White self-hatred.... it's impact on mixed race people and families?

[Qonundrum]

Color/race/gender/orientation/whatever guilt? Non-starter. Homey don't play, to borrow a phrase. I am not responsible for my ancestors' actions. I am responsible for myself. The same goes for you.

Be the best you that you can be. Achieve, excel. You can do it.

RULES FOR LIVING:
1. The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Everyone: Follow these simple rules. Full stop.

That's the basics, even if they originated in religion (written in a way to appease those who are either apathetic or antagonistic against). But the point is, the "Progressives" need to remember to think forward and improve and not keep looking backwards while ignoring the present because they lost a ton of people in 2016, all they need to do is compare statistics. I've also noticed there are reasons why people use the term "Regressives" and it's often not due to pejorative belittling.

 

[Qonundrum]

1950s,

1850s or 1350s, perhaps. Depends on the issue.

 

[DimesDan]

I have a lot of interest and do quite a bit of reading on this as I am married to a man of Middle Eastern descent. I am pale with dark strawberry hair and freckles. My son favors me, with light hair and pale skin and Irish features. My daughter looks straight up Turkish. You would not know she was mine if we were next to each other. Her experience is going to be different than mine and I both look forward to this and am terrified for her.

Not concerning privilege per say (if I read this correctly) your husband being Turkish, does that mean you feel he should ideally feel some "guilt" regarding the Ottoman Empire?

 

[Caleuche]

The thing about white guilt is I personally NEVER oppressed anyone. You are asking me to feel guilty for something other people did.

If I understand the counter-argument (having re-read the thread), it appears to be that we're not being asked to feel guilty over the actions of previous generations, but instead to feel guilty over the fact we are benefitting from their actions.
To use your analogy, it's if your grandad committed bank theft, but you were expected to re-pay the money once you had inherited it from him.

Whatever the reason, guilt still isn't the best emotion or term to use here.

 

[DimesDan]

That's the problem that you and Marynator have been running into in this thread quite a bit, despite multiple people addressing it. You're making unfounded and frankly rather condescending assumptions that people are not aware that they have privilege just because they reject the idea of feeling guilt for the circumstances of their birth and their ancestry rather than for their own actions. You (general you) can and should acknowledge your privilege and try and help and support others who don't enjoy it whenever possible without feeling guilty for simply being who you are. The idea that you should feel guilty for simply being white or male or any other group regardless of how you choose to behave as a person is wrong.

Indeed, myself, @Timewalker and @Garak (in a particularly piss poor way) described ways in which we use our privilege for good (and I think others did, but they're the only two that spring to mind right away) and to try and create a more inclusive and open future, should we be congratulated for doing that? No, because that is the right thing to do. Nor should those efforts be ignored, because in this day and age, what is the point in white privilege (which to be frank, I am self aware enough and intelligent enough to know I have a shit tonne of) if it's not for the betterment of humanity, leveling the playing field for all.

Of course, the realist in me thinks that that is a silly notion because we just like to place different individuals into their own little boxes and not pay them any attention once they're in that box because of X, Y and Z.

 

[BillJ]

It isn't guilt to understand history. We must use that history to make sure we don't relapse into behaviors that damage others.

 

[Timewalker]

1850s or 1350s, perhaps. Depends on the issue.

Well, not back to the 1350s. Those were plague years, after all.

But the 1850s? There are some who would be perfectly comfortable undoing all the progress made in women's rights, such as the right to own and control our own property, the right to vote, and even to be considered legal persons. There was a time when women needed their husband's permission to have a bank account, and also a credit card (the assumption being that she would be spending her husband's money since she had none of her own and society frowned on her having the means to acquire her own).

There are conservatives who want to repeal the same-sex marriage laws, repeal women's right to choose, repeal the doctor-assisted dying legislation, make divorce more difficult, and so on.

Given all that BS, plus the crap I had to go through in a couple of federal elections within the last 20 years, I do not take my voting rights for granted.

