ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the impact of slavery and segregation on contemporary White American identity. It searches for the traces of past racial oppression in the current expressions of a collective White responsibility. It deals more specifically with a recent trend in society and scholarship emphasizing the entrenchment of White racism in United States history. This new focus is a response to the rise of conservative ideology in the last three decades, a growing number of Americans using the concept of colorblindness to claim that the US has entered a post-racial era, making the debate on racism and responsibility irrelevant. The chapter argues that the current public discourse reflects the advent of a new racial era for the US and the world. The author historicizes the notions of White guilt and responsibility to analyze traces of the oppressive past in the contemporary context, concentrating specifically on historiography, museography, and anti-racist activism. After exposing the factors that brought about a change in perspective at the turn of the twenty-first century, the chapter examines the new ways of apprehending the past and dealing with the present, highlighting a discursive shift from the notion of White guilt to those of White responsibility and White privilege.
