Communal Guilt, Justice, and Grace

by Mary Volmer

A friend of mine, a white Christian woman, like me, posted this meme on Facebook. It was meant to end any discussion of white America’s legacy of racial violence and to silence calls for social justice. Cute little innocent girl, says the meme. The implication: poor little innocent me. Leave the past to the past. Leave me be.

My friend is right. The bombing of Pearl Harbor is not the fault of Japanese infants any more than she or I are at fault for dropping two atomic bombs on the ancestors of Japanese infants. And, yet, my friend and I are responsible for those acts, and for any acts committed by our country in our names. We are responsible, too, for the ongoing legacy of oppression and racial violence in this country. And if you are a white American, you are too.

Please, let me explain.

Communal guilt, like trauma, is passed down through generations and within communities. Unacknowledged guilt, like trauma, shackles individuals within those communities, and indeed whole countries, to exploitative and destructive patterns of belief and behavior so prevalent that we think of them as normal, if we recognize them at all. I’m a historical novelist, a student of human behavior, and have become aware of these patterns as the echoes of generations speaking through me. My ancestors are within me. I…