{"id":29293,"date":"2010-12-06T10:37:22","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T15:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=29293"},"modified":"2013-11-23T03:52:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-23T08:52:52","slug":"should-white-men-feel-guilty-for-the-sins-of-their-fathers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2010\/12\/06\/should-white-men-feel-guilty-for-the-sins-of-their-fathers\/","title":{"rendered":"Should White Men Feel Guilty?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tim Wise answers just this question in this 2 1\/2 minute clip featured on his website<\/a>. \u00a0Sneak peak: His answer begins with “No.\u00a0You should feel angry<\/em>.”<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Laurie J graciously pasted the transcript in the comments; I’ve added it after the jump.<\/p>\n

Transcript:<\/p>\n

Questioner (off-camera): Um, as a white male, should I feel guilty for the sins of my fathers. I affirm that they exist, but should I feel guilty for them?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tim Wise: No. You should feel angry. And you should feel committed to doing something to address that legacy. It\u2019s like, for instance, with pollution, right? We think about the issue of pollution. Now none of us in this room, to my knowledge, are individually responsible for having belched any toxic waste into the air, or injecting toxic waste into the soil, or done any of the things\u2026 we didn\u2019t put lead paint into the housing, you know?<\/p>\n

Individually we\u2019re innocent of that. But someone did that stuff, and we\u2019re living with the legacy of it right now, or in this case might be dying with the legacy of it, getting ill, right?.<\/p>\n

So it isn\u2019t about feeling guilty about what someone did, even if you were the direct heir of the chemical company that did the pollution, but it is about saying, all of us in the society have to take responsibility for what we find in front of us. There\u2019s a big difference between guilt and responsibility.<\/p>\n

Guilt is what you feel for what you\u2019ve done. Responsibility is what you take because of the kind of person you are, right? And so if I see a set of social conditions that have been handed to you, and which not only did wrong by othrs but elevated me and give me advantage that I did not earn, it\u2019s not about beating myself up, I\u2019m not responsible for that having happened, I\u2019m not to blame for it, so guilt is totally unproductive<\/p>\n

But in order to live an ethical life, to live ethically and responsibly, I have to take some responsibility for the unearned advantage, which means working to change the society that bestows that advantage. It\u2019s not guilt, but it is responsiblity. It\u2019s no different than looking at the issue of pollution or if you became the CFO of the company, you wouldn\u2019t be able to come in and say, \u201cI intend to use the assets of this company, and I insend to put them to greater use, and I intend to use the revenue stream we\u2019ve got going, but that whole debt side of the ledger? No, I\u2019m not paying any of that because I wasn\u2019t here when the other person ran all that debt up. You should\u2019ve gotten them to pay it before you gave me the job. Now I\u2019m here, and I\u2019m innocent.\u201d We would realize that made no sense.<\/p>\n

So isn\u2019t about innocence and it isn\u2019t about guilt, it\u2019s about responsibility, that\u2019s something we all have to take. White folks have to take it, people of color have to take it, uh, men and women have to take\u2026 everybody has got to take it, because we\u2019re living with\u2026 if we don\u2019t do it, no one does it, and it doesnt\u2019 get done. We\u2019re the only hope we have.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tim Wise answers just this question in this 2 1\/2 minute clip featured on his website. \u00a0Sneak peak: His answer begins with “No.\u00a0You should feel angry.” Laurie J graciously pasted the transcript in the comments; I’ve added it after the jump. Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12508,329,253,283,285,1757],"class_list":["post-29293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-activismsocial-movements","tag-emotion","tag-history","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29293"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59407,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29293\/revisions\/59407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}