Al Black
2 min readMar 28, 2018

--

Perhaps if I told you I was a New Zealander, and there was never slavery in New Zealand, and that the Maori people were given British citizenship in return for a treaty opening their land to European settlement, and that New Zealand was the first country in the World to give women the vote, you might think I have a right to be free of guilt for white privilege and male privilege?

Well I don’t base my argument on my ancestor’s relatively blameless past compared to your genocidal, slave-owning sexist ancestors: I am saying “you hold no guilt for the sins of your fathers” and should stop beating yourself up over things you had no part of. I did not say you should “use this as a justification to not fight the injustices of the world perpetuated by your ancestors and peers.”

All civilised human beings should fight against injustices, regardless of their colour or gender, alongside those of differing colour or gender. And I’m happy if you have a great life and are happy with it, because that has not been my experience with people who burden themselves with white male guilt from the sins of their forefathers. If you use it as incentive to do good in the world rather than as a scourge to beat yourself with, then I am happy for you, but that isn’t how it came across in your original post, where it appeared to me to be politically correct guilt signalling:

--

--

Al Black

I work in IT, Community volunteer interested in Politics, support Capitalism as the best economic system for lifting people out of poverty, Skeptical scientist.