Your white guilt is not absolved. It’s also not welcome in our conversations, and it is certainly not something we care to accommodate.
In an op-ed published last week, Isaac Rivera ’26 graciously liberated our white peers of their guilt, arguing that it was unproductive for creating meaningful change for marginalized communities. We believe this is an egregious affront to people of color.
First, no individual should designate themselves the representative of all individuals of color. The experiences of people of color are not monolithic.
Second, although we share Rivera’s dissatisfaction with the College’s empty land acknowledgements and nonsensical virtue signaling, absolving individuals of guilt after they attempt to “acknowledge” their place in society — as people of color are forced to do — is equally unproductive. Vapid gestures should be recognized as such, but the complacency of white individuals in those gestures should not be misconstrued as simple ignorance. Empty statements and virtue signaling are unhelpful because they are disingenuous.
In Rivera’s critique of guilt, he argues that white guilt “often divides and paralyzes us” — hence, it is unproductive. We argue, however, forgiving white guilt given how “contemporary race politics have separated us,” calling for all to reach across this division — when internalized racism is in fact embedded within us all — is dangerous and cruel.
Rivera further states that while in countries like Vietnam and South Africa, “I saw the same thing: people carrying the weight of history, but also finding ways to move forward. And not through guilt or endless academic analysis, but through something far simpler: compassion.” But not everyone in Vietnam or South Africa exists with “happiness and compassion.”
In our own country, there are states that push problematic depictions of American history, like minimizing the effects of slavery or glorifying the story of Christopher Columbus, and have banned discussion of critical race theory if they make white students feel guilty. This is all while false and dehumanizing narratives about immigrants and people of color and their cultures fill the media landscape.
People may ascribe false, sensationalized characteristics to people of color from what they absorb through media. This manifests in several harmful ways, the most pertinent being the appropriation of culture (especially with monetary benefit that the originators of the culture do not see) and discrimination towards people of color that do not fall into the categories that they conceptualize.
Simultaneously, people of color may also carry flawed conceptions about other ethnic cultures. Not being white does not preclude people from ethnic backgrounds from being racist towards other people, as evidenced by the fact that across cultures, the darkest people suffer most. White supremacy still exists because of how ingrained white supremacist ideals are in many facets of culture, from beauty standards to behavioral expectations.
We are not asking for white people to save us. Nor are we shaming people for their privileges or appearances. After all, oppressed groups haven’t asked for their tumultuous history or continued disenfranchisement either. Ultimately, the compassion Rivera argues in favor of should be a given — something we all collectively try to share and work toward as we move through our lives. Action, however, takes a lot more grit: It requires courage, curiosity, and commitment. It demands active engagement rather than passive acknowledgment of discomfort.
Last Friday, the Minority Coalition held the seventh annual ethnic studies and Indigenous studies teach-in, which explored the challenges faced by minority students in their continued journey to take space at the College, including, most recently, efforts to bolster the Native-American Indigenous Student Alliance’s demands. Echoing the sentiments expressed by the brilliant Hannah Bae ’24 in an op-ed last fall, we noticed for another year that so-called white guilt failed to drive white students — who make up 50 percent of the student body — to attend this event in proportional numbers.
Last semester, Mariel Baez ’26, a contributor to this op-ed, was on her way to an inaugural event at the new Davis Center when drivers of a pickup truck stopped to yell racist epithets at her. Now, she gets nervous anytime a pickup truck passes by her, afraid that it’s the same group of hateful people looking to target those who look like her again.
Mariel’s lived experience — and the lived experiences of other people of color — is not theater to be picked at with intellectual jargon. Her burden is creating community and fighting for equal opportunities all while being a student at the College. These communities and opportunities already exist for her white peers, but she must constantly stretch herself thin to access them. This is her burden. What is your guilt?
In the leadup to the 2024 election, BIPOC students, including every contributor to this op-ed, have had racial slurs and even physical items hurled at them on their way to dorms and surrounding businesses. Since we’ve come to the College, various students of color have shared experiences that are terrifying, uncomfortable, and isolating. They are compounded by other axes of oppression, including gender, class, and queerness. We don’t bring these hate crimes into conversation to pine for sympathy, turn all white people into the culprits of racism, or cling to the victim mentality some claim we have.
We say this to show that we’re not living in a post-racial utopia where every historical evil should be referred to in the past tense — “happened” but now safely behind us, alive only in the printed words of our textbooks. To share this rhetoric is to deny the foundational issues of this country, and the efforts made by millions of people and to encourage those complicit to celebrate prematurely a social awareness and empathy they indeed still lack.
So yes, please, carry your burden. If you truly have empathy for marginalized communities, you must actively think about how these systems of violence infiltrate our lives daily and how you contribute to them. Do not let your guilt turn you apathetic. Take this discomfort, listen, and provide the necessary support. But know that we are not letting you off the hook so easily.
Mariel Baez ’26 is a biology major and neuroscience and Latina/o studies concentrator from Springfield, Mass.
Uhart Bradnock ’27 is a prospective chemistry major with concentrations in biomolecular engineering, environmental science, and francophone studies from Trenton, N.J.
Chiaka Leilah Duruaku ’26 is a sociology and Chinese double major from Brooklyn, N.Y.
Sam Samuel ’26 is an environmental studies and Chinese double major from Shelton, Conn.
