Guilt → Action

In this latest episode of the White Male Rage Podcast, I try and figure out what to do if we shouldn’t feel guilty. Growth is always a process, and getting stuck in guilt can lead to defensiveness and bitterness.

Listen to the episode here: Guilty → Action

There is now have a transcript below! It’s word for word of the podcast (for better or worse).

Transcript

It is Jeremy with another episode of the white male rage podcast. And today I want to talk about feeling guilty and I want to talk about how we go beyond guilt to being just better at life. And I, I think I’ve been noticing more and more as I’ve been putting this podcast on. And even the whole time I’ve been trying to be vocal about being, you know, better citizens and better people. That a lot of times people that look like me, white men will become defensive very quickly. Especially when you start to mention things like white privilege and white privilege is the idea that people who are white have an inherent advantage or privilege because of the color of their skin. And a lot of people think that to mean that white people just have it easy because they are white.

And I think that that’s a nuanced way to hear that, or, or it’s a much more nuanced position than I think people are reacting to the way I understand it, at least is that there are challenges that everybody faces, but the color of my skin will not be one of them. That’s the privilege and privilege. I think I’ve talked about before, if not, it’s just, it’s inherent in every different aspect of our lives. And I don’t know if I said it on this podcast before, but like men have a privilege when it comes to going pee. Right. I know it’s so silly when it’s just kind of reducing it down to that, but like I can go pee on the side of a bush where that’s not always possible for women or as easy and maybe possible is not the right word, but easy or there’s not as much access to something.

And I think if we just look at that and kind of step back away from the ledge of defensiveness and what about ism and take a step back and just kind of understand that everybody has some sort of advantages white privilege is just the one that we deal with. And in America specifically is one that has been a bedrock of our history in a lot of ways. And even like, not even just America, but like a lot of Europe too. And my primary background is that of a music educator. And I’ve talked about this with my fellow teachers and stuff too. Just about how the, the music Siri, we look at the music curriculum that we teach to a lot of kids, especially as you get more into advanced music and go to colleges, different music, it is filled predominantly with white men from Europe.

And that makes sense because a lot of men from Europe were white and are white. But that is just the lens that we have looked at. Right. And so the advantage for white men is that their culture and history is taught. Whereas the rich traditions of music in other countries is not. And so that is just a privilege that we have even like a, a music education setting. And so people, when they start to talk about this stuff or they, they hear it for the first time, they start to get very, very defensive. And I hear that things. And just even recently, like we don’t need to feel guilty about the past sins of the people that look like me. Like I shouldn’t have to feel guilty for what my ancestor may or may not have done. I’ve also heard that we don’t even need to associate with the people who look like me that are in fact racist or Nazis or neo-Nazis, or like we don’t have to address that problem because we can just say, Hey, they’re not like us.

And I don’t think that’s true. I agree. Kind of with the first part for the generally that I don’t know if we have to feel guilty for something that we did not that commit. I think that we can atone for it and there can be lifelong impacts that we can work to rectify kind of like they might have caused the hurt, but as part of my responsibility to make the world a better place than I found it. And then I, I definitely don’t agree with the second part of that previous statement that we don’t need to associate or address or call out the people to our buttheads essentially. That’s, it’s something called the no true Scotsman fallacy where like just say they’re not a part of me, but in reality, it’s up to us to police. It. That’s like a really broad, probably poor definition, but we can’t not claim people just because we don’t like them.

If they’re a part of our tribe, if you will, as part of the reason that like it’s important for whatever group that you’re a part of to be interrupters. Now we’ve talked about that before in the past, or just when stuff is being said or joked about, that’s not cool, just, you know, interrupt it and just be better than that. And it doesn’t have to be a huge thing. You know, we have taken all of these things and there’s such a microscope on it that everything does seem way better and way more prominent than we have ever experienced in our lives. And for us people that look like me, that might be the case. It might have not been anything that we had ever talked about, but the more I listened to stories or read accounts of people who particularly are a different gender or different race than I am that is something that has always been at the forefront of their mind. And another example of privilege. And I, here’s where I think, I don’t think we should ever get stuck in feeling guilty or the guilt. I don’t think we should get beat up over guilt, but it is a feeling that I think can help us with the heaviness of a situation.

And I can lament at the fact that we have to deal with all of this stuff. I can be bummed out that despite my best efforts or my best intentions as a white person, I will be looked at with apprehension or anger by people who are different than me. And I could easily say, well, it’s not my fault. And I’m not a part of the problem, but I couldn’t lament at that and I can be sad and I can try to understand why people might think that, and then work at holding perpetuators of racism and, and sexism and classism accountable. I can feel sadness that relationships are so broken that we are still divided today. There’s a show on PBS right now. Somebody had sent me the preview for, and it’s about the black church in America. And I think it’s fascinating because I think a lot of church history is fascinating.

