Is “white guilt” really real? Slavoj Žižek thinks so.
The Slovenian political philosopher (once dubbed “the most dangerous philosopher in the West” by the New Republic and “the Elvis of cultural theory” by The Chronicle of Higher Education) has written a communist manifesto, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, challenging contemporary interpretations of 9/11 and of the global financial meltdown of 2008. I won’t try to capture all the nuances of that ambitious and provocative work, but I will give you my version of its punch line: that only what Žižek calls “a dictatorship of the proletariat” can make up for the limitations and constitutive exclusions that inescapably define capitalism (and liberalism and socialism) in all of their various guises.
Far from being a threat to capitalism’s undeniable ubiquity and unchallenged global hegemony (as some Leftists attempt to interpret things), Žižek sees the current global recession as potentially clearing the way for even more ramped up capitalist hysteria/utopianism. He also frames it as the context/pretext for intensified tensions between “democracy” (as a political system) and “capitalism” (as an economic formation). What if “capitalism with Asian values” (i.e., the invisible hand of the free market tightly clasped with an iron fist of totalitarianism) proves to be a more efficient and effective way to capitalize on the fundamental logic of capitalism?
French historian Pierre Rosanvallon claims that Scottish Enlightenment thinker Adam Smith was, in effect, arguing for “the withering away of politics,” theorizing the emergence of a free market system that could potentially govern all of social life (rationally and fairly) without recourse to merely political concerns and considerations. Žižek’s critique of the complicities between and among liberalism, socialism, and capitalism similarly asks what we might gain from thinking long and hard about how particular understandings of the relationship between politics and economics get naturalized.
As part of his argument, Žižek rails against the pathetic hubris of “white guilt,” what he labels “an inverted form of clinging to one’s superiority.” Quoting from a section of Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, a passage that Žižek describes as demonstrating Fanon’s “refusal to capitalize on the guilt of the colonizers,” Žižek demands that his readers inoculate themselves from the seductive sickness of “identity politics” in all of its “private” and non-universal forms (race, gender, sexuality, religion, and so on).
To be fair, this last point is little more than an aside for Žižek, a drive-by theoretical shooting along a tiny stretch of the much longer highway that eventually leads home to the Communist idea, but any real discussion of “white guilt” (and the ostensible implications thereof) would have to talk about Shelby Steele. For Steele, white guilt isn’t an aside. It is one of America’s central dilemmas. His book on the subject, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, argues that “white guilt is quite literally the same thing as black power,” the reduction of moral authority to a zero-sum game between blacks and whites wherein what was once the stigma of race becomes the neo-stigma of racism. The more guilty whites feel about race/racism, the more empowered blacks are to use accusations of racism (and invocations of America’s racist history) as a disciplining rod. Steele cautions against the lure of white guilt: for blacks, as a form of political capital; for whites, as a performance of social penance.
To hear Steele describe it, white guilt sounds like a metaphysical totality that overdetermines contemporary American life (and maybe not just the parts that have anything to do with racial issues). White guilt gets cast as the overarching organizing principle for race relations, but is that really true? Does white guilt explain the central dynamics of contemporary inter-racial exchanges and interactions?
In this version of things, “playing the race card” is political slang for attempting to exploit forms of white guilt. Affirmative Action gets dismissed as a policy predicated on a misguided effort to manage and minimize white guilt. But is “white guilt” really real? I mean, any more so than, say, what we might call middle-class guilt (vis-à-vis poor people)? Or heterosexual guilt (vis-à-vis homosexuals)? Or even, say, Christian guilt (vis-a-vis Muslims)? What manner of “guilt” is this? And does it make sense to offer it up as the analytical framework for our contemporary socio-racial moment?
