Suffering and Social Class

​It was a pleasure to read from Helen’s essay on suffering during the Thursday evening group.  In her essay, Helen says:  “There  was no guilt involved in being born into this or that social class, but nowadays we are beset on every side by false guilt which is inverted pride."

I was interested to find the following quote from Robin DiAngelo just the day after Thursday night group on Suffering:
 

• "I am sometimes asked whether my work reinforces and takes advantage of white guilt. But I don’t see my efforts to uncover how race shapes my life as a matter of guilt. I know that because  I was socialized as white in a racism-based society, I have a racist worldview, deep racial bias, racist patterns, and investments in the racist system that has elevated me. Still, I don’t feel guilty about racism. I didn’t choose this socialization, and it could not be avoided. But I am responsible for my role in it. To the degree that I have done my best in each moment to interrupt my participation, I can rest with a clearer conscience. But that clear conscience is not achieved by complacency or a sense that I have arrived. Unlike heavy feelings such as guilt,  the continuous work of identifying my internalized superiority and how it may be manifesting itself is incredibly liberating. When I start from the premise that of course I have been thoroughly socialized into the racist culture in which I was born, I no longer need to expend energy denying that fact. I am eager—even excited—to identify my inevitable collusion so that I can figure out how to stop colluding! Denial and the defensiveness that is needed to maintain it is exhausting."  DiAngelo, Robin J., White Fragility (p. 148 and149). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.