There are a depressing lot of conservatives on the news comment boards here (Canada) who think that only people who pay income tax should have the right to vote.

I don't have any problem requiring citizenship as a precursor to being allowed to vote. Resident in Canada? That's a controversial thing here, as to whether ex-pats should have the vote. The ones who have been gone for over 5 years were disenfranchised prior to the election in 2015. Some of them don't care. Some care very much because they still have family ties in Canada, or property in Canada.

One ex-pat who lives in Washington state (Seattle, I think) did some research and discovered that while he couldn't vote, there was nothing in the Elections Canada rules that prevented him from running, if he met all the requirements.

So he crossed the border, got the necessary 100 signatures, paid the fees, and filed his candidacy in the same riding as Stephen Harper, our former PM who was defeated in 2015. He made the point to the constituents there that he did not actually want anyone to vote for him as he had no intention of moving back to Canada. If he should win, he would immediately resign so a byelection would have to be held. He just wanted to make the point of how absurd it was that ex-pats who are gone for over 5 years cannot vote, but they can run for a seat in Parliament (he filed as an independent, so there were no issues with any riding associations and no party leader had to sign off on his candidacy).

He did get some votes, and I would assume that the recent bill pertaining to elections has quietly closed that loophole.

If I understand the counter-argument (having re-read the thread), it appears to be that we're not being asked to feel guilty over the actions of previous generations, but instead to feel guilty over the fact we are benefitting from their actions.
To use your analogy, it's if your grandad committed bank theft, but you were expected to re-pay the money once you had inherited it from him.

Whatever the reason, guilt still isn't the best emotion or term to use here.

Yes, I am benefiting from the past actions of various federal governments dating back to the 1800s and early 1900s. My great-grandparents were homesteaders who came to Canada just over a century ago. Their middle child was the grandmother who raised me. The land where I'm sitting right now typing this was either Cree or Stoney land at some point.

What "amends" am I supposed to make? Give it back and "go home"?

I AM home. I was born in this city. I could, I suppose, go back to my great-grandparents' and my grandfather's country, but why should I? I was never there, any family ties are extremely distant (in both senses of the word), I don't have citizenship there, and have only a smattering of knowledge of the language (gained from pestering my grandfather to teach me; he kept refusing, saying he was in Canada now and in Canada people speak English).

So yeah, I acknowledge the past. I try to vote responsibly for candidates whose party platforms include beneficial programs and righting past wrongs for the indigenous population.

But... I did not perpetrate the wrongs done to them or their ancestors. I object to the word "colonizer". I colonized nothing. I suppose they might have used that word about my great-grandparents, but that was over a century ago.

 

[Butters]

I'm so glad that others came into this thread and said the same general things I would've said in such a balanced way. I feel so strongly about these silly notions ("white guilt," white privilege, cultural appropriation, and similar ilk that we naughty white people are expected to punish ourselves for, even though it's no longer 1907) that I fear I would've come in here and napalmed the area. I have a history and anthropology background, and it makes me bristle with annoyance every single time, because it's a bunch of bunkum, twisted to fit a very specific narrative.

I salute our erstwhile members here for their awesome, balanced responses.

I responded quite strongly to this thread for my own circumstances. My stomping grounds were at the heart of trade unionism and the labour movement. I was raised in a deprived area with a proud history of community spirit and socialism, and taught the evils of privilege from an early age.

It takes astonishing ignorance and arrogance to tar an entire subunit of humanity with the same dirty brush and still claim the higher ground, but there we have it. I will not atone for my birth, but I will make the most of the hand I was dealt, same as everyone else.

I am relieved by the many responses more measure than mine. Quite rightly, this not an echo chamber.

