The Washington Post recently released a video on race and white identity called "What is White racial identity and why is it important?" It's one of several videos on race in a series that's part of The Lily, a publication of the Washington Post that targets younger women. In the five-minute video, several guests promoted the ever-present narrative that white people are uniquely bad and that their sin, whiteness, is a uniquely egregious crime that categorically leads to oppression, racism, and suffering.
Nicole Ellis, the host of the Post's show, said that the murder of George Floyd meant that "for the first time, white people were becoming aware of their whiteness and the systemic ways that white supremacy affects all of us."
Rebecca Toporek, a professor at San Francisco State University, stated that "white accountability groups are really helpful in terms of having a place to process, having a group of people whose responsibility it is to call me on things or challenge me." Toporek advocates not only for white accountability groups but white accountability "buddies." And, according to her, there's a "different cost for people of color to be in relationship" with her.
"The more you kinda dive into that, the more I am really realizing how deeply rooted racism is into like my everyday thought process. No matter how much you work at that, there's still even almost more work to be done," said Kelsey Arias, a crisis interventionist from Oklahoma. She added that "my whiteness is going to show up at different points in my life."
Resmaa Menakem, a specialist in black trauma, said that "a living, embodied anti-racist culture does not exist among white people. White people got to start getting together, specifically around race." He also stated that there were "thousands of George Floyds before the one you saw."
Trauma therapist Ilyse Kennedy jumped on the "white guilt" train by saying "we're unpacking wrong things that we have been taught in history class. I realized that I needed to go back and unpack and reorganize everything that I had learned because it was completely through a white lens. Most of us, in doing this work, have experienced...a period of deep shame for being white and for acknowledging the harm that our ancestors have caused. And that's a very legitimate piece of this work."
The Washington Post is embracing its new promotion of white guilt. They recently published an Op-Ed that defended such feelings. The author, Robin Givhan, had the following to say:
"Guilt is the uncomfortable acceptance of personal fallibility. It’s the ability not only to see that harm has come to others, but also to acknowledge that you have played a part — perhaps not directly but incidentally, perhaps not by action but by inaction, perhaps not by deed but by word, perhaps not individually but collectively. Guilt connects us to our most intimate companions and passing strangers. It reminds us that we are all each other’s keepers. It reminds us to care."
"White guilt" is a motivating factor for Leftists in anything race-related that they do.
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