there was something wrong with being those things. Mostly we immediately discount them because of their hysteria, but at their core there is the idea of dismantling oneself in order to become a better, stronger self: to check one’s privilege, as the popular notion goes. I fully support this checking of privilege, this eating oneself alive, in order to ensure one is on the correct path for fulfillment, enlightenment, community, etcetera. But the checking of one’s privilege is best done in private, and not to pathetically and obviously project this self-flagellation hysterically onto others. As I’ve previously stated, I have weighed myself in the balance and have been found wanting… I am not so different than the twenty-two year old straight white girl lashing out at Walmart in a hysterical rage yelling at some minority for not standing up for their own supposed injustice taking place at the register before their very own eyes. Well, actually, I am very different than that, but I am attacking my “own people”, that is, upper, middle class, mostly white… But it isn’t because they’ve accumulated wealth or are white. It’s because of the way they live, so falsely—the pretense of their supposed ideologies. It’s possible that someone would think that I thought the bourgeoisie are a horrible, immoral lot. And I do! But somehow, simultaneously, I don’t think they’re bad at all. They’re just people. They’re so far removed from the injustices that those injustices are not embedded into their consciences.

Hannah Arendt described Adolph Eichmann as a mindless bureaucrat, a cog in the system, a leaf in the whirlwind of time, although he was personally responsible for the killing of millions of Jews. This American bourgeoisie cannot possibly be directly blamed for the atrocities their money supports. Yet the question of goodness remains when arriving at their final judgement day. Have you lived well? Does ignorance of injustice change the magnitude of injustice, or the reality of injustice? I attack my own people in order to bridge the gap of ignorance. It must be done. We are bad people. But the reality is there are hardly any good people. Being poor, being oppressed, does not qualify one a good person, just because they’ve suffered some kind of injustice. This notion is a ripe and putrid stench emanating from the Leftist mindset. The oppressed are often as ignorant and act as horribly as their oppressor. The oppressed also engage in opression. But there is a sound notion that the poorest among us (though, in reality, the poor are not among us), those that are forced to do everything for themselves—grow food, make food, sew clothes, etc.—are far too busy to behave badly. Although perhaps they are also too busy to behave well (a rabbit hole of an idea for another moment…).

     So, what is my point here in discussing the perversity of attacking my own people, in admitting to a certain self-flagellation often seen in the most hysterical of guilt-ridden white leftists? I will always believe that true change is created first from within oneself, then within one’s community. I am only capable of sowing the seed, the rest is up to the sun, the moon, and the stars.