 

[Jayson1]

When you get down to it doesn't systematic racism serve as the best label if we want to use labels. It sort of covers a broader array of issues's that come to play that makes racism have as much power as it does. It also basically holds everyone accountable to try and not be part of the problem. It's also something that doesn't trigger people like white guilt or reverse racism etc that at this point have become political arguments more than anything IMO. If you here white guilt and your Conservative you instantly feel like it's a personal attack on you as a individual. If you say reverse Racism and your liberal it feels like a dodge by people who are racist and don't want to own up to that or their side has a problem. Which might be true in many cases but who knows how many times it would be true. It's almost like to make any headway people need more PC ways of crouching certain uncomfortable topics so they don't get offended. I think that is because nobody trust anyone and feels like any counter argument is basically just a excuse to insult them. Which IMO goes to the fact that people on the internet are so use to always being insulted they expect it to always be the case in every situation. I think people tend to basically assume someone is guilty until being proved innocent and the idea of giving someone the benefit of the doubt is gone for many people.

Jason

 

[Spot261]

I've kept out of this so far and watched with interest.

One thing that occurs to me is there is a very big distinction between making a statement about a group and making a statement about an individual within that group. Labelling someone is usually a quick route to blinding yourself to the reality of the individual and sometimes simply seeing someone as a member of a demographic and stopping there is very dangerous. Systemic bigotry exists, massively so, it provides a backdrop for the experiences we all have living in our societies, even if we don't recognise it as such, but it doesn't necessarily define the individual experiences of any one person, either in terms of discrimination or privilege, it just swings the balance of probability. One must be very careful of drawing conclusions about a person based on their gender or ethnicity without knowing more about the specifics.

I'm a white male, that theoretically makes me a member of a privileged group and frankly I wouldn't disagree. However the extent to which that privilege has actually manifested in my own individual life story is debatable. One could easily turn the tables on such an easy assessment by saying I was a baby raised by social services, eventually adopted and grew up to have manageable mental health problems. That I have been reasonably successful career wise can hardly be attributed to privilege alone, I've had to fight obstacles all the way and statistically you would expect me to be in the shoes of my patients, not the clinician charged with their care.

 

[urbandefault]

Give it back and "go home"?

Yeah.

At first glance I look like a white European. But most of my ancestors were Native American. Real "Trail of Tears" Cherokee and all that. My paternal grandfather's nickname was "Indian."

If I "go home" I'm just moving to eastern Tennessee.

All this bullshit is just bullshit, and I'm calling bullshit on the whole thing.

 

[Timewalker]

All this bullshit is just bullshit, and I'm calling bullshit on the whole thing.

Good, because if everybody "went home" we would probably tax the resources of Ethiopia and the surrounding region pretty severely.

I suppose I could go "back to" Wyoming. I found out recently that my mom's mother was born there. She came to Canada at age 3. But since I don't bother with my mom's side of the family when considering genealogy (and her family would have to "go back" to Europe anyway), I'd have to choose between "going back" to Sweden or Norway.

 

[c0rnedfr0g]

Edit: I have been attempting to understand this issue from @Marynator's perspective, since she seems to hold an unpopular opinion even though I believe her heart to be in the right place. My thoughts below are my response, which I believe holds some common ground for us both:

Merely feeling guilty doesn't do anything; one must respond to that feeling with action.

Interestingly, this discussion seems to be leading towards the notion of "white guilt" resulting in some sort of reparations to be paid or amends to be made, which can be viewed as a branch of class warfare, where the issue is not so much skin colour or ethnic background, but the age old case of rich vs. poor, or "haves" vs. "have-nots," except in this scenario the majority of the "haves" would voluntarily relinquish their wealth as opposed to it being forcibly taken by the "have-nots." Unfortunately, the accumulation of wealth is still a major driving factor for economies, so each of us must look within our own self to temper that greed and balance it against the well-being of the fellow man. I believe this is best accomplished at the personal level (e.g. charity) to alleviate the guilty feeling, and can be problematic when directed by the state (e.g. taxes) since governments are, after all, composed of (flawed) people. To quote Scripture, "...If you have two coats, give one to someone who doesn't have any. If you have food, share it with someone else" (Luke 3:11).

