White Guilt

I hate the concept of white guilt. As if I, a white man, cannot conceptualize racism and bigotry. As if I am excusing the hatred of my white heritage by trying to empathize with the abused. Maybe there are some haters out there who are incapable of understanding the harm, or who want to excuse it, but throwing all who want to truly understand into a neat, trite, hateful phenomena called “white guilt” is a hurtful oversimplification. Besides, I don’t think so many people would have written so eloquently about how racism feels without wanting everyone, especially white people, to feel something too. I don’t think that desired feeling boils down to simple guilt. I believe it is empathy, respect and inspiration to change behavior.

Some of the better writings about race are simply the stories of struggle, especially the ones with some sort of triumph. Chapter One of Genocide Of The Mind: Native American Writing contains six essays/stories and five poems that illustrate the rural/urban divide that challenges Native American culture. The divide is exacerbated by the terrible treatment of those who were on the land first from the “visitors”, my colonizing predecessors. (I can trace one branch of my family back to the Mayflower.) The main themes of the essays and poems are poverty, alcoholism, broken promises, the importance of land, the oral history of families, tribes and nations (mainly kept by older women), and movement.

“Keeping the home fires burning,” chapter one of Genocide Of The Mind: Native American Writing, edited by Mari Jo Moore

Essays And Remembrances:

“To Carry The Fire Home” by Kathryn Lucci-Cooper

“Blood Flowing in Two Worlds” by Mary Black Bonnet

“Home: Urban and Reservation” by Barbara Helen Hill

“Indian in a Strange Land” by Wiley Steve Thornton

“Everyone Needs Someone” by Mari Jo Moore

“Unci (Grandmother)” by Ben Geboe

“From Brooklyn To The Reservation: Five Poems” by Maurice Kenny

“To Carry The Fire Home” by Kathryn Lucci-Cooper fondly remembers the author’s Cherokee grandmother as the keeper of the Native roots flowing in Lucci-Cooper’s blood. These roots are important for the half-Sicilian, half-Cherokee Lucci-Cooper as she struggles with racism, including from a Native American professor who sneers: “I mean, really is everyone around here a Cherokee?”

“Blood Flowing in Two Worlds” by Mary Black Bonnet is a personal account of a Sioux woman who was adopted by a white family at 18 months old. As an adult, she seeks out her Native relatives on the reservation. She experiences occasional rejection of “urban Indians” on the rez and “people who think they’re better than us” in the cities.

“Home: Urban and Reservation” by Barbara Helen Hill is another personal story about the rez/non-rez divide. Hill’s insight that Native Americans are not one unified language and culture like the Chinese or Irish, but many nations and languages, resonated with me.

“Indian in a Strange Land” by Wiley Steve Thornton conveyed the author’s emotions and clever insights (people in New York “pretend to have no relatives”) about his move away from the rez and subsequent life in a big city.

“Everyone Needs Someone” by Mari Jo Moore is a thoughtful memory of a Cherokee grandfather. Moore’s point about Native American culture becoming briefly fashionable within white culture (Dances With Wolves) was maybe the only time I actually felt a little guilty as a white person.

“Unci (Grandmother)” is Ben Geboe’s tender account of a renewed connection to his Native American family. I learned that the urban/rez split doesn’t always involve cities. An urban Indian is simply one who has left the reservation.

The five poems by Maurice Kenny poignantly, often achingly, illustrate the split lives of Native Americans. “Reading poems in public” shares the frustration of trying to convey Native American life to a gathering of people who respond with inane questions. They ask if Indians shave.

Like the Native Americans who bristle at individually being imbued with derogatory characteristics of their social grouping (whining, poor drunk), I bristle at being seen individually based on a social grouping (I only care about Native Americans because of white guilt.) Therefore, the pertinent question is why do I care?

But do you need a reason to care about (or at minimum be interested in learning more about) a group of people? Must every motivation be connected by if/then chains? “If I feel guilty about what some of my ancestors did to Native Americans, then I should learn more about them?”

If I personally need a reason to care, it could be my own experience as a gay man. Although our land wasn’t taken, our language forsaken, or were we forced to assimilate the dominant culture quite as forcefully as the Native Americans, I can relate to many of the things I read in this first chapter.

Like the people listening to Maurice Kenny’s poem, straight people replace a desire to learn about gay men with silly questions such as “is it contagious?” Like Native Americans, the LGBTQ community has many different tribes that do not always get along. Like Native Americans experiencing the Dances With Wolves culturally en vogue moments, we have experienced touchstone events that generally increase acceptance. (For example, Milk, Brokeback Mountain, Obergfell v Hodges. Like the various caricatures of Native Americans (the noble Savage, the lazy drunk), gay men have caricatures to battle, such as Jack from Will and Grace.

There are also many differences between Native American and gay men as groups. We have not had our language taken from us, forcibly moved from our land or legally confined to unusable land. We are not easily identifiable in how we look or act. There are many Native American gay men. We are a group based on who we are not where we came from. Finally, we have very little in the way of history to pass down. Or at least there appears to be no solid system for passing it along.

So that’s why I care. I am a member of a minority group in American culture. I enjoy reading about the experience of other minority groups because I seek points of comparison and points of contrast. Comparison comforts, contrast puzzles. It’s all in the learning. Maybe a stronger question than why do I care is what am I going to do about what I am reading?

The authors of chapter one don’t specify any call to action. Their purpose is to inform, to lift the veil on the urban/reservation divide many, maybe most, Native Americans feel. So I’m going to add that phenomena and these experiences to my understanding. That understanding applies to the Native American experience. But many elements of that divide, particularly the urban Native American’s experience with white people, applies to my own experiences as a gay man. I applied what I learned to my own life. The end result is a better, more knowledgeable, more empathetic, more honest me.

And something interesting arises out of the sympathy and honesty. Maybe I do feel some guilt about how my ancestors treated Native Americans. Since I’m white and they were white, maybe that makes it “white guilt”. Okay, that’s just a feeling, but it’s not why I care and it’s not the end of the story as far as what I’m going to do about it. The whole problem with white guilt is it oversimplifies empathy, and it shuts the door on opportunities for learning and growing. These are the only activities they can lead to improvement.

Link to Genocide of the Mind on Powells.com

Link to review of Frybread Face and Me (film)

Posted by Drevil, 3/21/2020