I am a STA for the first year experience seminar and while at the talk with Claudia Rankine, I found many of the students in my class acting in a very disrespectful and defensive way. At first, I was upset at their blatant disrespect for best-selling author and lyricist, but after a couple of days, I realized that they took it as a direct attack on their character. This mentality also stops white and black people from reaching an understanding. When white people immediately get defensive, I get confused. I am starting to think that their reactions might be stemming from a different emotion than just anger and ignorance. Some might just be trying so hard to distance themselves from what has happened to black people in the past. Slavery and oppression in history class were always taught as a big accident in class and white people just want to make it clear that they weren’t a part of it. By doing this they further isolate themselves and hinder the progression of change to create an equal environment for both races. This is also apparent whenever my class is forced to speak about race and many get uncomfortable which just leads to silence complete with the avoidance of eye contact. They become so afraid to say something wrong or just acknowledge the fact that these oppressive actions are happening in the world that they just don’t react at all or in private, become angry with the feeling of being targeted. Many of the silent kids in my class were also the same ones being rude and disrespectful during the talk. Guilt shows itself in many different emotions and what I seem to find is white men tend to be the ones who show it with animosity.
We always say that in order to create a change we need to have the difficult conversations but it’s hard to be successful in these endeavors when half the room constantly feel attacked. They also feel targeted because they do not want to acknowledge what was done to black people in the past they want to move on and forget about it. Slavery cannot be forgotten because so many principles, mentalities and ways of living harken back to the period where one person was legally able to own another. This all can be related back to Mrs. Applebaum’s class where she glosses over this period of history, which tells white people that at the end of the day slavery was an accident and because of that we can ignore it and it will no longer affect us. So when it does come up the first question out of ignorant white people's mouth is "Why do we always have to talk about race?"
I grew up in a place surrounded by people who did not care to understand or to acknowledge any struggle I had as a black person in a majority white, conservative republican high school. Because of this, I was met with their anger and silence when faced with questions about race and sharing my own opinions. Their guilt is fostered with their own ignorance to the part of society that doesn't always include them. Sometimes I think by putting their anger and ignorance under the umbrella of guilt, it can give them a way out because it implies that they recognize and understand the events that occurred and their consequences. Because of Mrs.Applebaum, this is not the case for most people today, they do not know what really happened which creates the question of how can there be guilt about a situation they do not understand.
Pledged by Logan Griffin
WC: 605
I agree with your perceptions of white guilt. I would like to add that although anger/defensiveness is a common response from white people in these situations, white guilt also includes a response of crying or sadness. What comes to mind is a proverbial white liberal crying because people of color experience oppression. Instead of acknowledging the oppression and doing something about it, they just cry because they "feel so bad" for them.
ReplyDeleteAnother example of this is when a white person is called out for saying or doing something racist, and instead of acknowledging their mistake and changing, they apologetically cry wanting to hear, "It's okay. You're not racist! I forgive you."
Over the summer, I participated in the Rhodes Institute for Regional Studies, and during that time, one of my main preoccupations was digging into what exactly white shame and guilt were (for they are different), how they come about, and how each of them are played out in the mind of a white person. And to begin, in my opinion, white shame and guilt have almost nothing to do with the past (as in history of the 18th century and the like). Though there is something to be said about the past, I think we rely to heavily on the past to explain white shame and guilt, removing however nominally the racism that exists today and now (even more in light of Rankine's talk and works). Moreover, white shame and guilt are ever more amplified by the blackness and the brownness of the group (which complicates and add to Rankine's institute and her work, since she is a black woman espousing white culpability and guilt). By having black folk and brown folk in the rooms and in the spaces where white folks talk about race and inequality, white folk have little to no commonality in which they can fall on. They're scared of saying the wrong thing. They're scared of thinking the wrong thing. For their entire lives, they've been told certain things, and in these new spaces, they're being told completely opposing views. Their family is being ridiculed in these spaces. Their grandparents are being called liars. Every racist action (or the ones they could think of) are being called out in these spaces. We're being called violent in these spaces, and even more, we cannot express emotion in these spaces like crying, grasping out, hatred at ourselves (for that is completely opposite what we've been told our entire lives). White shame and guilt are complex entities, and we should devote more time (both scholarly and not) to discern how best to cultivate and use them for social justice and anti-racism, for in the end, the correct uses of white shame and guilt could be the difference between white folks hating Claudia Rankine for what she stands for and white folk actually reading themselves into Rankine’s narratives (making themselves vulnerable and making themselves the racial villains in a story they’ve been told differently their entire lives).