Ultimately, nothing good can come from hatred. Believe in yourself, be proud of who you are, and strive to understand your neighbors. Little by little, we can make this planet a better place for everyone.

 

[Timewalker]

There is no "guilty feeling" to alleviate. Awareness and acknowledgment of past history, yes. A desire to not allow the horrors of the past to happen again, yes.

But I'm way past tired of being told I'm supposed to feel guilty, as that implies that I did something wrong.

 

[Awesome Possum]

I don't think that white people are supposed to feel guilty. Just that we should be aware that our society has given us many benefits that other races do not get, to the point where we don't even think of it. We didn't create this system, we were just born into it. But we do benefit from it and should do everything in our power to not use it to put down others who don't. Black people can't even walk into a store without being followed because it's assumed they're going to steal something or they get the cops called on them for just being there. What can we do? Just be aware of it and if you see someone you know doing it, tell them to knock it off. Hopefully those biases ideas will die off and we won't have to worry about this shit anymore.

 

[Caleuche]

Yes, I am benefiting from the past actions of various federal governments dating back to the 1800s and early 1900s. My great-grandparents were homesteaders who came to Canada just over a century ago. Their middle child was the grandmother who raised me. The land where I'm sitting right now typing this was either Cree or Stoney land at some point.

What "amends" am I supposed to make? Give it back and "go home"?....

...So yeah, I acknowledge the past. I try to vote responsibly for candidates whose party platforms include beneficial programs and righting past wrongs for the indigenous population.

I simply stated what I felt the argument was, not that I agreed with it. The thread was getting bogged down in defending how we aren't responsible for the past and ignoring current issues. The problem with the term 'white guilt' is it means different things to different people. Those who have argued in favour of it in this thread have done so mainly from the point it being a phase meaning 'a discomfort from benefiting from past injustices' which I think nearly all of us (with one exception who wanted to discuss why they felt transsexuals shouldn't serve in the military instead) seem to acknowledge exists. What we seem to differ on is how bad we should or shouldn't feel over it. Essentially we all seem to be on the same larger page on civil rights, we just seem to be discussing our personal nuances on it.

Sadly the people who might of benefitted from this thread, those who do use the term 'white guilt' to try to shame people into feeling bad about their ancestors actions (usually to avoid responsibility for their own) or who refuse to acknowledge outright that some of us do benefit from historical mistakes and prejudices didn't seem to want to take part. Maybe they were too busy buying MAGA hats or something.

As for what 'amends' we all make. That's a personal one, numerous people of this thread have stated what they do, but yes, I agree - responsible voting and speaking out are the starting points.

As for 'Go Home'. I don't want to get into a discussion of Canadian Politics (I think I've proven I have a poor grasp of Canadian History), but from my perspective, no. My fathers family are Irish, but my mothers are German-Jewish (she herself is English born and raised). Do I think this gives me a right to go to Frankfurt and demand that the family shop(s) and home(s) are returned to me because of past historical injustices? No, I don't. If they are still standing, those shop(s)/home(s) all have families living in them, businesspeople running them and employees earning their livelihoods from them. Who am I to evict/financially ruin those peoples lives over something in the past that happened to family members I never really knew or have never met? The Germans are well aware of their past and have taken numerous steps to prevent it occurring again (despite the rise of the AfD). That's all I would want or hope from them on this.

It takes astonishing ignorance and arrogance to tar an entire subunit of humanity with the same dirty brush and still claim the higher ground, but there we have it.

I have found some of the arguments that white people are unware of their privilege a bit strange. To be totally unaware you would have to be in every single majority group and I think the number of Christian, financially-well-off, hetero-allosexual, alloromantic, cis-gendered, middle-class, white males with good physical and mental health living in same country that they and all of their ancestors have lived in since time memorial, is a small group in society at large - let alone a Trek board. Therefore most white people will have at sometime fallen into a minority group(s) at some time which means most white people will be aware of majority privilege, since at some point in our lives they will have suffered/ had to fight it themselves. White people aren't a homogenous bloc, anymore than any other demographic.