I think the way that people worship is fascinating. And, and in particular, I think on the music side of things, black gospel music is just one of the most intricate at times and complex styles of music that can be author. So I think it’s fascinating to try to, to see that and see the progression of jazz. And it’s truly like an American art style too, which was pretty cool. But as I watched the previews and have watched some of the shows, we, we proclaimed basically in virtually the same faith, right? We both would proclaim as the church, I believe in God and a belief in Jesus from particular as Christians, but in reality can feel like Biles and miles and miles apart, not in, just in style or in worship or anything like that. But in the understanding and core, looking out at their faith, the core understanding of their faith and the purpose of their faith and community, really the community that has, that has been built as a result of oppression and racism in the United States.

Again, this is USA focused understanding I’m trying to process through, you know, I’m not from Europe or anything like that, but just in this country that I am a part of. And as I watched this, I was just, I was really overcome by sadness. It’s cool that we’re like celebrating and looking at this, this part of our church history and this part of American history. But for me, I just felt like sad. Don’t we have this great connector, our faith, but that faith in the way that it’s practices also just evidence of this great divide, because our faiths are carried out differently, or our understandings are carried out differently. And I’m good. I know that’s not the same everywhere. And but it just, even in these great connections that we have, we have division or evidence of division that people are seemingly happy with, or don’t want to address, or just write off is that’s a product of the past eras.

And so what do we do with like past expectations and current realities and future hopes. And I shared in the past, and even on this episode, my faith drives a lot of my values and perhaps, you know, my values of course filter the way that I view my faith and challenge. My faith in create the friction needed to grow and to be a better person in all facets of my faith, but in the Christian tradition right now, we’re in the season of lent and lent is the journey to the cross. And I think there’s just such an interesting parallel. We have, like in the Bible, here’s a quick Bible history for you. Like God’s chosen. People were the old Testament essentially. And the current reality, they’re supposed to be the light of the world. They’re supposed to go around the world and spread that God is God.

And that’s great. And that’s how God was supposed to spread the message to the ends of the earth. But then Jesus walks into the situation that that is not happening. People have gotten comfortable, people have stopped doing what they’re supposed to. They’ve gotten so caught up in laws and rules and regulations to be the perfect people that they’ve lost kind of sight of the mission. So Jesus comes into this crazy situation and it’s so far gone that Jesus is crucified, right? And that could be the end of the story. This great experiment was done and Jesus crucified, but in our faith tradition, we believe that Jesus came back and that is a promise of something better, right? So we have something that was supposed to be really good, something that ended up being just a cluster and then this promise of something even better.

Like there’s still something more to work towards. And it’s interesting, like, as I look at the broad history of America, even we have this, all men are created equal kind of, you know, but that’s in our constitution. All men are created equal the pursuit of life and happiness and all that stuff, justice. But in reality, men are treated poorly. People are treated poorly. In fact, when the constitution was written and those words were penned, there was slavery in America, right? Like, so we have this promise in this hope of something better vision of something better, but even in the midst of that, there’s just awfulness. And then we have civil rights type stuff happening, freedom of slaves and lose the civil rights. And then we get to this spot now where there are people think that some of our best days are behind us.

And I don’t think it’s, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that there are saying such as like make America great again or remembering the good old days or I just wish things were the way that they used to be. And some of those have been co-opted by politicians. Others are just like things that come out in our speech all the time. And we look back fondly at these times that we think are good. And we kind of forget that the world is much bigger than ourselves, and we have so much further to go. And a lot of ways, I think we can be comfortable. We get comfortable enough that we no longer feel the need to fight for the benefit of others because we got ours. You know, I got mine. I don’t need to, to fight for other people. We’re good to go.

Or maybe, perhaps it’s we stopped advocating and making space for others because we’ve been hurt by people who seemingly accuse us or who do maybe accuse us, not even seemingly, but we feel like we’re accused of, or people actually accuse us of only getting something because the color of our skin. Right. And if you want some more info on that, you can check out the affirmative action episode, or we feel like we’re being attacked because the color of our skin, or we should feel guilty about our accomplishment because of history. Right. And as I say these words, and as I wrote those words, I think it’s just kind of funny that these things that we are getting upset about, we as white men, particular like people are lumping us into categories because we’re white and we’re males, people are saying we only are successful because of white privilege.

