Entry by Lauren Nader and Kyra Araneta

Definition

The term ‘white guilt’ can be defined as the feelings that white people endure when they realise the racial injustices that people of colour have faced for many years, and how they have benefitted from it. 

Historical context

Use of the term sparked during the summer of 2020, particularly in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floyd. While most of the world was in lockdown due to COVID,  social media became an important tool for activist groups but also a sphere where more and more white people, including celebrities and public figures, showed their support towards the cause. However, as Spanierman argues, ‘when white people gain awareness of the enormity of structural racism and white privilege, they become self-absorbed and focus obsessively on their feelings of white guilt’ (2021:44). This became noticeable when a lot of  white celebrities came under scrutiny for their posts and statements which came across as performative and unproductive. For example, when Emma Watson participated in the #BlackoutTuesday on Instagram, where users posted black squares to show solidarity with the BLM movement, the response from the Black and activist communities was widely negative as the hashtag proved to be problematic when the squares flooded the resource-filled #BlackLivesMatter hashtag and contributed to a futile silencing of the content. Spanierman adds that white people who experience guilt often become so obsessed with not appearing racist that they ‘inadvertently subvert efforts to understand how structural racism is maintained and reproduced’ (ibid.), therefore running the risk of practising performative allyship because they want to appear antiracist.

White guilt also plays a significant role in politics. Black conservative political writer, Shelby Steele stated that ‘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 now acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for four centuries (NPR, 2006). White guilt is often criticised for being an argument that hinders serious conversations about race because it is often reduced to a concept that targets white people to feel individually blameworthy for racism — also known as an ‘emotional trap’ (Nile and Straton, 2003). In the US, both conservatives and liberals consider discourse on white guilt to be unhelpful. For conservatives, guilt is seen as a manipulative tool used by BIPOC, while liberals often argue that it offers no productive function for racial justice even though it involves at least some realisation of racism. 

The term in relation to higher education in the UK

In May 2020, MP Kemi Badenoch said in the House of Commons that the Conservative government does not want white children being taught about white privilege and their “inherited racial guilt” (The Guardian, 2020). She added that schools have a duty to remain politically impartial and should not openly support “anti-capitalist” groups such as Black Lives Matter. In March 2021, the Commission of Race and Ethnic Disparities released the highly controversial RACE report, which was later accompanied by The Education Committee’s report on “The forgotten: how White working-class pupils have been let down, and how to change it”. These reports have been criticised for being the epitome of the victim rhetoric that the government has been using for the past decade as a weapon against antiracism and by extension, ethnic minority groups. In The Guardian, professor of critical race studies David Gillborn stated that:

“The latest report – as well as almost every headline on this topic over the past decade – has reported data on this group of children in poverty under the banner “working class”. This makes for impressive soundbites, but it grossly misrepresents the scale of the issue. In Britain around 60% of adults think of themselves as working class; but free school meals kids make up only around 15% of white pupils in state schools. Simply by replacing “FSM” with “working class”, the MPs’ report exaggerates the size of the issue by a factor of four. Not only that, it makes 60% of adults feel that their children are being held back unfairly.”

This is particularly important to our understanding of white guilt in a UK context because narratives that support the idea of a “forgotten white working-class” completely ignore the racial disparities that deeply impact BAME communities in education (achievement gaps, exclusion from school, stop and search, retention rates) and undermine the action of groups who demand these be confronted.

Suggested literature

Spanierman, L. B. (2021). White Guilt in the Summer of Black Lives Matter. Guilt: A Force of Cultural Transformation, 41.

This book chapter offers a contemporary reflection on white guilt in the context of the Black Lives Matter protests and the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. Spanierman seeks to under the concept in the political, technological and social realms

Nighaoui, S.C. (2019). Moralism and Compensation in Shelby Steele’s White Guilt Theory: African American Economic and Academic Performance under Preferential Policies. Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies, 6(1), p.90 

This article revisits Steele’s claims about the politics of social equality and justice by interrogating some of his postulates about the allegedly ineluctable effects of preferential policies on African American social mobility

Swim, J.K. and Miller, D.L. (1999). White Guilt: Its Antecedents and Consequences for Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 25(4), pp.500–514 

This article examines the strength of feelings of White guilt, the relationship between White guilt and possible antecedents to this guilt, and the consequences of White guilt for attitudes toward affirmative action

Further resources

ASU SCETL (2021). The Enduring Power of White Guilt with Shelby Steele. [online] www.youtube.com. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G2RY-pamq8 (a webinar with Black author Shelby Steele about his view of white guilt)

Kallehauge, K. (2020). White Guilt – Just Another White Privilege? [online] Impakter. Available at: https://impakter.com/white-guilt-just-another-white-privilege/ (an article by a White Danish woman who speaks about feeling white guilt)

Questions to ask

1. What does white guilt mean to you?
2. What could you do today to ensure that white guilt is proactively put to practice?
3. If you are a student, what could your university do to acknowledge white guilt?

References

Gillborn, D. (2021). How white working-class underachievement has been used to demonise antiracism. The Guardian, June 23. Available at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/23/how-white-working-class-underachievement-has-been-used-to-demonise-antiracism 

Nile, L. N., & Straton, J. C. (2003). Beyond guilt: How to deal with societal racism. Multicultural Education.

Murray, J. (2020). Teaching white privilege as uncontested fact is illegal, minister says. The Guardian, October 20. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/20/teaching-white-privilege-is-a-fact-breaks-the-law-minister-says 

NPR. (2006). ‘White Guilt’ and the End of the Civil Rights Era. NPR.org. Available at: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5385701 

Spanierman, L. B. (2021). White Guilt in the Summer of Black Lives Matter. Guilt: A Force of Cultural Transformation, 41.

von Kellenbach, K., & Buschmeier, M. (Eds.). (2021). Guilt: A Force of Cultural Transformation. Oxford University Press.