What accounts for the tenacity of the white person’s belief he is a bad person if he believes whites should not prefer whites to other races? One hypothesis is a guilt that became deeply imbedded through endless propaganda beginning after birth.
The intense feelings are love, joy, fear, anger, sadness, and perhaps guilt. The child and, on many occasions, the adult, thinks irrationally. If mother or father does something, the child cannot reliably attach a rational interpretation, so the child attaches an irrational one. For example, let us assume a two and a three year old sibling share their parents’ attention equally. But one day, a sibling becomes ill. The ill sibling requires the great majority of parental attention. The well sibling, thinking irrationally that he deserves all the parental attention, becomes angry and wants to hurt his parents. This intense feeling of anger conflicts with the child’s intense feelings of love and fear (because he is totally dependant on the parents). This conflict is too much for the child to reconcile, so he represses the anger.
Later in life, the conflict inevitably tries to surface but is repressed through ritualistic behavior. The adult cannot face the fact he FELT like punching his parents or worse. The conflict causes anxiety or sadness or guilt later in life. An adult might handle the unconscious conflict by giving an inappropriate amount of attention to his parents. Another might alienate himself from his parents in a futile attempt to rid himself of all memory of them. Yet another, a white person perhaps, replaces the ill sibling with illegal immigrants, who are getting an inordinate amount of attention, and is angry at them rather than at his parents. The anger at his parents is taboo and is therefore deeply repressed.
Similarly, the post-modern white child is presented with conflicting ideas from his parents and other authority figures. The authorities say he should treat nonwhites equally to whites, but his genetic and cultural instinct is to prefer those most like him, that is, whites. There is a greater predicament here because there is no middle ground. The nonparental authorities will not tolerate preferential thoughts. A parental authority tolerates the thoughts and therefore often talks to the child and agrees it is not fair that the child is not getting an equal amount of attention. The parent consoles the child. The parent reminds the child that his brother deserves the extra attention because the brother is part of his family and not a stranger and the brother will suffer terribly without the extra attention. The parent does not say the child is no more deserving of attention than any other child in the neighborhood, which is a falsehood no different than the liberal falsehood of equality.
This post is inspired by Lawrence Auster’s writings about white guilt at View From the Right (VFR) and FrontPage and by Mr. Horowitz’ (editor of FrontPage) recent change to the view that illegal immigration threatens the survival of our society.
The Psychology of White Guilt-edited
The correct issue is, “What accounts for the tenacity of the white person’s belief he is a bad person if he fails to believe whites should not prefer whites to other races?”
Psychology
I’m not sure psychology is the correct category, but we can use it as a catch-all for a hodge-podge of beliefs, prejudices, propaganda, instincts, educational biases, and religious traditions.
When spoken by whites—“whites should not prefer whites to other races”—the statement is usually pronounced with an assured superiority and moral self-righteousness (and one almost expects the speaker to add: “And it takes an enlightened White like myself to realize and preach this undiluted moral truth!”).
In this sense, the “whiteness” issue is really a game among whites, that is, who can act the most morally superior among the whites in the game. Those who support the speaker can be smug, self-assured, and self-righteous; those who oppose the speaker are ostracized as “racists” or “bigots.”
This is the Pharisee dynamic as exposed by Jesus of Nazareth (only the terms have changed). Who can be the most holy and be perceived as such by the crowd?
Race is merely one distinction invoked by liberals for moral examination. Given the Uber-principle of Equality, all distinctions, including racial distinctions, are illegitimate and immoral. Therefore, those who cling to such distinctions are obviously moral imbeciles, malicious reactionaries, or fascist thugs.
If you’re a Nazi, I not only have the satisfaction of “exposing” you, but I can sleep well at night in the knowledge that I have slain a bigot and that my spiritual health is right with the Liberal diety of Equality.
So, I don’t think the “psychology” has anything to do with self-hatred; to the contrary, I believe the psychology has much to do with self-congratulation, a simple, self-reflecting marvel at what a wonderful moral creation a modern liberal is.
White Guilt
Dear MD and Fellow Readers,
These are just some ideas that my intellectual betters might be able to use. I know I am on shaky ground when dealing with an MD.
My hypothetical premise is one can conceive of the human brain as a computer that has Freudian hardwiring. (The premise is a device that might lead us to discover truth.) The product, human behavior, is not a result of a hodge-podge, but the result of finite, articulable causes. Having no formal knowledge of psychology, I am not sure the Freudians insist their theory is the answer. Rather, it appears they think their theory is a model that has a decent success rate but recognize drug therapy and cognitive therapy as respectable treatments.
