What Should I Do With My White Guilt?

Currently as of writing this multiple protests have been going on through the United Stated of America and around the world in response to the murder of George Floyd.  This is not just about the wrongful death of George Floyd but the countless number of wrongful deaths, convictions, abuse of power, and disenfranchisement of a whole category of people.

During this time I’m hearing a word being used a lot right now: Restless.  For many, they want to be doing something right now.  They want to take part in protest, take some type of activism, donate to worthy charities and/or black owned businesses.   They are looking for something to DO.  Many people are noticing they are feeling guilty and the restless feelings want to act upon that guilt t help relieve it.  

I am a White therapist ruminating on these topics with multiple clients and below are some things I noticed and want to share.  We need to sit with our White Guilt.  We want to do something to relieve ourselves of the guilt we are feeling.  That pull to action wants to be absolved by doing something.  You should probably do some actions to support Black folks (and other People of Color) right now, but the most important thing you can do is unpack this White Guilt.  

This article is addressed to my fellow White people.  However, I’ve had conversations with other People of Color (POC) who are not Black who are dealing with similar issues.  I’ve heard from some folks that they knew of their own racial and/or ethnic disparities, but are starting to recognize their own privileges and the struggle of the Black community.  This article may be helpful for you, but I’m going to use the term White Guilt here to address the White audience.  

White Guilt is when our eyes are suddenly open to how much pain the Black community is in.  It is starting to recognize the narratives of lost lives, unfair practices, and mental anguish people with black and brown skin have to go through.  It is finally being able to see why people are angry and really reflect on how unjust our system is.  

Robin DiAngelo wrote the book White Fragility.  This is her term to examine the behaviors of White peoples’ defensiveness and aversion about talking about race and racism.  She often states that White people often feel attacked or offended by accusations of being a racist.  DiAngelo points out that this often cuts off listening.  When we get defensive or feel shameful we don’t listen.  

Dr Kendi Ibram, who wrote the book How to Be an Anti-Racist, defines racist as “One who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inactions or expressing racist ideas.”  Throughout his book and his lectures he highlights that racism is about our behaviors.  We can be a good person and respect our Black neighbor, but if we are not breaking down the structures of racism then our inaction would qualify as racism.  That is a hard pill to swallow.  This is what our White Guilt is processing right now.  

Kendi goes on to define Anti-racist as “one who is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions or expressing an anti-racist idea.”  Right now our White Guilt is saying I need to do something so I can start labeling myself as Anti-Racist. But here lies the trap. We want to label ourselves as “good” or anti-racist.  We don’t want to be “bad” or racist.  But our behaviors are what defines racist or anti-racist.  This can not be a one time thing.  Showing up at a protest or purchasing a meal from a Black owned restaurant are good steps and behaviors, but to be anti-racist you must change the actual structures in your life.  Our actions must always be anti-racist and unless we self-analyze and bring about change we are doomed to repeat history.  But we are not the ones who pay for the repeating of history, Black people pay.  

I do couple therapy often.  If there has been abuse of trust in a relationship, say an affair, then a person can just say ‘I’m sorry’ and want everything to be forgiven.  The person accepts them back and but then the behavior keeps happening.  The person keeps saying ‘I’m sorry’ but the words have lost all their power.  Forgiveness can not be obtained just by words and good intent.  There needs to be accountability, change, and a processing of guilt.

Many people were moved by a few police officers kneeling in solidarity with protesters.  It was a beautiful moment and many of my White friends posted pictures and articles of them on social media.  People had hope.  We can make this work.  The cops were acknowledging the pain of the Black community.  We can be absolved by our discomfort and the cops feel better about their White Guilt. But in most of these areas, the same police used force on protesters in less than a day or two.  The behaviors kept happening.  Kneeling is nice and all, but it doesn’t bring accountability.  It doesn't make systematic change.  The cops never understood their own White Guilt to stop the same patterns of behaviors to keep happening.  If we just do symbolic behaviors like the police then there will be more like George Floyd.  

White people, myself included, are opening up our eyes and seeing the large impact of the disparities of racism.  We need to unlearn the lessons of racism and how we saw the world before.  We learn through our White Guilt.  We don’t know how and we keep turning to Black and POC to tell us how to process this.  But they are dealing with it on their own and we haven’t built up trust with them enough for them to feel safe and vulnerable with us.  We need to hold space for Black folks.  Let them process how they need to process.  Don’t rush to them with support you didn’t have a month ago.  Trust is built with time and continued good effort.  Be there for them but don’t impose.  

