Blog #6 - Madeleine Perko

Reading about the history of racism in America and how it is profoundly intertwined in today’s society was something I was familiar with, but had no idea to what extent and in what ways this is true. Additionally, I had never read such a thorough contemplation on how to begin to make reparations and heal as an entire country, and what that looked like in other areas of the world.

Before I go further, I think this is such an important paper and I could analyze it for a lifetime.

I found the German/Israel reparation process to be extremely interesting. I was so surprised by how the majority of Germans felt that they did not owe the Jews anything and how an extremely small fraction of the German population felt guilty. I think that in a situation like this, I would not necessarily feel that I was responsible for the holocaust in that I didn’t have a hand in making orders or causing direct harm, but that as a human I feel very badly. My feeling badly would be in part because I think when you see pain it is a natural reaction is to feel at least a little of that pain, and I would feel badly because my cooperation (even if only latent) along with the cooperation of others (out of fear or appreciation) would have given the Nazis the power to commit such crimes agains Jews. So, I would feel guilty as being a part of the situation (not necessarily a part of the problem, but also not as a part of the solution) that allowed such an abuse of power.

However, Ta-Nehisi Coates advocates for the “banishment of white guilt”. In my perspective, I think that guilt is a sign that there is something good one can do but isn’t doing, which I think is a crucial realization in order to initiate change. However, it seems that from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s perspective, guilt makes us so uncomfortable that we suppress it and ignore the problem entirely. I think that what the problem is, more so than white guilt, is the fear of what reparations will take from what we have, and perhaps more so, that the unsettling feeling of guilt is exacerbated and seemingly eternal due to the feeling that that there is no way to make real amends… the crimes have been committed and there is no amount of reparations that can reverse them. However, to address the latter, I think it is crucial that we accept what has happen and not take on what the crimes of our ancestors were, but to instead do what we can in the present and accept what our current human responsibility is to current issues (of which are plagued with context from the past). I hope that in that statement I have made it clear that we have to accept the past and use it to understand the present, in order to change the future circumstances of those plagued by institutions of racism in society.

I think that the way I approach guilt is more typically to try to remedy whatever causes that guilt. In my mind, to deny guilt is to further act without moral regard and would only make guilt worse. But I also understand that some people may be so empathetic to the pain of another, that facing that guilt feels too great especially if they feel unable to put that guilt to productive work. Why feel guilty, if a situation is out of your control. This perception of what we are able to do I think is a major barrier to reparations, more so than white guilt. So when he says that we need to be rid of white guilt, I feel conflicted. On the one hand I think that there is a fine line between guilt and empathy or compassion, which is necessary to tap into in order to feel motivated to make amends/try fix damage done. On the other hand, I see that guilt also can lead to denial and prevents action. It is a very complicated issue. 

I had no idea that the holocaust that “movies that suggested a societal responsibility for the Holocaust beyond Hitler were banned”. Its so interesting the different ways we as a society deal with the consequences of our past, and how it is typically those with the most to loose and not those who have suffered the most who are catered to.