The most destructive consequence of guilt and one that is most likely to cause [counseling] practitioners and teachers to behave inappropriately and defensively is the threat it poses to self-esteem and to everyone’s need to feel positive about his identity. White people have as great a need to feel that their racial identity is positive as do people-of-color. The task for them is to find out what they need to do to achieve this.

Elaine Pinderhughes, Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: The Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice (New York: The Free Press, 1989).