Thanks largely to the campaign and eventual election of President Donald Trump, average Americans have become accustomed to terminologies previously known exclusively to white nationalists. Out of this lexicon comes one that has attracted significant attention of late: white guilt.
In short, white guilt is the principle that whites hate themselves for the sins of their forefathers. Specifically, white people of today have enjoyed a tremendous head start relative to other minorities due to racist, oppressive laws. In order to rectify this situation, many progressive liberal whites advocate protocols such as affirmative action to even the playing field.
On the surface, these acts of restitution carry moral weight. Indeed, racist government policies denied generations of Americans opportunities for success and advancement. And such policies have harmed the U.S. due to the economic inefficiencies of racism.
Although some of the ideas that have “sprouted” from white guilt are well meaning, implementing them creates a new form of economic inefficiencies. Unfortunately, there is no true way of restoring “racial balance.” Doing so harms current generations of white Americans who have not committed racist atrocities. Further, rewarding at-risk minorities does nothing to provide justice to those who were the ones wronged.
Of course, extreme progressives don’t see it as such. Therefore, we will continue to see degradation in our economy and communities until we wise up.
Nobody Needs White Guilt
As I mentioned above, one of the byproducts of economic white guilt is affirmative action. Essentially, this law states that some community groups are handicapped relative to white communities. Therefore, the government must rebalance the system.
But someone always pays for this rebalancing. Worse yet, affirmative action isn’t really taking seats away from the “evil” whites; instead, the policy has disproportionately affected Asian Americans – a minority of minorities in the U.S.
In fact, John Katzman and Steve Cohen wrote the following in a Wall Street Journal (hardly a conservative outlet) op-ed:
Affirmative action’s original intent was to incorporate more minority students, specifically blacks and Hispanics, into elite universities. But blacks and Hispanics have actually lost ground in the admissions race over the past 25 years, as recently reported by the New York Times. And while the original policy was intended to help minorities, Asian-American students feel they are taking the biggest hit. As a result, many have filed lawsuits against Ivy League schools such as Harvard, claiming that to gain admission, Asian-American students, on average, have to score 140 points higher on the SAT than white students, 270 points higher than Hispanic students, and 450 points higher than African-American students.
The authors ultimately argue that college admissions should be based on true meritocracy, not on race. I’ll go a step further: abandon affirmative action altogether.
Take race out of the picture. The government can never mandate success: people either want to succeed or they don’t. Forcing people to succeed only encourages mediocrity, for no consequences exist for failure. That’s the ultimate and unwanted consequence of white guilt.