Social media posts, news headlines, political protests—racial tension dominates these forms of public discourse. While the Civil Rights Era spoke peace into the problem, shaking America awake to the reality of its crimes, the period following that did just the opposite. Beginning in the 1960s, a new era of white guilt evolved, functioning as yet another form of racism, the other side  of white supremacy. Ashamed of their past, white Americans sought to make amends with African Americans, but injured both parties in the process. Race relations scholar Shelby Steele employs a prosaic narrative of his own personal and political maturation to illustrate how white guilt and reactionary black anger exacerbate racial tensions and unravel moral progress.

What is white guilt? It’s touted about in political language and everyday conversation, but still, its definition is oftentimes murky. The author depicts a memorable brush with white guilt, recounting the time he and several other black students marched their way into their university president’s office in order to list various demands they felt obliged to receive. The university president, who was himself a white man, appeared to flinch at the intrusion but then willfully agreed to each of the group’s requests. This was in the period of time following the Civil Rights Era, in which the traditionally peaceful way of demonstrating for equality of rights and opportunity was replaced by a new mindset, one created by white guilt.

According to the author, white guilt consists of the absence of moral independence on the part of white America. Bogged down by the country’s horrific past, culture sees no way to break away from its sins and loses its sense of moral autonomy as a result. By emphasizing its own social morality in race relations, it hopes to regain its moral authority. This behavior of repaying previously oppressed people is motivated by fear, not kindness. Guilt moved the university president and various contemporary institutions to regard race in decision making in order to say, “Yes, white people have improved, and the proof is in the act.” But therein lies the trap of allowing guilt to guide behavior. White guilt disadvantages African Americans yet again, as it traps them into a position of inferiority in order for white Americans to consider themselves moral again.

The author notes that while white guilt is significantly destructive to African Americans, it’s still a huge improvement from white supremacy in terms of morality, equality, and social relations. Beginning in 1964 through to 1968 with the passing of both Civil Rights Acts, people began to confront racism as a true societal crime, which had not been done on a large scale before. These laws not only led to the movement away from Jim Crow laws, but they also enabled greater material equality by prohibiting discriminatory treatment under law and in housing opportunities. This shift that took place primarily after the 1968 Civil Rights Act is significant and impactful to the whole of American culture. 

At a speaking event for comedian and civil rights activist Dick Gregory, the author encountered the other injurious mindset that functions in relation to white guilt—black rage. Fueled by Karl Marx’s concept of social determinism, or the theory that cultural constructs drive human habits and ways of thinking, black rage operates under the assumption that racism is ingrained in the structures of society. This was the ideal way to root out additional racism in a society that had just achieved equality of rights and opportunity in tangible ways. Today’s conversations concerning “systemic” injustice and racism evolve from here. White guilt seeks to address this form of global racism, distinct from the more visible forms of racism confronted in the Civil Rights Era. Now, a majority of racism is attributed to societal systems rather than particular racist acts or language.

A culture of guilt-ridden and anger-driven behavior will never achieve true moral progress. Conflating race and individual identity is dangerous, even though on the surface it seems to help minorities in a society bent against them. This kind of thinking reignites new forms of racism, perpetuates social discord, and sets culture back into prejudicial patterns it sought freedom from long ago.

Despite the fact that society was literally against him, the author’s father built for himself a life with his own hands in the pre-Civil Rights era of the ‘30s and ‘40s; he relied upon no one else’s responsibility but his own. During the time in which his father was living and trying to construct an existence for himself amidst the moral wreckage of his country, societal systems were clearly racist. Though he had all the freedom to do with his life what he wished and the responsibility within that, his opportunities to stretch this freedom were still limited. And yet, he pressed on. At this time though, an African American’s ability to to live freely and make his own way in life was injured by racism, and people used the idea of responsibility against African Americans, while at the same time preventing them from improving their lives in many ways. At that time, most of the talk about African Americans’ responsibility for their own lives was laced with racial injustice and inequality.

