Why White Guilt?

Targeted Demographic: Individuals of any race who write off acts of generosity or kindness from whites to any other race because "they are obviously just feeling the white guilt! They're obviously not sincere!" Or any other such bull shit relating to the concept of "white guilt."

In case it wasn't obvious from the tone of the TD, I'd like to point out that I fucking despise this entire concept; as someone whose love of literature in part grows from his acknowledgement of its capability to provide a voice to the voiceless and stomped on, I encounter a lot of stories (both fact and fiction) of people who have felt the oppressive hand of the majority who, in most cases, happens to be power-hungry white dudes. And yet, I shouldn't feel guilty? I shouldn't feel sickened by the actions of people with whom I share a common identity? After all, why should I feel embarrassed? I didn't do any of those heinous things? I'm not the oppressor, I just look like him.

The problem with this is I'd feel guilty even if I wasn't white. I'd look at the acts of those people who I inevitably share some commonality with and be ashamed. But because I am white, any action to rectify or repair the cultural damage is nulled, insincere, unimportant.

Well fuck that. I would feel black guilt if I was black for gangster rap, for BET, for a popular culture that demeans woman and rights off any attempt at personal progress as meaningless because "we're disadvantaged;" I would feel woman guilt for feminine-ism (look it up, it's ridiculous), for taking the freedoms and near-equality gained in the sexual revolution and squandering them on the ability to spend your own money on makeup and trampy clothes instead of your husbands, for the modelling industry; I would feel Christian guilt for allowing the Political right to steal a two-thousand year old religion and re-write it for use in their political agenda, for falling into a mindless follower position despite a religion born of anti-conformity; I'd have Islamic guilt for the extremists who feel it necessary to represent their religion through explosives instead of words.

But I wouldn't be written off for those types of guilt because all of those demographics help form people's identities. White can't be an identity; being white is the lack of racial identity because by forming your identity in part as "a white man," you are siding with the KKK, with the Aryan Nation, with everybody's worst imaginings of an oppressive being, with Bill O'Reilly. Screw that. I am left without a racial identity but I'm still clustered with a bunch of numb-nut assholes who have been lording over (in spite of a number of size issues) every other race on the planet for too many god-damned years.

I'm not asking anybody to feel bad for white folks because they're not allowed to relate to their race unless they happen to be heartless bigots. I don't expect anybody to feel sorry for the majority. But I expect the damn right to do whatever I can to change the common perception of what it means to be white without being written off by a bunch of fucking pricks who feel the need to compensate their inability to do anything productive in society by claiming I'm just feeling white guilt which, incidentally, they probably feel too but feel the need to repress because they're secretly (or not) just really glad they didn't draw the racial short-stick in American society so they don't have to worry about minorities. Or other people at all.