White guilt

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White guilt refers to feelings of guilt said to be experienced by some people of European descent when they consider present or past wrongs committed by their ancestors, or nonrelated historical people of European origins, against natives of conquered and colonised lands and other exploited people. It is usually used with regard to the feelings of White Americans regarding the history of African Americans and Native Americans.^{[citation needed]}

In today's society, it is argued that in the past, white Europeans committed wrongs against non-whites in the form of economic exploitation through colonialism and political and legal systems designed to enforce racial segregation and racial discrimination. Many white people do not feel a sense of personal guilt over past oppression of other races, and resent being blamed for events they had nothing to do with. Others are often anxious to distance themselves from the actions of their ancestors and are said to feel a sense of collective guilt. Others may be descended from a different ethnicity or social strata which presumably committed no offenses against exploited people. Similarly it is said that descendants of oppressed people, some of whom have experienced modern day discrimination, sometimes expect whites, either collectively or individually, to feel and accept "white guilt".^{[citation needed]}

White guilt is said to result in a feeling of lost moral authority on the part of some whites, so that they feel uncomfortable discussing issues of race and are very anxious to avoid being seen as racist. Whether white guilt is healthy or unhealthy, just or injust, proper or improper, and necessary or unnecessary, are matters of controversy, as are questions about if and how to make amends for the historical and present inequities between races.^{[citation needed]}

One controversial issue related to white guilt is the concession to demands for reparations from contemporary governments for their nations past involvement in slavery, or for other crimes committed against Africans. No such reparations have been paid by the United States and, at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban, at the insistence of the European Union, it was agreed that only modern slavery can be called a crime against humanity because the trans-Atlantic trade was legal at the time and that:

'slavery and the slave trade, including the trans-Atlantic slave trade, were appalling tragedies in the history of humanity, not only because of their abhorrent barbarism, but also in terms of their magnitude, organised nature and especially their negation of the essence of victims,'^[1]

In 2002 Belgium apologised to Congo for its role in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, but not its support of the Mobutu dictatorship, nor the colonisation of the Belgian Congo. In 2002, Germany apologised for the genocide of the Herero people in Namibia^[2]. In both cases reparations were denied.