To explain, I proposed a theory that a Freudian might propose as a logical, articulable cause for a particular person’s overreaction to “alien peoples.†An overreaction would consist in symptoms that substantially interfered with one’s life such as insomnia, body pains, severe anxiety, depression, etc. I am proposing a cause for anti-immigration thinking in general: Freudian psychology. I am not proposing a particular set of Freudian premises for anti-mass-immigration thinking in general. I proposed a hypothetical example with two siblings merely to explain and not to serve as a substantial reason for most anti-mass-immigration thinking. Freudian psychology, after all, is possibly responsible for much of the good behavior we see. (I think anti-mass-immigration thinking is good behavior.)
To the extent a society considers it taboo to wish harm on one’s parents, the society’s values are a cause of the slighted sibling’s repression. The more important question for the patient is to what extent HE punishes himself for the taboo thought. The Freudian helps him to realize the cause and encourages him to deal with the cause he has understandably refused to deal with. Once the cause is on the table, the person can deal with it. While it is hidden, he has a lower chance at curing or lessening his symptoms.
In a society like ours where racial preferences remain taboo, the preferences will remain inexcusable to some PC Freudians. Instead of simply tying the person’s symptoms to repression of irrational anger against the person’s mother or father and giving the person permission to go ahead and deal with it, that is, feel the anger and shame but in the end to not be ashamed of such childish thoughts, the PC Freudian might tell the patient he must change his adult thoughts. The PC Freudian might ignore the adaptive value of preferences and substitute his own childish thoughts as adult thoughts.
Thinking one is morally superior is a highly desirable thought for some reason; desirable also are anger, love, and joy. I suspect the Freudians have some theories about why it is highly desirable and what situations it applies to usually. I suspect the cause of white guilt can be tied to a rational Freudian theory in a way that is useful. I would like to see real psychiatrists and psychologists blog at political sites.
(I saved Turnabout’s link as a Favorite link on this PC. I try to advertise whenever possible.)
Paul
White guilt
Let me first say that I’m not a Freudian. Freud, and his theories, were probably inevitable given his time and place: a putatively scientific, reductionist model of the human psyche, based upon biological drives and internal conflicts.
But, nevertheless, guilt is a real phenomenon, at least for some. Although Freud was a Jew, the guilt he projects is bourgeois, Protestant, adolescent, and trivial. It’s all about sex, which Freud reduces to a biological drive, and in Freud’s system biological drives rule the world.
I don’t take this kind of guilt very seriously. It hardly compares to the guilt of a failure to love, or an incapacity to love, or the guilt of moral collapse before anxiety, or the guilt of leaving one’s family or environment in the pursuit of something greater, or the guilt of a life of pride, etc.
“White guilt” is a concept; I don’t know how real it is. It is peddled as if it’s real, and I’m sure there are some whites who buy into it, just as there are some whites who feel guilty for eating at McDonald’s, or for watching the Simpsons, or for being 10 pounds overweight. There are trivial people everywhere.
I see the concept of “white guilt” as cover story for white condescension towards other races and ethnic groups: “We Whites, we’re so powerful, we control history, we win all the wars, we know we’re superior, so in order to make you (non-whites) comfortable, we will beat our breasts, and express our guilt, and make amends, and because we’re Whites you (non-whites) will be grateful and be so impressed by our moral goodness and righteousness.”
If I was non-white, this so-called “white guilt” thing would make me _______. If a hustler, however, I would use it rhetorically (Randall Robinson, Jesse Jackson, etc.).
It’s obvious, however, that “white guilt” doesn’t really exist. If it did, appropriate repentance would be made. It hasn’t been made, and it never will be made.
That leaves the question of immigration, and its relation, if any, to so-called “white guilt.”
As Victor Davis Hanson has made clear, most immigrants are condemned to a life as second-class citizens, far into the future and for several generations. Perhaps this is an improvement upon their lives in Mexico or Central America. In the meantime, certain economic interests in the US benefit from cheap, easily manipulated labor; these economic interests probably have little or no allegiance to any nation, ethnicity, tradition, or common history, and just don’t care what the social cost may be as a consequence of immigration, legal or illegal. However, I don’t believe that the white elites of the US, or elsewhere in the West, seriously entertain the notion that immigrant groups are a threat to the fundamental power structures of the West, which are controlled by whites. Immigrants, however, may have other ideas.
White Guilt
Dear MD and Fellow Readers,
I am unconvinced white guilt does not exist. Some liberals refuse to support money for building prisons and beefing up law enforcement because these can never solve the problem, which is the lack of education and opportunity that the liberals assume exist among blacks, at least. In essence they are holding nonblacks hostage: give blacks education and opportunity or we are going let the blacks keep victimizing you. Of course, they are open to victimization also, so their position is not hypocritical technically. (I think they are not thinking rationally, that is, they are in denial, they think they will never be a victim.) When faced with a compromise such as increasing law enforcement and education, they say we cannot afford both. They don’t have a way of dealing with the existing blacks while the younger blacks are getting educated and opportunity. Where am I going wrong here?