Communal Guilt

There's a video making its way around the Internet called "Dear Woman" by a group of human males calling themselves "Conscious Men".  I won't link to it, but you'll find it if you want to.  I'll admit that I haven't watched the entire video, doing so requires a stronger stomach than I possess, but the upshot of the video is a couple of (alleged) men apologizing to women for all the mean and nasty things done to women by men throughout history.

The whole thing reminds me of a conversation I had with a former girlfriend (herself a Women's Studies major), where she asked me if I ever felt guilty for the fact that men rape women.  I told her, most emphatically, that I do not feel guilty, because I personally have never raped a woman.  I've never hit a woman.  I have, to the best of my ability, attempted to treat women with the respect they deserve.  I would, in fact, intervene to defend any woman I saw undergoing such an attack.

The thing that sticks in my craw about this is the concept of communal guilt, the idea that an individual belonging to a group is to blame for all the misdeeds of any other individual member of that same group.  Therefore all men should feel guilty for the crime of rape committed by other men.  This despite the fact that most men are not rapists.  All Christians are responsible for the Crusades, despite the fact that the last Crusade ended hundreds of years before anyone currently alive was born.  All whites should feel guilty about slavery, despite the fact that no one currently alive either owned, or was, a slave and that indeed for most of us our ancestors weren't even in the United States when slavery was abolished (personally, three of my four grandparents came to this country fifty years after the Civil War, the fourth grew up in North Dakota and her ancestors fought on the Union side).

I accept no guilt for actions I personally did not perform.  I do not apologize for the actions of others.  No one has the right to apologize on my behalf.  I reserve the right to apologize for my own, and only my own, misdeeds.