Indeed, white guilt doesn’t seem to define the ethos behind the Tea Party push. Janeane Garofalo isn’t the only one who wants to characterize them as reactionary and racist, as anti-Obama simply because they’re anti-black. Self-professed Tea Partyers take offense to such accusations, and they also seem to display a decided lack of guilt about America’s racial history, a guilt-freedom that serves as one of the engines powering their political efforts. I would think that even though most Americans (and most white Americans) aren’t card carrying Tea Party types, they also aren’t particularly angst-filled about America’s racial history either. Few Americans are.
Maybe a powerful film or book can provoke a pang of sadness, humanizing the past in ways that are poignant and real. And I wouldn’t argue that white Americans never reflect on how or why under-represented minorities are so under-represented in elite spheres. But is it really accurate to claim that “white guilt” haunts the American psyche? Can we use that to explain anti-racist efforts anymore than we can use that aforementioned “heterosexual guilt” as the fundamental psychological drive behind the push to get rid of “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the military? In fact, people are increasingly willing to invoke bad genes or the “culture of poverty” (over and against America’s sordid racial history) to explain contemporary racial disparities in education and employment. That seems like a powerful anti-guilt move.
Most of Obama’s detractors might be extra careful about deploying their political rhetoric so that they don’t find themselves described as racist, bowing to some of the mandates of a politically corrected public sphere, but they have no qualms at all about attacking America’s first black president with all the gusto they can muster. They are trying to foment a revolution, and they don’t feel guilty about that, not one bit.
Of course, Steele was talking more about liberals than conservatives. Žižek was too. But I’m not sure that “white guilt” is as big a problem as these cultural critics make it out to be. Moreover, the election of President Obama might be ushering in an era of “white rage” that is more than giving “white guilt” a run for its money.
13 Responses to ‘White Guilt’ and the Revolution
luther_blissett - June 9, 2010 at 10:16 pm
My main problem with identity politics is that they suggest that justifications for political change are all in the past: the history of racism, the history of sexism, the history of Amerindian removal, etc.What all of this implies is that those who suffer but suffer without such a history are essentially to blame for their suffering.The argument from class gets beyond all this. The poor white child and the poor black child are equally innocent. No need to bring in the past. Who cares why they are poor! Their parents might have made all sorts of stupid decisions. But why should that affect the children? Understanding why they are poor becomes an academic question, interesting, but beside the point. Instead, we’re forced to ask ourselves, “Why should children suffer for choices they themselves didn’t make? What can a society do to ensure that all children compete on an equal basis?”
rumagin - June 10, 2010 at 4:35 am
@ the ex watford footballer”Why should children suffer for choices they themselves didn’t make? What can a society do to ensure that all children compete on an equal basis?”- Capitalist logic, i.e. the motion of capital does not ask such questions nor does it care to answer them.
stinkcat - June 10, 2010 at 9:55 am
“but they have no qualms at all about attacking America’s first black president with all the gusto they can muster.”As well they should. After all, there is a significant difference in political views between conservatives and the president. If they attacked Bill Clinton with all the gusto they can muster, it would be racist not to do the same thing to Obama just because of his skin color.
callmemiss - June 10, 2010 at 11:43 am
Perhaps someone other than the author can take a stab at what this essay is trying to say. If it has a thesis, it’s well disguised. I think the author is trying to say “Shelby Steele is wrong.” (A contention a little late to the party, considering White Guilt came out in 2006.) But if this is Jackson’s thesis, he undercuts his own argument–”To hear Steele describe it, white guilt sounds like a metaphysical totality that overdetermines contemporary American life”–when he says, “For Steele, white guilt….is ONE of America’s central dilemmas.” (Emphasis added.)But then Jackson finally gets to what I suppose is his thesis when he concludes, “the election of President Obama might be ushering in an era of ‘white rage’ that is more than giving ‘white guilt’ a run for its money.” In other words: if whites really felt “guilty” they would not “attac[k] America’s first black president with all the gusto they can muster.” Would that we actually did live in such a black-and-white world as Jackson describes, in which the rule is if you’re not for us, you’re against us. But we don’t. I don’t.
