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Introduction

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Hi All.

Before I begin, I just want to thank anyone who left a comment or an upvote on my last post which introduced myself. I really appreciate it. Having people leaving a comment or upvote shows me the kindness of the community, and how they treat new writers. Thank you.

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The Post

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The thesis for this post is a simple 4 word phrase:

I hate collective guilt.

One of the earliest examples of collective guilt for myself and many others would be school. Class detentions are quite common in schools, and the logic behind them is somewhat valid. If the teacher cannot determine the culprit of a particular thing that one or a few students have done, then punishing the entire class would mean that the guilty parties will have their punishment. Problem solved, right?

However, the issue that arises from this are the students within the class that have done nothing wrong, the innocent ones who are punished for another person or peoples sake. These students have their time wasted, and are treated as potentially being the ones who did something to disrupt the class, when they haven't.

Class detentions are an example of collective guilt, but the consequences aren't really that bad. If you haven't done anything wrong and are blamed for it, it's a simple issue to fix. Talk to your parents or carers, followed by the principal and in most cases, it'll be sorted out the next day. But this post's intention is not to focus on class detentions. Rather, it is to discuss some other types of collective guilt that are more serious and are worth discussing.

I think a form of collective guilt I want to go after is the collective guilt that surrounds white people. For Australia, which is where I live, we are all taught about the history of Australia. Australia was initially inhabited by Aboriginal people, who lived off the land rather than on the land. Meaning that the idea of "property" was a foreign concept to them. They were, put simply, nomads.

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The British arrived in Australia via boat and landed at Botany Bay in January of 1788. Long story cut short, the Europeans colonised the country, due to the belief that the land was terra nullius, meaning "no mans land".

Why is this relevant though?

The reason for me bringing this up is this notion that non-indigenous people need to feel guilty for the actions that happened in the past. There's this strange narrative that 230 years after the British first colonised Australia, people who are non-indigenous must feel guilt and shame for the past.

I have no issue with Indigenous people and I don't have an issue with learning about the past of Australia. There were some terrible things that occurred to the Aboriginal people and I am certainly not denying that those things happened. An example would be the Stolen Generation, which had Aboriginal children stolen from their parents. I'm not dismissing the horrible actions, I simply have a problem with this collective guilt that some people seem to apply for all white Australians.

We as white Australians are not responsible for colonisation.

The two examples which I've listed, classroom detentions and the history of Australia are remarkably different, but very similar at the same time. Different because obviously, a classroom detention is a non-issue when compared to the colonisation of Australia and the death of Aboriginal people. However, the two examples have a common link, a group of people are collectively blamed for the actions of a few.

We are individuals, it doesn't matter what collective group we belong to. Whether you are white, black, asian, male, female, transgender, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, etc, it doesn't matter.

What matters is what WE do.

It matters what WE say.

The actions of the collective groups we belong to do not define who or what we are.

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Endnote

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Thanks for reading. If you have any criticisms, leave it as a comment and I'll be sure to read it.