whites are only ever concerned when a fact is counterproductive for them
Whites want to evade guilt for their unearned privilege, so claim guilt is counterproductive. Yet Blacks know better than Whites that the guilt Whites experience because of that unearned privilege is the just punishment for the existence of such privilege. The gulf between the two sides is always going to be wide so long as this fact is not clearly understood, accepted and acted upon.
Guilt is a painful experience that requires great effort and courage to overcome; courage and industry that Whites lack precisely because White privilege encourages Whites to become complacent and lazy - especially ethically. If you look at the guilt pedophiles possess because of what they do to children and the fact that none of their kind has ever been cured of the desire for sex with children, you can see how far Whites still have to go to cure themselves of the inferiority complexes known more commonly as White supremacism and Negrophobia.
The function of guilt is to alert the guilty to the fact that they have done wrong - either absolutely or in relation to their moral values. Guilt is thus the starting point for self-reappraisal and change. To re-label guilt as counterproductive, as Tim Wise foolishly does, is to say that guilt is irrelevant and useless. This is the same as saying that a fire alarm is irrelevant when there is a fire - even though it would result in no action being taken to put out the fire. This proves that White guilt and shame are still so pervasive and so profoundly felt that Whites still desperately try to evade its inevitably-negative consequences and, in the process, damn Blacks to being always treated by Whites as genetic inferiors.
The solution is for Whites to exploit their guilt constructively and not simply self-indulgently wallow in it as White anti-racists do, by effectively challenging their own unearned privileges (as Time Wise, Robert Jensen, Noel Ignatiev & others have done) and learn to stand on their own two feet as grown-ups do. Of course, this requires that Whites put themselves in the firing line usually referred to as becoming a Nigger-lover, and how many Whites are really willing to put their own lives on the line to protect those of Blacks? Like the question every US Secret Service agent has to consider - would you use your own body to stop a bullet aimed at the President? - trying to evade the unevadable - Guilt - is never going to answer this question nor is it going to enable Whites to mature as people, into people, and so unreconstructed Whites will always be the emotional and ethical cripples they currently choose to remain. And children always choose what gives them pleasure because they have not yet learned adult responsibility and have never been taught this so do not know any better.
Kittywampus deliberately equates feeling guilty with renouncing privilege - even though they are unrelated - in order to vainly get around her own feelings of guilt. All that is being asked is that unearned privileges be renounced. Whites are not required to forgo college but they are required to prove that they have a right to be there over and above their Whiteness. Few Whites can do this. To claim that guilt paralyses and is solipsistic is a self-fulfilling prophecy that encourages running away from it and living in denial. It is only these things for people who choose it to be these things. Kittywampus's problem is her lack of experience of human variation - a typically White supremacist stance that proves her attempt to hijack the national debate on White supremacism in favor of Whites. No-one can ever be responsible without acknowledging the power of guilt in our lives, for only in this way is redemption possible. After all, redemption without guilt would be as meaningless as sex without love. This is the usual White attempt at success without achievement characteristic of their apartheid-style political life.