trendisnotdestiny - June 10, 2010 at 12:21 pm
What if white guilt is a necessary part of a process of repair? What if it is not an inverted clinging onto privilege, but a remembrance of how one’s privilege can be constructed socially through racism? What if transgenerational wealth attained by one white family is directly related to the poverty of families of color? Acknowledging the transgenerational abuses, privileges and power process reminds all of us that we have a responsibility to change the system, even if this means losing privilege. For those concerned with making amends: (something that cannot possibly be done completely) 1) you first have to acknowledge the problems (stop blaming the victims of racism and begin to own the historical parts)2) second you have to be commited to not re-enacting racism again(knowing that racism operates: overtly, covertly and institutionally) (also knowing by virtue of living in this culture we all have some degree of embedded racism and through a process of engaged awareness it can be slowly reduced)3) third, attempting to repair relations at all levels (possibly not through guilt or shame, but the conviction that our similarities of humaness are more important than our historical prejudices) always acknowledging that 300 years of colonizing oppression cannot be undone in one moment, one relationship and one year, but steadily over time where intentions and actions meet consistently…If this process can begin with White Guilt and end with a received sustained effort at repair (knowing it will never be enough), then guilt can morph into something more productive for everyone: awareness… we need more humanists
johnljacksonjr - June 10, 2010 at 1:23 pm
These are all such differently pitched responses. And appreciated reading them all. i did want to say a few quick things in response: stinkcat, i think i agree with you. trendisnotdestiny, thanks for providing your take on white guilt’s potential utility. callmemiss, i would emphasize the CENTRAL as opposed to the ONE in the sentence you cite. and i would love to have more discussions with you about how black-and-white our respective worlds might be. luther_blissett, thanks for your formulation of the stakes. and what did you think of rumagin’s response?
tbdiscovery - June 10, 2010 at 4:01 pm
You should look into the history books children are reading (or even the June 4 CHE article on liberal summer reading) – white guilt is inculcated from the very beginning. For the current young generation, much of this education has led them to be quite liberal and filled with white guilt. For those who refuse to be indoctrinated, such efforts have made them very cautious of schoolteachers, the media, politicians, and authority in general.Intellectuals manifested white guilt; yet now you wish to act as if those who are finally breaking away from the mainstream are the reasons to doubt that white guilt ever existed. As long as there cannot be outright white pride, then there will be white guilt.
generally_academic - June 10, 2010 at 6:11 pm
We need more white guilt among the extreme right-wing ChristoFascists who come into class, refuse to learn, disrupt the class, and make threats against our minority faculty. But don’t hold your breath.
stinkcat - June 10, 2010 at 6:16 pm
“extreme right-wing ChristoFascists who come into class, refuse to learn, disrupt the class, and make threats against our minority faculty”Can you give a citation of a ChristoFascist (whatever that is) making a threat against a minority faculty member?
