The white man’s guilt

By Matt Sanchez

“The future is really bright for people like you; our time is pretty much through.”

Last weekend, I met with a college friend, a Marine Corps captain who fought in the initial push into Iraq, back in 2003.

“It’s pretty much over for white guys like me,” my friend said in the same manner someone surrenders the keys to a house after an ill-fated attempt to keep current on the mortgage, except this Marine captain wasn’t turning over a home; he was referring to civilization and the United States itself.

“You guys are the future.”

“You guys” meant people like me, those who buy hair products in the “ethnic” section of the drugstore, the non-white, in my case Hispanic.

“The election of Obama means things are different,” he continued after telling me how proud he was to have personally supported the Hope and Change campaign and President-elect Obama.

A century before, a British poet, Rudyard Kipling, wrote about the “White Man’s burden” when Europeans dominated the planet through commerce, culture and colonialism. The poem has been interpreted in many ways – some positive, but mostly negative.

Take up the White Man’s burden–
Have done with childish days–
The lightly proferred laurel (cloak),
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!

Yet, the term “white” was never simply about skin color or race. “White” had a broader concept meaning modernity, progress, civilization.

In the United States, where “white” is a vague term covering everything from the pristine All-American to the sullied trash, the Yankee confidence of the past has given way to a passive paternalism, as the one-time “ethnic” mainstream of this country defers to both democracy and demographics.

I have to admit, I never thought of the USA as a place for competition between Americans – “us” against “them.”

My middle-school Vietnam veteran teachers never seemed “white” to me. If anything, I saw them as role models, samples of what I could become regardless of race and background.

As a young non-mainstream kid growing up in California, “whites” were not a self-identified box to check on an application – they were real people. Like Mrs. Smith and Judson, my second- and fifth-grade teachers who challenged me with books to do my own studying, because they didn’t want me to be held back by the pace of the class, or Coach Ashemore, the son of poverty-stricken “Oakies” who came to California looking for work.

If my role models had distanced themselves by saying, “I am white and therefore ineligible to be an example for you, go find someone among your people to look up to,” that would have been ridiculous, but that’s a similar message to what former presidential hopeful John McCain conceded when he pleaded with minority groups not to view him as a racist.

There is a double standard here on racism when a white candidate for the presidency is required to prove how tolerant he or she is, and a minority candidate is exempt from any such demand.

The multicultural ideology that started in academia as a criticism and contrast to the West flattened the public playing field to where no one could judge, least of all the whites. In fact, the only “culture” not included in the “multi” was the bland mainstream, less exotic American culture. Throughout the world, many will say that the United States has no culture at all. Unfortunately, far too many Americans agree.

It’s no mistake that President-elect Barack Obama is culturally American, born to a white mother and raised by white grandparents, and yet we insist on dismissing and disdaining that heritage by emphasizing the election of our first “black” president and pat ourselves on the back for the triumph of superficial diversity. Obama also exploited this cultural branding by running as the first black candidate rather than the first biracial man – no attempt at unity there.

The Marine captain who kept repeating “yes we can” seemed relieved now not to be in charge. It is a sad fact that the public forum conned “the white people” into believing their burden was to seek redemption rather than take responsibility. Guilt has been marketed as a healthy, introspective form of penance, and those who don’t openly show sympathy are suspected to be potential Archie Bunkers.

America is about a single nationality, not a rainbow-colored coalition of peoples, and the moment we believe making the future better for one group over the other is helpful to us as a nation is the day our nationality no longer unites us.


Matt Sanchez

Matt Sanchez has covered the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as an embedded reporter for WND. He resides in New York City. Read more of Matt Sanchez's articles here.