In her book, Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria, psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum explains that Black kids learned to process race with their own community.  They needed space where no one questions their Black experiences.  By sitting with the other black kids, they could talk about race, microaggressions and unfairness and no one would invalidate them.  These kids were more likely to have people understand their experiences.  Through this they learned how to talk about race.  They could see racism because they didn’t (and couldn’t) ignore.  

White people need to process their White Guilt with other White people.  Not just now.  There is a lot of unpacking to do.  We are seeing the abuse we have done on our neighbors and we want to earn back their trust.  Brené Brown always talks about trust as the frame of a Marble Jar.  Trust is many little things that build up over time.  If I do an Anti-racist action then I will earn a marble of trust in the jar.  But I may still do an Racist action (even unintentionally or through inaction) and I will lose a marble from that jar.  We need to refill that jar with multiple anti-racist actions.  We need to learn how to be anti-racist when the fire cools down to always keep that jar full.  

Again I think as a couples therapist.  When the trust is broken, the one that broke the trust always asks ‘what can I do to make it better?’  But if they understood their guilt better and how the other person was hurt, then they could make the answers of how to repair the relationship for themselves.  The hurt party can’t tell them how to repair the relationship.  The hurt person doesn't trust the other person and they are dealing with their own pain of being hurt.  They need the other person to understand their pain and for that person who caused the pain needs to do the work.  Often I have heard that hurt partner say “You need to step up and fix this!”  The one who caused the pain needs to look inside their guilt and not put any more pressure on the relationship and the hurt partner by asking them to do more when they are in pain.  

We need to sit with our White Guilt.  We need to find the answers for ourselves and not ask more of our hurt Black Brothers and Black Sisters.   They are trying to validate their own pain.  They are finally having permission to feel their anger.  Their hearts have been holding a heavy pain.  They need to process their own pain.  We need to step up not through actions that will make us feel better now, but that will bring change in how we interact with the whole system.

What should I do with my White Guilt?

We White Folks are learning how to process this.  I understand that people need some structure.  I have been helping clients go through their own process.  I’ve been thankful for the Racial Justice Book Club that I was in before all this (hence the multiple books I have cited in here).  I have had time to process my own White Guilt to help others process their own.  I’m still processing my White Guilt, but below are things I think are helpful first steps to process this White Guilt.  

As I have said I am processing this on my own as well.  I’m sharing some of what I’m learning because we need to learn together and not in a vacuum.  If I want to earn the trust back from Black people I must sit with this White Guilt.  I must use that White Guilt to change how I see the world.  I can not just get distracted by doing something to relieve the guilt but understand the guilt to do better and be better.  

How did you learn to talk about race?

I mentioned before that Black and POC kids have to learn to find spaces to talk and express their own identities.  Consider how you learned to talk about race.  This often  isn’t something blatant, but something we just pick up by observing others.  Color-Blind mentality tries to not talk about race and sometimes children are shushed when they ask questions about race or see an embarrassed reaction from the parent.  There is no ill-intent, but the impact of it is that the child learns it is inappropriate to talk about race.  Or we might see actual racist statements/jokes said and learn it is okay to talk that way.  

As a gay youth, I had to find gay spaces to talk about being gay to help form my identity.  As a White person, I was never forced to talk about race.  I learned systematically that you can notice the differences, but you don’t talk about them.  My mother gave me books about Native Americans taken away from their tribes to be schooled by White folks, and Chinese Immigrant stories and my school had African American literature, but we never truly learned how to talk about race.  Other people in my life might say blatantly racist statements or ones that might count as microaggressions and I learned not to talk about it.  You don’t bring it up.  This is part of my own White Guilt.  I must unlearn what I have been taught in not talking about it.  

At this moment, What are you learning you did not know before?

A flood of information is being sent our way.  We are processing the unfair deaths of so many Black individuals.  We are taking in account all the things we could turn a blind eye to for so long.  I had one client ponder if people are getting it more now because they are less distracted due to the Covid 19 Pandemic.  People are not at work or doing less social things and have more time to actually process systematic racism.  We may never know.  But it shouldn’t take a pandemic for us to see the numerous murders and injustices that happen.  

We have a lot of knowledge to process.  Do not look away from the knowledge.  Process how you were blind before.  I grew up in a very blue collar neighborhood where cops were literally my neighbors.  I felt safe with them.  I felt like I could trust them.  I heard stories of misconduct but never let it actually hit me to the core.  I knew “good” cops and just thought there were bad seeds in the bunch.  But I’m unpacking that those bad seeds keep getting more powerful and keep getting away with bad behaviors with no repercussions.  I learned that those “good” cops are part of racism either through their inaction or because they haven’t processed their own racist behaviors.  