After the success of the Civil Rights Era, opportunities increased and conditions improved for African Americans, but a new enemy had come to life—white guilt arrived on the scene. Despite the fact that full responsibility is what makes us fully human, white guilt attempted to relinquish this from minorities through welfare programs and affirmative action initiatives. In the past, the responsibility that African Americans had to better their lives was hugely disadvantaged by explicitly racist laws and institutions; as a result, it is hard to separate the idea of African American responsibility from this negative history, and people try, erroneously, to make things right through the types of programs mentioned above. White guilt and the actions that stem from it establish a cultural framework within which racism and African American victimization linger. As long as that is the case, African Americans are unable to assume full responsibility for their own improvement. Affirmative action may give minorities advantages with the intention of creating more equal ground, but it comes at the cost of their responsibility and their humanity. 

The author compares the militant politics of Malcolm X with the new era of black rage. Though anger is an integral component to both movements, Malcolm X advocated for the acceptance of responsibility despite potential setbacks. The newer black rage movement the author grew to be a part of as a youth sought to free itself from responsibilities, looking to guilt-ridden white institutions to take control instead. The author pins this failure to accept responsibility for one’s own improvement to dread. He had witnessed all that his father went through to act within his responsibility, and he was rightfully afraid. White guilt was ready to accept responsibility for oppression of African Americans—taking responsibility gave white people back a sense of moral control. 

Relinquishing this responsibility for African Americans’ future improvement, and allowing for it to be taken, prevents true progress. “Results reform” may seem like a good idea in theory, but in reality, it doesn’t work. Things like lowering SAT score qualifications for minorities might appear to be a productive way to equalize an otherwise biased cultural construct, but the author argues that it does no good. Without full responsibility, people are unable to accept their own improvement as a product dependent only on them. The absence of responsibility holds people back, breaking their desire and handicapping their freedom.

Tie dye-wearing hippies and sign-wielding pacificts might come to mind when someone brings up the ‘60s. But why do such displays of youthful rebellion characterize that time period, and how do they interact with the civil rights movement and the growth of white guilt? The author argues that just at the moment in history when white supremacy began to question its own moral authority, evolving into a form of white guilt, the youths rebelled. A natural tendency for the young to test the limits of adult authority grew into a political statement, one which aided the growth of white guilt and the belief that all of white history is tied to evil.

Though youth of all backgrounds flocked to the civil rights movement, by the mid-‘60s the movement transformed from one that was just about testing adult authority into one fueled more by anger and separatism. The beginnings of black rage emerged, and black protesters refused the involvement of white people. Some youth began to move into other movements, which the author describes as the creation of the “counterculture consciousness.” This consciousness sought to expel America’s past crimes in the areas of war, women’s rights, and environmental issues. The civil rights movement had awakened the United States to its past, and now there was no stopping it. The counterculture movement truly did correct various national crimes, and white guilt worked to its benefit. The timing for all of this was perfect, too. The moral superiority of white supremacy was crumbling, and in its wake, the rebellious Baby Boomers sought to resurrect a new national identity and source of morality. 

The ‘60s stoked the flames of what would become a great fire, a shaping force of culture. Though white guilt worked to the nation’s benefit for a time, it also misidentified various traditional American values as intrinsically tethered to white supremacy. In essence, the explosion of white guilt led people to question otherwise positive traits which had previously proved essential to American culture. White guilt changed the narrative of what it means to be white, and just as white supremacy’s superiority went unquestioned, now white guilt’s control over culture is undisputed, too.  

Following the birth of counterculture consciousness and white guilt during the 1960s, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to enact this seemingly reparative mentality throughout his Great Society programs. The author argues that though these programs appeared well-intentioned, with aims of eliminating poverty and the remains of racism from the country, the results did more harm than good. The motives for the social welfare programs on the surface looked selfless and ethical. It appeared that people advocating for these programs were moved by nothing more than the desire to see the country in an improved moral state. But the programs really served a different purpose—to dissociate the country from its racist past in order to declare itself innocent, moral, and in-control once again. The reparations inspired by white guilt did little more than reassert white superiority under the guise of generosity.

This movement to dissociate from the past through any means possible actually blinds white institutions from the individuality of African Americans. Advocating for more “diverse” university campuses or courses in school is a vague, generalizing notion that eliminates any hint of individuality from the minorities it seeks to benefit. The races it desires to uplift, it actually infantilizes. To prove this point, the author draws upon the famous Gratz v. Bollinger Supreme Court case, which involved the University of Michigan’s use of affirmative action in its admission decisions. Though this system of affirmative action was eventually found unconstitutional, more than 100 universities expressed their support for the university’s regard for race as a determining factor of admission. According to the author, this brand of white supremacy masquerades as social virtue, producing blindness on the part of white institutions to both the individuality of each black person and to the reality of their own prejudice. Using race as a factor to determine anything beyond race is inherently racist. 

