A double shot of white guilt, on the rocks please

Reality is a bitch, that’s why I like mine in small doses and preferably heavily diluted. This is particularly true of a reality that is either embarrassing or indefensible and especially when that reality is in some way my own creation.

Take, for example, some of my undeniably embarrassing and inexcusable behaviour.

Like most South Africans I do like the occasional alcoholic drink and since Jesus allegedly turned water into wine I don’t see this as much of a sin. But the Good Book supposedly also says something about “all things in moderation” (I think I got bored after Exodus and skipped over all the infanticide, blood and guts, chauvinistic and preachy parts). I have also, on occasion, had eyes (and a throat) bigger than my stomach or alcohol tolerance level. Quite unintentionally, and unbeknown to me, I have reached a point past reasonable intoxication and well beyond my brain’s ability to record the subsequent events, faces, utterances and apparently not so amusing dance moves and gestures.

This kind of behaviour is not inconsistent with either the harm principle or John Stuart Mill’s views on liberty:

“Individuals should have complete freedom of action, provided their actions do not infringe on the freedom of others.”

In our liberal democratic and constitutional dispensation we are all free to get hammered as long as we don’t harm anyone or infringe on their freedom. At least that is my retrospective justification and I am sticking to it! But, I digress.

While I have the freedom to know and freedom of speech I also have the freedom to choose not to know and not to speak, especially about embarrassing and indefensible actions such as the above and, more specifically, when I can’t remember it.

Following those infrequent evenings of stupendously drunken tirades, I would wake up, in my own bed, with no recollection of the previous night, apart from obvious and tell-tale signs scattered around the house.

I know something really stupid happened, it hangs thick in the air and let’s be honest, alcohol augments our propensity toward stupidity. But, I go on as if nothing happened, I don’t want to be reminded of what I did and certainly don’t want to talk about it because it is embarrassing, indefensible and above all makes me feel incredibly guilty.

For me, something as simple as a drunken night out illustrates the stranglehold of white guilt — in the socio-political and economic sense — and the subsequent impetus towards denial.

The Jews invented guilt, the Catholics perfected it and the Calvinist Afrikaner internalised it and turned it into a way of life. We just don’t talk about it, it never happened and should it be brought up, the subject is hurriedly changed.

Western society functions on the notion of punitive justice and it’s easier to believe that there was some, once-off payment for the sins of our apartheid forefathers (who we didn’t support, by the way) than talking about it. Western individualism does not understand restorative justice, it understands cheque-book quick fixes and paying for our sins or getting someone else to pay for it Jesus-style.

I don’t believe black people are immune to similar phenomena of “black guilt” and “black denialism”, it’s just easier to talk about something if you’re the “victim”.

My friends, partner and family are more than willing to tell me about what I did, said and tried in that twisted state of mind, mainly because they think it is necessary that I understand what I turn into and the stupid things I do (like, try and walk on the wall of the fourth floor balcony at the State Theatre, for example). It makes sense that they should wish that I listen because they are subjected to it while I come off of it practically unaffected and life goes on.

White guilt and denial operate in the exact same manner and at the same psychological level: we don’t want to hear about it, we don’t want to talk about it because should we start doing so, we realise that we have not paid for the sins of our fathers and we consciously start feeling uncomfortable and guilty about our potential culpability in the unjustifiable social inequality in South Africa.

Maybe I should sit down for once and actually hear them out, I’m sure embarrassment never killed anyone.

Originally published on my personal blog as “The Power of White Guilt”.