Ampersand on the difference between feeling guilt about your country’s actions and responsibility to put them to rights:
[…] As a straight white guy, I’ve been the beneficiary of homophobia, racism and sexism since before my first breath. Starting with my parent’s relative affluence – which was to some degree a product of minorities being unfairly kept out of competition with them for education and for jobs – to my own life, where I’ve always done better than I otherwise would have due to other folks being kept down – racism, sexism and homophobia has helped me to a large degree. And (from my straight white male perspective) it has always done so in a conveniently invisible fashion.
I don’t feel shame for that. I didn’t ask for that, and I don’t want it. What good would my personal shame do anyone, anyhow?
But I do feel responsibility. All my life, in mostly quiet and invisible ways, I’ve benefited from advantages I shouldn’t have and don’t deserve. This is why I support affirmative action, and reparations, and almost every reasonable measure I?ve come across for fighting racism, sexism and homophobia (and classism, and imperialism, etc etc).