Political Memes

While that might be true for most healthy people you can also grow up to not feel guilty while being guilty and the other way around. Source: I feel guilty for heating my apartment when i freeze.

I totally get the sentiment, but having been raised catholic I’m inclined to disagree. Guilt can come from a bunch of places, including an inordinate sense of community involvement.

That's not true no matter how much you want it to be, how simple of a slogan it is, or how convenient it would make your actions. I get it, we need to teach about race and this is a part of it; but be careful of using justifications like that, it can really hurt your cause. Recognize that social change requires nuance and tact, and to be firm in your positions but adaptable in your approach. These are kids, we need to approach this correctly.

Tbh, I don't think that's true. Feeling guilty is not tied to someone else judging you as guilty.

People feel guilty for some dumb thing they said in a conversation 20 years ago that nobody remembers but they themselves. At the same time, they don't feel guilty for things where they are actively creating suffering, e.g. buying stuff that was made with child labour.

And I also don't think, that guilt is a helpful feeling to teach children in this context. It would be much more helpful to teach them to spot inequality and unfair things and to work on resolving that inequality.

I don't think that inherited guilt is a helpful concept at all, because did a white school kid do wrong except being born with that skin color?

This only leads to these kids breaking out of that guilt and hating the whole concept.

It's also quite unfair in total, since it includes the children of those who fought against the injustice and it includes white children that are worse off than the average black person.

It would theoretically also include me, even though I was born and live in a country where slavery was never legal and where black slaves where never a thing.

Guilt, like most other negative emotions, paralyzes. It doesn't lead to any positive change.

What would be much more important to teach children to see those who are less privileged than them and to do what they can to fight that injustice.

But sadly, many Americans see anything that could reduce social injustice as socialism and thus bad, so many prefer to wallow in guilt instead of actually improving the situation.

That's not really true though