Martin Luther King's dream - Americans may now be free to judge a man based on the content of his character instead of the color of his skin

The End Of White Guilt?

By Nancy Morgan
Monday, July 27, 2009

Something strange is happening in America. For the first time, a white man is standing up to a black man’s charge of racism. And he is being supported by his employer. In another first, the media coverage of this event is not employing the time worn premise that only whites can be racist.

For those of you who may have missed the unrelenting 24/7 media coverage of the latest racial tempest in a teapot, the basic facts: A white policeman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the alert for 2 reported black burglars, detained a prominent black professor. The black professor then proceeded to play the race card, accusing the officer of being a racist. After challenging the authority and the mother of the policeman, professor Henry Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct.

This incident may have gone the way of millions of others but for the fact that this professor was a friend of President Obama. Luckily for Henry Gates, the most powerful man in the world took time out from pressing affairs to take his call.

The President then announced publicly that the Cambridge police Department ‘acted stupidly’, even while acknowledging that he wasn’t familiar with all the details. That our president chose to get involved in the first place is a discussion for another time.

What makes this incident unique is the fact that the automatic assumption of racism on the part of the white policeman is actually being questioned. In a very public way - signaling the possibility that the ‘white guilt’ America has embraced for the last 45 years may finally be consigned to history.

White guilt is best described by author Shelby Steele, who says “White guilt is literally the same thing as black power.â€