Additionally, this dissociative behavior is most prominent in the circles of the elite, growing widely throughout academia. White liberalism advocates for historically marginalized groups, but it does so only to bolster its own sense of moral righteousness. Black poverty is merely a tool for the white elite. This form of social morality is infuriating to the author, himself a member of academia, who struggled to reconcile his true beliefs in democratic principles, such as equality and freedom, with a culture that wanted him to cling to white institutions for help. Over time, his anger towards what he calls white blindness overcame him, and he decided to voice his true opinions within the academy, rather than repeat the opinions his left-leaning peers expected from him.

Unfortunately, as a black man who does not favor programs that seek to exploit one’s black identity to rebuild white morality, some academicians stigmatized him and separated themselves from him, because he did not accept the prominent, race-based strategies of the day. When a colleague assumed he would vote in favor of a course entitled “Ethnic Literature,” due to its inclusion of black writers, he spoke up and asserted that substituting artistic excellence for racial identity encourages mediocrity. In short, it says that African Americans and other minorities are simply not talented, smart, or artistic enough to compete with the likes of white people who’ve been privileged for so long. This is a racist and victimizing claim that perpetuates a white savior mentality.

This way of thinking is simply a rebranding of white supremacy—it disguises a lie with virtue and victimization with kindness. 

Throughout the book, the author draws upon the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal to illustrate a shift in cultural values and virtue. Prior to the 1960s, President Clinton wouldn’t have gotten off so easily for his crimes of adultery and dishonesty. Yet, in a sexually-liberated age which associated traditional values with racism and sexism, it was perfectly fine for him to maintain these moral failings and still hold the presidential office. Social morality, an agenda that places social good over everything else, and an intense focus on racial morality took precedence over the liberal values of equality and freedom, the sole means for actually combatting racism.

The author attributes our contemporary culture wars to the split that grew from left liberalism’s establishment of social morality as a remedy to white guilt. Social morality replaced traditional American values, or Jeffersonian liberal values that lauded individual freedom, integrity, and responsibility above all else. In order to take ownership of one’s victories and improvement, one must also take ownership of one’s failings and setbacks. Jeffersonian liberalism upholds individual freedom as one of its highest tenets, and individual freedom is impossible without complete responsibility. Additionally, race is not a collective mass; one race is filled with a multitude of uniquely different and distinct individuals who are responsible for their own betterment and success within society. Anything less than freedom is less than human. These elite liberal followers wanted to fill the absence of morality with a form of racism which sought to use race as identity once again. This thinking is still pervasive in culture, but it’s not the end of the story. Proponents of the conservative right are in best alignment with the liberal principles necessary to steer our country towards overcoming the past and redeeming the future.

At first, anyone who disagreed with the claim that dissociation with one’s past renewed white morality and eliminated racial inequality was silenced as racist. Now, culture is starting to shift. Since nearly all of society can agree that racism, sexism, and bigotry of any kind are wrong, people are seeing less of a need to dissociate from a past they are not directly connected with. The author recommends relying upon traditional American principles and individual responsibility for one’s own life, as found within today’s conservative viewpoint, as productive ways to truly separate oneself from the past. African Americans are no longer used as tools for a damaged white ego, and a truly racist way of thinking can finally dissipate. The author argues that African Americans must be willing to avoid the lull of social morality and black rage as ways to correct systemic injustice and supersede individual responsibility. Instead, all people, black and white, must live in full freedom, apart from a mentality that seeks to prove superficial morality and create further racial divisions. People must learn to be responsible for their failings and their successes, separating themselves from a culture that’s all too eager to provide help in exchange for humanity.

White guilt created a chasm. Social morality attempted to fill this hole with a breed of virtuous racism which existed not for the sake of “diversity” or racial equality, but for the reassertion of white people as victorious. Racism cannot cure racism, only freedom and individual choice can do that. We’ve diverged too far from Martin Luther King’s dream in favor of a nightmare, and now we must wake up.