trendisnotdestiny - June 11, 2010 at 1:53 am
John,Thanks for the reply… After reading the threads again I am reminded of my own ignorance developmentally over time. It made me consider past, present and future dimensions: racism, white guilt and hooks’ intersectionality… I do not know if white guilt is useful at all to be honest here… but I study payday and predatory lenders and my take is that we all share some responsibility and guilt for creating financial structures in communities of color where interest rates exceed usury… This is not a recent event, but the wealth accumulated by white men owners of these companies can be tied directly to the poverty of minority families in this country and overseas… btw 2010 reminds us that there is NO estate tax on huge estates (sunshine provision exempting estates of 2million and over to pay no tax where historically 45-55%)… This combined with the fact that our country is in the process of dismantling the New Deal commitments and cutting supports to families in most need is shameful…shameful beyond racism but also contributing to it.Fraud on wall street, systematic financial oppression and the thousand tiny little cuts of de-regulation all point to a white male privileged agenda of retaining power for another generation through globalizing finance; as more african and latino american men are imprisoned domestically and more bases are built to acquire resources internationally… all the while we hear our politicians asking us why don’t we love our country as if loyalty is synonomous with leaving our critical thinking to the elite experts… John, sorry for this rambling, but to tell the truth, there is so much to be ashamed about (even though I didn’t create this, I and many others have been a party to it, risking nothing and benefitting from McIntosh’s invisible knapsack).Thanks for your work
honore - June 11, 2010 at 9:55 am
Don’t believe it for a minute, “white guilt” exists only in the lexicon of the clever political charlatan and the deluded fake campus “ally” that parades on our campuses as self-appointed agents of racial change.But ask them what we should change into and mosquitos begin to enter and exit their mouths with much frequency. You know who they are. They’re always center stage at all the “diversity” outrage spectacles. That is of course when they are not booking their ski vacations to ALL-WHITE resorts in the Rockies or taking month long cruises up the fjords, where their “white guilt” politics are not likely to be challenges by the the polar bears.On my campus their population never seems to dwindle. There they are in upper administration making cameo appearnces for the 6 o’clock news cameras spouting their latest sound byte of coded white guilt, no doubt including words such as “marginalized”, “diaspora” or (my favorite) “inclusive excellence”.And then as soon as the cameras are off, they jump into their Volvos, Saabs or BMWs and race back to their all-white enclaves in University Heights to meet with their architects about that 300K addition to their already-preciously restored Frank Lloyd Wright house.Blacks and other minorities see-through their disengenuousness, but stay quiet so they can seize on these “white guilt” buffoons when the opportunity arises to force them to concede political crumbs whenever they are dropped in advertently.White Guilt? Don’t you believe it.It sounds good, but so do the Taco Bell ads during the Super Bowl and no thanks, I’ll pass up that drive up window and any conversations with talking Chihuahuas……sifting and wallowing in Madison, WI
t_paine - June 11, 2010 at 7:01 pm
I am a white man and I have no white guilt.I do have some guilt for things I’ve done or failed to do, but I know enough not to assume responsibility for earthquakes, the extinction of the dinosaurs, or man’s inhumanity to man.Nowhere on the planet do I find a healthy, productive black culture, and none that exceeds what African-Americans have achieved here in the oppressive USA. Cultures, peoples, civilizations, do not play fair: they dominate or they succumb. Being oppressed is evidence of oppress-ability.I can find no people in history without the experience of slavery, in both roles, as slave and slaver.The only way up to strength is to stop finding excuses for your inadequacies. Or, if you wish, blame someone and keep dancing. The fact is if you could have overcome, you would have.
trendisnotdestiny - June 11, 2010 at 8:31 pm
honore, I share your skepticism as well as your experience of witnessing the hypocrisy around “white guilt”; as I am hypocritical myself in how I spend emotional and physical capital in my social communities…But your critique has more to do with socio-economic hypocrisy and the aspirations of many concerned about racism to demonstrate their wealth or accumulate more power… I wonder if it is more complex than how you characterize it… While you are obviously correct about hypocrisy, there are relatively very few roadmaps or guidebooks on where, what and how to live out your beliefs in this country (where taco bell’s are right next door to the payday lender); Arlie Hochschild attributes these problems not to hypocrisy but to individualism, dysfunctional sense of work ethic and religious form of competition… I wonder if there weren’t more communities looking to avoid these hypocrisies if academics selling white guilt wouldn’t have to make more concrete and visible choices beyond how they spend capital… you know words meeting actionst_paine,your words have a sting to them that suggests: “this is reality, get over it”. This is not the work of someone who is reflexive, but more of someone who reports conditions… When it comes to white guilt, black empowerment and racism, the last thing we need from white men (as I am one too) is to be the reporter of how things are: in so many ways we have already lost that credibility… For me, have a little piece of white guilt reminds me that my historical bent towards individualistic, competitive and over-worked themes increases my distance from other humans (whatever their characteristics, histories and stories)