A White Man's Musings on A Black Woman's Musings

As someone who has diaried on race before I took great interest in these two recent diaries.   Coffee with my Dad and A Black Woman's Musings on Coffee with My Dad.  I thought they both provided valuable insight into thoughts on race in America from two incredibly different persepectives.  And it led to some musings.

First a little background on how I identify with Barack Obama.  After Obama won his race for Senate, I read Dreams From My Father.  I had begun to get into some community politics on a local level and the book fascinated me.   I recommended it to all the organizers I knew.   I also strongly identified with Barack in several ways.  While I'm ten years younger we shared a lot in common.  I moved around a lot as a kid and never really fit in in schools.  Like Barack, I found solace on the basketball court.  I then headed to college and like Barack, partied a bit too hard as I was trying to figure out who I was and had no clue.  However, I made it through an Ivy League school (like Barack) but I had no idea what I wanted to do.  I ended up in corporate America and was told I had a bright future there.  Like Barack, I didn't last long and chose a different path.  Unlike him I didn't have the balls to go try to organize poor people in poor neighborhoods.  I started my own business.  However, I honestly felt that here was a guy I had a lot in common with on many levels.  Now I'm sure many would say that as a white man I may have shared some general experiences with Barack but that all of that is insignificant to the fact that he was a black man in America.   You'll get no argument from me on that one.



There were some things in the Musings diary that struck me that I wanted to comment on, mainly the ideas in this quote.

What I see happening instead, as reflected in this diary and many conversations I have observed and read, is white people, left and right wing, subconsciously unifying in an effort to fulfill one of their deepest (yet rarely acknowledged and usually vehemently denied) desires since the 1960's:  the desire to once and for all free themselves of any guilt for, and any sense of personal obligation to fix, the damage wrought on African-Americans from hundreds of years of American white supremacy and all its institutionalized racism in the present generation.

I can't speak for all the whites in the country or what they subconsciously are doing but this statement came across to me as just plain wrong.  On several levels.  

1.  If you think one of the "deepest desires" of whites is to free themselves of guilt over slavery and racism in America, I think you are making a grave miscalculation on two levels.  One, I don't think most white americans give a damn on this subject.  I've never met one who says anything on the subject.   Two, I've thought about this a lot and I can assure you that I don't have one shred of guilt about slavery and racism in America.  I don't feel the need to be freed of something that for me doesn't exist.  I don't feel guilty about the destruction of native americans either.   I think all of these things are horrible events in history (like so many others) but I don't walk around bearing that burden.  Why?  I didn't do it and I'm not taking responsibility for every bad thing ever done by people who happen to look like me.  And I'm surely not going to base decisions in my life on trying to make up for the misdeeds of people I have nothing to do with.

2.  This is second part I had a problem with

The desire to once and for all free themselves of any sense of personal obligation to fix the damage wrought on African-Americans from hundreds of years of American white supremacy and all its institutionalized racism in the present generation.

I'll return to my first point and criticism.  I don't think anyone is voting for Obama so they don't feel like they have to work to help make the lives of black americans better.  If they aren't doing that type of work now, it ain't like they are going to start just because Obama isn't elected.   And if they are doing it, its not like they are going to stop.  In my city the white liberals are the ones doing the most to help the poor communities (mostly black population).   Perhaps they do it out of guilt but I doubt it.  And the sad truth is, if they didn't do it, no one else would.