ake any prison and ask the inmates if they are guilty of a crime and you’ll find few who admit their culpability. Most protest that false convictions, societal deprivations or other circumstances caused their incarceration. This is not to deny that the criminal justice system is racist. It is. But self-proclaimed assertions of innocence are the least convincing form of evidence.

Consider now mainstream white Americans who protest they are innocent of maintaining a racially structured society that privileges white people and holds people of color at a disadvantage. Like fellow inmates who support each others’ claims, they convince only themselves. Prisons contain society’s outcasts and prisoners’ views have little impact on the rest of society. But mainstream white Americans, by virtue of our power and numbers, shape the very nature of our country. Reminiscent of the shallow feel-good "I’m OK, you’re OK" philosophy of the 1970s, white proclamations of innocence are a sweetheart deal, a tacit agreement that a more profound review of our role in creating a multiracial society is to be avoided at all costs.

"The entire dialogue on guilt and innocence is simply a smokescreen hiding the truly painful inner reality of white culture. We have failed to live up to our own values."

The best defense is a good offense, and mainstream white Americans who lobby for their innocence take this to heart. To those people of color who protest the dominance of whiteness, the charge is made that they are seeking privilege, indeed have obtained it, at the cost of innocent white people. To the white people who believe the racial structure of our society is an evil to be undone, they cast the claim that we suffer from "white guilt." These claims have all the earmarks of male masturbation. They may feel good while doing it, but in the end they’re nowhere near the target.

Some white people do feel guilty. It’s a temporary matter of restoring balance. Our schools teach us we are innocent. Our politicians tell us we are entitled. Our friends and neighbors tell us the problem lies in the dysfunctional cultures of African Americans, Chicano/as, American Indians, you name it. In the meantime, Asians are held up as a model minority and the white poor, lacking a "dysfunctional culture" to blame, are all but invisible. These are lies, and eventually some white people turn to the evidence, the real evidence, and find we’ve been fooled. Along the way we experience a nagging sense of guilt as our innocence is shed. But when it’s said and done, when white people finally free ourselves from the blinders our culture imposes upon us, we feel something quite different, and it’s not guilt. It’s anger.

In time the anger gets channeled into activism, words and deeds intended to make our country live up to its values of freedom and democracy. And here we have a hint of the real problem self-declared innocent white Americans experience. The fact is, racially speaking, they suffer from low self-esteem. Espousing values they claim as sacred, they fail to act upon these very values. Like prisoners aspiring for power and success, "innocent" white Americans choose the cheap way to their dreams of racial inclusion and eventually find themselves locked away from their true aspirations, resorting to fantasies of innocence and self-supporting claims bearing no relation to true accomplishments. They ought to be ashamed, and here’s the secret. They are. The entire dialogue on guilt and innocence is simply a smokescreen hiding the truly painful inner reality of white culture. We have failed to live up to our own values.

True pride and self-esteem are earned through accomplishment. What are you doing to create a multiracial society?

Jeff Hitchcock can be contacted at jhitchcock@euroamerican.org.