 How did you learn to accept racism as something not to address?

How as White people did we learn that racism wasn’t our fight?  We learned that along the way.  Maybe we were being defensive?  Maybe we shut down when we were challenged?   As stated before were we too distracted to pay attention?  We must understand why we were blind before this.  We can not close our eyes again.  

I grew up in a neighborhood that was very Irish oriented.  Instead of processing what it was to be White, I focused on what it was to be Irish.  I grew up in a segregated neighborhood and never learned how to address it.  Later as I was learning about what being gay meant I took so little time to think about what it was to be White because they would saw White as “normal” and everything else as “different.”  Being gay was my “different” and I never thought they were the same thing, but I compared the two very often.  In this I inadvertently made it so it seemed like my pain of being gay was the same as the paid of being Black.  I never took the time to understand what it was to be Black cause I was too focused on my own experience.  I’m now trying to understand racism in the gay community, but also racism within the therapy field.  What is it like to be gay and Black?  What is it like for a Black client seeking mental health or a Black therapist to work in the field?  

What is not going back to “normal” look like for you?

True White Guilt is about finding ways to bring about systemic change.  It is not just giving a nice statement that you support Black Lives Matter or Black employees.  It is not about just giving money to Black charities.  Again these are good actions.  They do not dismantle racism.  We must use our White Guilt to learn.  We must learn about the past.  

There is the old adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  We must learn from the past even if it is not our own.  Black people carry scares from the past, not just within their lifetimes, but for generations.  But it is more than just remembering; we must process the past.  White Guilt is sitting in what we are learning and seeing and learn not to do it again.  

I have acknowledge my White Guilt.  I am not done acknowledging my White Guilt.  I have so much more to learn.  I won’t stop.  I can’t stop.  Too many Black people have suffered because I didn’t sit with this White Guilt before.  I can’t unsee this White Guilt.  I am crying as I write this because I feel my White Guilt.  I must let it stay there and acknowledge that it is there.  With this I will learn.  I will do better.  I will continue to find space to talk to other White people about race.

Avoidance of shutting down

DiAngelo challenges us to reflect on our own White Fragility.  If we keep having these reactions we will never learn from our past mistakes.  While I continue to urge you to sit with your White Guilt, pace yourself.  If we shut down into a sham spiral we just focus on how awful we feel and not how to actually be better.  Shame is ‘I did something wrong and I’m a horrible person’(and thus can not change).  Guilt is ‘I did something wrong and need to do better next time.’  That is why I use the term White Guilt.  We need to do better next time and the time after that.  

Pay attention to when you shut down.  We all have a breaking point in difficult conversations.  You can not keep pushing yourself past your limit.  If you do there is a high chance you will experience burnout or compassion fatigue.  If this happens you may inadvertently learn that racism is too big to handle and walk away from the conversation.  Selfcare is part of this process.  We have a lot of unpacking to do, so pace yourself.  It is a long journey to go.  

What are safe spaces to talk about race?

Now that you spent some time thinking about these questions there is a next step.  Talk about them.  Don’t just keep it in your head.  We might understand them, but conveying these ideas to another person allows us to process it deeper.  It also helps us unlearn our inability to talk about it.  

We need a safe space to talk about it.  We need someone who will not shame us, who will work on understanding our perspectives, and hold a nonjudgmental space.  We need this safety and trust to talk about it with others.  Who would be someone you could be open and vulnerable with?  How would you start the conversation with them?  

My Racial Justice Book Club has helped me process many of these aspects.  I am overcome with gratitude for its existence and creating a space for me to process these aspects.  I am trying to create new spaces for White people to talk about race.  I am talking with my clients intentionally about race and guiding them in how to unpack this as well. I want them to learn to talk about race with their peers as well.  

It can not go back to normal.  Black people are hurting too much and they will keep hurting until we acknowledge our White Guilt.

My last last sentiment as a couples therapist.  I see this discomfort when an unfaithful partner sees their other partner in pain.  They ask them when will you stop living in the past.  “Won’t you get over it?”  It is hard for them to sit with their own guilt through the process, but they also hate seeing their partner in distress.  They want to know when the other partner can stop living in the past and when can they stop making them acknowledge their own faults.  

I give a simple answer to explain when these behaviors will end: “When the hurting stops.”