Common questions about racism: How do I deal with white guilt?

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Partly because I'm trying to mentally prepare for my panel at femmeconne, and partly because people keep asking me these sorts of questions and I can't come up with a good answer on the spot, but mainly because I'm bored: I've been preparing some answers to common questions I get asked (or have seen others asked, or have asked myself) about racism.

I know this is all very wordy, but in my experience this stuff is a lot more complicated than people think. Truly, I have found this all as difficult to get my head around as some of the stuff in my Phd. Not that people didn't ask me to explain that in a few sentences too :)

It's important to note these are just my opinions, and one of the first rules of antiracism is that you should listen to the opinions of POC(*), ie not me. To this end (and because this stuff often
doesn't click until you hear it multiple times in different ways, it didn't for me), I have included links to either POC or at least more articulate white people (mostly from Angry Black Woman's required reading and The Great Race Discussion Linkspam)

These all assume you are familiar with the basic ideas underlying my anti-racism.

(*)I am using the term "POC" instead of "non-white" since afaict it offends less people and, well, is easier to type :)


How do I deal with white guilt?

(I had an epiphany about this today, it's a question I've asked myself intermittently, so this is aimed as much at me as anyone else! Unfortunately I think that has made it end up a bit preachy...)

White guilt is a distraction. Anti-racism is not about feeling guilty, it's about fighting racism. Sometimes in the process of fighting racism you might say or do something that makes you feel guilty, but that's a side effect, not a goal, and as with all negative emotions, unless you can make that guilt useful (say as a motivator) it serves no purpose.

Pretty much every time I see anything about the greenhouse effect/endangered animals etc, I feel depressed and useless and guilty. I do not then go and do anything to help the environment. But this is my problem: the environment isn't trying to make me feel bad, and my feeling bad does absolutely no good. I need to know what's going on with the environment, and this is going to make me feel bad, and it's up to me to get over it and try to do something to fix things. It's possible that some environmentalists lay it on a bit thick, but the main problem is everyone's (including my own) tendency to see-saw between complacency and useless terror.

It's like that with racism: yes, learning about it is depressing and makes you feel bad. But that is, unfortunately, an inevitable consequence and there's nothing anyone can do about it (really, I have seen people try to explain things as nicely as possible, people still freak out). On the plus side, despite common opinion, fighting racism doesn't require you to feel guilty, and at least in my experience the more you get used to hearing about this stuff, and get involved in working against it, the less guilty you feel. I'm very aware (though still not as much as I should be) of my privileged position as a white person in this country, of the dark history of oppression my position is built on, and the responsibility that privilege gives me to fight racism, but I don't feel guilty about it. I didn't choose to be born white in a racist society. I can't even help having a bunch of subconscious racist motivations and assumptions.

I do feel guilty for my own racist actions, especially the many I've done when I demonstrably should have known better. But I do lots of stupid selfish things which make me feel guilty, and the only way to deal with them is apologise etc as appropriate and then try to do better in future.

So: either you stay deliberately misinformed and complicit with injustice, or you feel bad all the time, or you learn to get over your guilt and try to get involved in fixing things. The last option is the hardest, but if it's any small comfort, in my experience it's overall less difficult and more rewarding than writing a thesis on computational group theory :)

EDIT: I realise this needs to be said: Don't feel bad for feeling bad! (I've been in that spiral enough times to know how unfun it is) Emotional reactions are not something you can control. You just have to acclimatise yourself until the reaction dies down, it's like dealing with a phobia or whatever.

And yes, I really need to get over my Environment Guilt! But it's all so overwhelming... *is a big fat hypocrite* On the plus side I do have a lot of sympathy for people who feel the same way about race (which is of course easy to say when I don't experience racism myself. But that's the topic of another question...)

Links:
Baby-stepping away from racism: A guide for white people
White Liberal Guilt
Race to Our Credit:Denial, Privilege and Life as a Majority