 

[Jayson1]

One thing I always think about is that people already sort of know the system is wrong even without the name. How many poor white people actually like rich people or corporations? Some get fooled by people like Trump or any politician it seems like they will fight for you but even without the race angle people already I think hate how the system is set up except maybe if they are in what I guess you could say is a upwardly mobile job where you think you might become rich yourself.

Other than voting what kind of power do any poor people actually have? Even in the more advanced jobs your co-workers I assume are just as much competion as they are anything else so it seems like the system is set up their to basically have people as rivals so you wonder how many people will do the right thing in some situations when it can be used to knock them down. Does anyone think most people really believe in the idea of, nice guys finish last? Standing up for the right things will end up being used against you by someone more cutthroat?

Jason

 

[Long Syntax]

The problem with the term 'white guilt' is it means different things to different people. Those who have argued in favour of it in this thread have done so mainly from the point it being a phase meaning 'a discomfort from benefiting from past injustices'

I also don't feel discomfort from 'benefitting' from past injustices. I don't say this to start crap with anyone though. I have my own life to live and a relatively short time to live it and I can't spend it fighting the past. The discussion of who is to blame (for the past), to me, is largely irrelevant. Placing blame or feeling discomfort helps nothing. We all have our paths in life, some more difficult than others. Be kind to those that have it more difficult than you is really all anyone should ask.

Feeling discomfort or, jumping back to the OP's point, hating ones self helps no one.

 

[Riker'sMailbox]

Not concerning privilege per say (if I read this correctly) your husband being Turkish, does that mean you feel he should ideally feel some "guilt" regarding the Ottoman Empire?

He is of Turkish ancestry, you are correct. The Ottoman Empire existed for 700 years. Should the Italian Americans feel guilt for the Roman Empire? Should the Greek Americans for guilt for the Greek Empire? My husband was born in Brooklyn.

If you are referring to the genocides that Turkey refuses to aknowledge: Armenian, the Assyrian and the Pontic Greek, that is a different topic. The Empire itself was no different than any other world empire. But, the genocides, they were at the ale end of the empire. Turkey itself did not exist until 1923 and my husband's family emigrated there in the 1960s from Syria. However, they do not consider themselves Syrian despite being of the Syriac Orthodox religion. I have no idea why.

I am not sure what your point is. White Americans are afforded a privilege by being white in this country, despite previous posters saying that white privilege is a "silly notion". It is pretty well documented. We were not an empire, conquering other countries.

I mean, I guess your question would make sense if the Ottoman Empire still existed and if my husband lived in Turkey and if Turkey had large racial minority groups in it. However, since my husband is Syriac Orthodox, he would be one of the religious minority groups. Like, I fail to see any equivlency. Not saying it is not there, just that, on paper, the Ottoman Empire has little to do with modern day racism in the US.

 

[DimesDan]

I am not sure what your point is. White Americans are afforded a privilege by being white in this country, despite previous posters saying that white privilege is a "silly notion". It is pretty well documented

I was merely curious, this is an international board and several posters in this thread either come from former territories (I'm not including America here) of the British Empire (that involved the displacement of indigenous cultures and other, unsaviour acts) or Great Britain itself and at times it seemed that we must be held accountable and thus guilty for the acts of Empire.

But thank you for replying to my question, it's actually clarified for me yours and @Marynator's stand points, you seem to be viewing the idea of white privilege through the prism that is living in the United States of America where as those who believe it is a silly notion are (mainly) not, they're viewing through a prism that isn't living in the United States of America.

I fully admit there are problems in the UK (and no country is immune to that) concerning individuals and which ethnic group they come from, but no-where near the extent that seems to occur in the USA.

conquering other countries.

Well that is debatable, but not for here.