The destructive power of white guilt

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Racism, or any other destructive fallacy based upon human pride and arrogance, is not simply "wrong," it is anti-Christ. Yet in our human fallenness, both racism and reactions to it can conceal the same pride of life that makes true human freedom unreachable. No man I know of sees this more clearly than Shelby Steele. If you have not yet discovered him, you should, and he can be found on the Internet. Listen to what he says concerning the destructive powers of "white guilt" in an article written on September 18, 2001 entitled, "The Guilty: War of the Worlds." "White guilt is what causes minority and Third World 'inferiority' to stand as a negative moral judgment on the Western way of life. It presumes that Western success is the result not of three millennia of cultural evolution (much enhanced by contributions from what today we call the Third World) but of the ill-gotten gains of slavery and colonialism. Western success is presumed to have come at the price of Third World inferiority."

White guilt morally and culturally disarms the West. It makes the First World apologetic. And this, of course, only inflames the narcissism of the ineffectual. In the vacuum of power created by guilt, a world-wide class of guilt-hustlers has emerged. America and the West must cease this three-decade-long indulgence in guilt, moral equivalency, and apologia. None of this redeems the West or uplifts the "Third World." It really shouldn't matter, but Mr. Steele happens to be black. After thirty-plus years of counseling and rigorously pursuing the issues of human transformation, I can say unequivocally that "feeling bad and feeling guilty," in the long run, never helps the oppressor-victim relationship to move toward true freedom. True freedom is only realized by repentance, restitution if possible, and the recognition of the equality of the oppressed by the oppressor.

All of this hangs upon two simple truths: All of us have oppressed others at some time in our lives, and all of us bear the same image of our Creator, whether we are male or female, regardless of our ethnicity. We are all guilty at some time of oppressing those less able to defend themselves, and we are all guilty of rejecting our human equality of value before God. Denials to the contrary are ego games designed to gain power over one another using guilt and denial as currency. To segregate white racism or colonialism out from murderous African tribalism; institutionalized sexism which touches virtually all cultures; or a host of other pernicious "isms" is politicized hypocrisy. More to the point, it doesn't serve to humanize either set of parties in the hateful game of exploitation-humiliation-poverty and spiritual death.

The politics of guilt and blame guarantees that every player loses. The guilty, without true biblical repentance, stay imprisoned and can never get free or enter transformation, and the blamers remained entrapped in the double web of the false power that the exploiters had over them and their inability to shift their energy and focus from victim to achiever and self-producer. The guilt-blame game in human relationships, either personal or social, is the con game of all time. It promises freedom, and that it will someday end when all debts have been paid, but alas, they never are nor can be. True power is, as Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (1 John 8:32). The blame game is a loser's game. The winner's game is: Let's both get free, and that's the bottom line.

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