ReplyDeleteI love what you have done with breaking down white guilt. In one of my educational courses with Dr.Casey, we talked about how white guilt is seen and perceived. Learning To Be White by Thandeka addresses the concept of white shame and guilt. In the very beginning of the text, she talks about the purpose and the rules of the Race Game. Seeking to receive feedback, she talked with a person who played the Race Game and reviewed his response. After hearing his personal account, Thandeka describes the uncovering of his own feelings about being white as white shame - a sense of exposure, abandonment, and humiliation are hallmarks of this emotional state. She then explains how he felt white guilt because of the what he did, the actions he took to solidify his whiteness in his particular situation.
ReplyDeleteIn my paper for the class, I attempted to break down this white guilt in teacher programs, specifically teacher training. While watching TedTalks, Christopher Emdin talks about what’s missing in these programs causing teachers to fail their students. He says, during this particular process, we stir up a white guilt, making these teachers question how to use their privilege for a positive purpose. He uses the example of carrying a boulder up a hill where students are. Teachers are carrying a bolder filled with white guilt and shame. As you’re traveling up the hill, you’re tired because you’re desperate to make a change with your privilege and help children in these communities. When you finally make it and are faced with students and you’re so tired that you drop the bolder on top of the students, silencing them. (If you want to read my paper, let me know. I didn’t want to write everything on the blog post, but this is a topic that I’ve been wanting to chat about with someone for a while!)
I attended the Rankine lecture as well and was also disappointed by the reaction of certain first year students. There was a whole section of boys who sat to the side with their heads down, looking at their phones the whole time. It really made me angry in the moment. I wanted them to understand the gravity of Rankine's work and to value what she was saying. How privileged of them to feel as if this lecture did not apply to them.
ReplyDeleteAfter thinking about it though, I remembered it was a required lecture. They had to be there, which makes the subject matter only second to the fact that they didn't want to be there in the first place. In a perfect world, those students would be respectful, listen during the lecture, and care about the extremely relevant work/speech by Rankine. I think that the missing link here is intrinsic motivation, as well as privilege and white guilt. These students' views about race and white privilege have obviously never been challenged. They have never been asked to consider the lives of black and brown people who are oppressed by the same system white people benefit from daily. Without the proper framework to work through the complexities of race and race relations in America, it would be difficult to enter a lecture by Claudia Rankine with an open mind. Understanding these broader social problems takes time and the willingness to learn. The inspiration to become an advocate for minority groups and to become invested in the amendment of racist practices in the US needs to come from a personal motivation -- something that can be taught through open, non-judgmental conversation. Requiring that students attend this important lecture on a revolutionary piece of literature was a good intention, but lacked the necessary means to engage all of the first year students in the critical thinking that is necessary to conceptualize Rankine's writing.
That story shows in a nutshell what Claudia Rankine is actually talking about in Citizen when she explores the privilege of being comfortable. Many white folks use guilt as their way of actually being uncomfortable about this types of conversations that obviously needs to be happening. Many white people have been so complacent in their comfortability mentally, that the second they are put into a situation where they are out of their element, their first reaction is to shut down. Me being a person of color on a majority white campus, which is the first time for being in a majority white space ever, I am uncomfortable on a daily basis. However; I am not afforded that luxury of shutting down because at the end of the day that will do nothing for me academically or socially. I appreciate you sharing this story because it highlights the problems that Claudia Rankine is trying to convey to her readers. It's ok to be uncomfortable, because that means you are just exploring territory mentally that you have not fully grappled with yet.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of white guilt is something that has really interested me in the past. When I first came to Rhodes, I was often uncomfortable speaking about race for fear of saying the wrong thing or being labelled an uneducated racist. As some of the people above commented, this may be why so many white people become silent or defensive around the topic of race or slavery. However, I think another issue is at play. I think white people try desperately to believe that we live in a post-racial society, one where no marks of slavery exist. However, we are conditioned in a society where race is everywhere. For this reason, white people, when talking about race, are forced to confront many of their ingrained prejudices, or fear discovering that they live in a world where they benefit from systematic racism. Because of this, white people may choose silence or defensiveness.
ReplyDeleteHi Logan! Thank you for writing on this. In my experience, this defensiveness stems from the assumption that critiquing of white behavior and history is specifically directed at the actions of white people in the room. White people struggle to see that though we may not all purposefully act in ways that marginalize other people, we have continuously benefitted from the privileging of our lives over others’. In other words, we struggle to take ownership of how a history of white racist actions informed the immunities we enjoy today, that our complicity as beneficiaries of this system allows it to exist in perpetuity. Conversations about race will not be effective if there is not a diversity of voices at the table, and without white people fully engaging, progress will be minimal. White people must learn to be okay with being wrong, because how can we ever adapt our misinformed opinions if we do not learn to involve ourselves in the conversation? We must learn to be okay with conversation that renders us the ally, to appreciate listening over directing, to value empathy over our pride, to value empathy over our guilt. These are learned traits cultivated through practice that many white people have simply not sought out.
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