Avatar, Pocahontas, District 9... It seems Hollywood has become the latest place for white men to express their historic regrets. “White guilt” has become a common, albeit a little bit taboo, phrase of the latter 20th and early 21st centuries, a modern twist to the archaic “white man’s burden.” Though “white man’s burden” was used historically to justify imperialist “civilizing” throughout the world, our contemporary “burden” has been to unravel the crimes of white people—hence, a contemporary sense of guilt within white identity.
