^{by Tom Head, About.com Guide to Civil Liberties}

I just ran across the required reading section at The Angry Black Woman, and stumbled across her post on white liberal guilt--the debilitating fear that many whites have of saying or doing something that might come across as racist.

I'm not immune. I'm a white guy and I live in a 73% black city. Being thought of as a racist would be profoundly damaging to my social life, my career, and my activism work. But the truth is that if you write and talk about race--and I write and talk about race a lot--then you're always at risk of stepping in it, because race isn't just a "touchy" subject. It's an incredibly complicated subject that no one person can ever completely comprehend.

I don't remember ever being called a racist in person, but I've occasionally said things that came across the wrong way and had to backtrack. I'm not just talking about the everyday experience of having whites on the Internet accuse me of "reverse racism," but also about times in my life when I tried to say something interesting or helpful and stepped in it.

And I've learned from my mistakes, so here are five thoughts I'd offer to any white person who is legitimately paralyzed with fear that something s/he one day says or does might be seen as racist:

- First, don't be paralyzed. Seriously. Whites tend to resolve the difficult problem of talking about race by pretending that race doesn't exist at all. Pay attention to what people of color tell you about racism. Learn from it. Let yourself care about it. Talk about it. As whites we materially benefit from racism, so we have a moral obligation to confront it.

- Remember that racism is much, much bigger than you. Racism is an institutional problem, not something that has been invented by people who are alive today. It pervades American culture. So if you accidentally say something racist in a culture that's already racist, the problem isn't that you're creating racist sentiments. It's that you're failing to filter out the racist sentiments you've been fed.

- If what you say sounds racist, apologize for it. There seems to be this weird idea floating around that if you didn't mean to say something racist, it wasn't actually a racist remark. Sorry, no. You can, in fact, accidentally make a racist remark. Practice these words (or something to this effect that sounds more like you): "Yeah, that wasn't what I meant to say; I worded it wrong. I'm sorry." Unless you're dealing with somebody who already hates your guts, a simple verbal gaffe is probably not going to be perceived as a Freudian slip as long as you apologize for it. But if you defend it, the perception may be that your statement wasn't really a slip-up because you consider it worth defending.

- Don't buy into the "race hysteria" myth. Race is a touchy subject, sure, but people of color who are your friends probably aren't going to suddenly forget who you are just because you accidentally said something offensive. If any do, it's a safe bet that there's more going on there than an isolated verbal slip-up.

- Relax. Again, we live in a racist culture. Whatever you might one day say by accident, it's a safe bet that people of color in your life have heard people say far worse things on purpose.

In closing, I'd like to go back to a blog entry I posted in October regarding various highly-publicized instances in which white celebrities had made offensive remarks (see "All Apologies"):

None of this is to say that this will earn the offenders forgiveness, but that shouldn't be their primary objective anyway. The proper response for any ethical human being, upon discovering that they have caused harm, is to try to make up for it.

This is something that I have only slowly learned about racism controversies. Most of the time the controversy isn't about who is and who isn't a racist, as if this were some kind of sociopolitical remake of Where's Waldo. It's about recognizing the damage we do, and refusing to profit from it, and correcting it, and moving forward.

As long as you're more concerned about the harm your words can do to others than you are with the harm your words can do to your reputation, odds are excellent that you will always be able to address your verbal gaffes in an intelligent way. In personal communication, as in most areas of life, genuine empathy and concern for others tends to shine through--but when you're only thinking about yourself, people can usually pick up on that, too.

See also:

• All Apologies