People are saying, we need to feel a certain way because of the history or we need to get over the history. Right. And all these things that we’re upset about should be the things that give us empathy and insight towards the plight of the oppressed at the hand of people that looked like us right here is something that if we would, I think, I think if we just would have listened and continue to listen, we could say, that’s what it feels like is happening right now. It feels really bad. Maybe they felt really bad, you know, like it should be this thing that brings us together, misery in a way loves company. But not only that, it should just move us towards understanding and saying, wow, I didn’t have any idea. That’s what this felt like. Right? Instead we become defensive. We become defensive than other people become defensive. And not just our divide grows further and further and further apart. And I, and I do want to highlight here. This is not towards, I th this is across all demographics, I suppose, of white men, educated, uneducated Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives rich, poor, you know, like we all feel in some way attacked right now.

And so that causes white men to act out, you know, an anger. A lot of times, at least in defensiveness, you know, woke white people might say, well, we’re not like those people. We’re not like the Nazis. The Nazis might say, well, you just need to get over this. And this is what it’s like. Not like we all have our flaws. There’s only, you know, I don’t know. There’s only one another. And so all these things should give us empathy towards the plight of the oppressed. Instead we focus on winning our own games and becoming defensive and surviving our own races. And if there are winners, that must mean that there are losers, right. But in life, there really is no finish line. The most pessimistic view is that there is no future. There’s just the end called death. There’s definitely no cash reward when you’re dead.

There’s not even an ice cream with sprinkles. You know what I mean? Like it’s just, it’s one another. And if we lose the sense of community or the strive to be a community and we lose standing up for one another, I think I do think that we lose parts of our humanity. Again, my faith draws or, you know, guides my, my understanding of the world and there’s talks all the time of there’s differences in the church body. But together we make up the full image of Christ, right in earth. There are multiple different types of people, but in the end, we all make up this planet earth in this population of earth and we’re seeking. It seems like we’re seeking division and, and winning for ourselves at the expense of not having to think about other people. And please don’t hear like, you’re not supposed to stuck at being guilty or feeling guilty.

And I hope you don’t feel guilty. Like maybe you feel bad. And I hope you can sense that there is sadness and all of that. But the beautiful thing is if you’re hearing this, that means you still have time to be a better person. You know, you still have time to change a worldview and to be better than you were the day before. So my challenge is, you know, get some new perspectives. This is an old challenge. I’ll probably give this challenge like a billion times on this podcast, but you have to get different perspectives. It can be a different race. It can be a different gender. It can be different socioeconomic class, but try and see the world from a radically different perspective than the one that you have right now. Just, just try it, you know we can always, always be better and we can always make our worldview more diverse.

This goes back to you in the America thing. Like when I grew up, when I grew up, I was, I was taught to America was a great melting pot and a lot of ways. That’s cool. You know, we’re supposed to kind of melt into one big monolithic you know, culture, I suppose. But, you know, it started to change that grew up as like, we are a salad bowl. Like we’re all different, but we’re all necessary to make the salad good. Right? we’re not a soup or salad, but either way, like there’s no end to being a better person for other people. And with other people. And my challenge to you is that is to be better yourselves because we can’t make other people be better for themselves. All we can do is just change ourselves. All we can do is just be better ourselves and hold each other accountable and make ourselves better and be, you know, above reproach, I guess in the church world and my faith tradition, it’s, it’s called holiness.

You know, it’s like when love abounds of remorse, there’s more and more love when there’s more and more love and more and more togetherness and community. There’s no room for hate we’re in this world of social media. And that sometimes it can be really awful for society, you know it can also open the door for people to share their stories and wants those stories are shared. That can be related to the internet at times can be the wild West. And with that said, it can maybe not so much now, but still I think can be pretty much uncensored in the sense that communities can come together and amplify their voices. You can find like-minded people on the internet. So the challenge is get some new perspectives. And that could be just as easy as if you have Twitter creating a Twitter list of people who look radically different than you.

And you might find that there’s different world experiences that you never would’ve come across with. Thought about. You also might find that you’re very similar to one another. That’s the challenge. If you like, what you heard, I would just ask that whatever podcast service you use to listen, you know give it a good rating, share it with somebody. You can visit my website whitemalerage.org. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook under the same name. And you know, you can interact with, with me through those channels. If you really, really like what I’m doing and you’re able to, and willing you can support me financially at buy me a coffee.com/white male rage. And the first set of donations is going towards creating a community where people can gather together and discuss topics like this outside of the show. Thank you all and have a great day.