(Todd A. Smith)
White people have never had to apologize for being White, despite what Vice President J.D. Vance said at a Turning Point U.S.A. convention.
Throughout the world, even in countries where they are not in the majority, White people have benefitted from their skin color.
They have gotten free land from America, while descendants of African-American slaves have gotten nothing.
White slave owners have gotten reparations when African-Americans gained their freedom.
Still, most African-Americans got nothing after their emancipation.
What White people have had to apologize for over the years is generations of inhumane treatment of people of color.
What White people have had to apologize for is enslaving other human beings because they thought their skin color made them superior to the darker races of the universe.
What White people have had to apologize for is killing people based on their skin color.
What White people have had to apologize for is for raping African-American women during slavery.
What White people have had had to apologize for is lynching innocent African-American adults and children based on the lies of other White people.
What White people have had to apologize for is Jim Crow.
What White people have had to apologize for are hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis.
What White people have had to apologize for is redlining.
What White people have had to apologize for is preventing people from voting based on skin color.
What White people have had to apologize for is the modern policing system, which came about to re-enslave African-Americans.
What White people have had to apologize for is police brutality.
What White people have had to apologize for is police harassment and the over-policing of African-American neighborhoods.
What White people have had to apologize for is not allowing African-American people to attend the schools they want to or live in the neighborhoods that their money can afford.
What White people have had to apologize for is racially profiling African-Americans who are doing ordinary things like going into their own homes, watching birds in a park or delivering packages because they work for Amazon, FedEx or UPS.
What White people have had to apologize for is calling an African-American person a racial slur like the N-word.
What White people have had to apologize for is excluding African-Americans from top jobs that they qualify for and giving them instead to a lesser qualified White person because they feel more comfortable around their White peers, friends or relatives.
What White people have had to apologize for is for purposefully making it hard for African-Americans to build generational wealth by appraising their homes at a much lower value than it would be appraised for if a White family occupied the same home in the same condition.
What White people have had to apologize is for rigging the political system by breaking up predominantly African-American congressional districts so that there will be less African-American representation in the House of Representatives.
What White people have had to apologize for is for taking taxpayer money and allowing rich kids to get their private school tuition subsidized by less affluent people who cannot even afford to send their own children to private schools.
What White people must apologize for is political stunts like Texas Gov. Greg Abbot forcing schools to have Turning Point U.S.A. chapters on their campuses even no student wants to join, or no faculty member wants to sponsor it.
What White people must apologize for is destroying African-American wealth and excellence like they did to Black Wall Street Tulsa, Okla. in 1921.
What White people must apologize for is infiltrating and destroying organizations dedicated to the uplift of the African-American community like the Black Panther Party.
White people had to apologize for bombing and shooting up African-American churches.
White people had to apologize for rigging the system to favor them, while pretending that they achieved what they have in life by hard work only.
White people in countries like South Africa had to apologize for apartheid.
White people in other countries have had to apologize for enslaving people of African descent.
White people have had to apologize for stealing land in Africa, robbing those countries of their natural resources and oppressing the indigenous people of that land.
So, no Vice President Vance, White people no longer must apologize for being White.
But they still must apologize for the atrocities committed in the name of whiteness, White supremacy and this weird God-complex that many White people have.
White people who feel guilty because of what has happened to people of color throughout the world in the name of White supremacy feel that way because they have a guilty conscience.
White people who are not racist, do not feel guilty at all.
Those are the White people who do not owe anyone an apology.
All they owe people of color is an acknowledgment of how they benefit from White privilege.
By Vance saying that White people no longer must apologize for being White, he is saying that White is synonymous with hate, racism and violence.
It is not.
Those descriptions, though, are synonymous with bigoted people and bigoted people should feel remorseful for their ignorance.
And it is a shame that we have a vice president who is O.K. with bigotry.
- Movie Review: ‘731’ Another Film That is a Warning - September 26, 2025
