Thread by @ashtonpittman

THREAD: White guilt is so damn destructive.

I've often been accused of suffering with "white guilt" for speaking against racism.

I didn't get that criticism; I feel a duty to speak against racism—not guilt.

In reality, the "white guilt" accusations are pure deflection.

https://twitter.com/rightwingwatch/status/1408437120457392128

First of all, guilt simply means "a feeling of having done wrong OR failed in an obligation."

I didn't create the racist systems that I benefit from as a white man.

But once I became aware of how those systems privilege me, I would've been guilty if I'd stayed silent.

Imagine being on the top academically at your school. You get all the awards, praise, privileges.

Then you find out your parents paid off the school to unfairly advantage you.

It's not your fault. You need not feel guilty—but you should feel an obligation to right the wrongs.

But what if you still FELT like you had cheated even though that wasn't the truth?

You might then fear you'd lose, not only privileges, but be found guilty and punished if others found out.

So instead of correcting others' wrongs that benefited you, you become complicit.

You can quickly go from being the unwitting benefactor of another's wrongs to fighting tooth-&-nail to defend yourself & evade a punishment you fear you deserve.

You start to see yourself as the victim of any threat that the wrongs may be uncovered.

It can drive you to kill.

Many white folks know intuitively that they benefit from systemic racism & white privilege—even if they can't name those concepts.

They fear that acknowledging these things will mean they must pay, not just in loss of privilege, but eye for eye, tooth for tooth, lash for lash.

Those white folks have usually never had any real, meaningful relationships with Black folks or any honest conversations about racism.

They think Black people secretly walk around wanting to punish them for it—wanting revenge.

Because it's what they'd want. It's deflection.

So instead of acknowledging the reality of systemic racism & working to dismantle white supremacy, their guilt drives them to a defensive crouch & they actively, knowingly become complicit in racism by denying its reality & declaring themselves victims of "reverse racism."

That is why many want to stomp out what they erroneously call "critical race theory" (they really just mean history & social studies that acknowledge the reality of racism).

They see such education as a personal threat. So they say teaching about racism is... racist.

That's why the "color blindness" the media, conservatives & centrist liberals heavily promoted in the 1990s-2000s was comforting: People thought, 'As long as I, an individual, cannot see race, I can't be a racist.'

But it also meant pretending not to see gross racial injustices.

The great irony of it all is that critical race theory provides a framework that would free those very white folks from that individual guilt.

It doesn't focus on racism as a sin of the individual—but as something perpetuated by social structures we all have the power to alter.

But they can't see that because, by burying themselves in a defensive position that denies the existence of systemic racism, they've knowingly made themselves complicit in it as active participants. The guilt, if anything, has compounded.

White guilt becomes white defensiveness.

Defensiveness is destructive. On a personal level, it can ruin marriages (I've had to learn to tame my own personal defensiveness over the years).

On a social level, when we're talking about one group who benefited from centuries of slavery & apartheid? It's nuclear.

Unchecked white guilt becomes white defensiveness and mutates into white grievance.

Savvy, soulless political demagogues & media figures (like @TuckerCarlson) know how white guilt works.

They exploit it and manipulate it (for votes, for ratings...) to increase their own power.

People like Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump allow those with advanced stage white guilt (white grievance) to see it as something else.

They reframe it as patriotism—as the essence of being American. Now, instead of guilt, it's a noble cause that must be defended.

That kind of demagoguery can turn people against their own interests (make no mistake, even many white people are indirectly harmed by systemic racism).

It can turn them against democracy.

It can convince them to attack their nation's Capitol in the name of patriotism.

Not only do political and media demagogues exploit white guilt (whether to amorally increase their own power or out of true devotion to white supremacy), but so do avowed, unrepentant, clear-eyed white supremacists.

They use it to grow their ranks. The result can look like this:

More often, it looks electing leaders who uphold racist policies in policing, education, housing, voting, crime and a host of other areas.

It also looks like every day, banal, passive racism.

White guilt, particularly in its malignant form, is one of white supremacy's most potent tools.

And the truth is, critical thinking about race and systemic racism is a threat to that gravy train for demagogues and white supremacists because it can rob white guilt of its power.

If too many white people stop naval gazing and start reckoning with race as a systemic issue—which began happening in 2020—it's a threat.

Demagogues and white supremacists need white guilt to flourish so they can harvest and reap the rewards of metastasized white grievance.

It's no accident that, after a year in which millions of white folks across the country began really learning about and understanding how systemic racism works, a full-throated effort is on to stamp that out & convince white folks that racism is about individuals, not systems.

White guilt is not a threat to white supremacy.

It's one of its secret weapons for corralling the white masses into doing the bidding of demagogues & self-avowed white supremacists.

But white people collectively understanding & taking action against racist systems IS a threat.

It's helpful to tell white people that racial justice means retribution against white people for the sins of their fathers—lash for lash, lynching for lynching.

"If CRT is taught, SYSTEMS OF POWER WILL FALL!" is far less scary.

It even risks making converts.