The Burden of Proof

White Entitlement

Have you ever shared information online about the experience of an oppressed group, and two minutes later some white middle aged man pops up in the comments: "Where's the proof? Explain it to me. What are your sources?" This frequent event is not an accident, nor is it indicative of the well-meaning curiosity or critical-thinking-prowess of white men. It's something much darker. It stems from white entitlement.

White entitlement is a passive assumption of something being owed to white people. That can be special treatment, privileges, ease, comfort, and so on. Although this attitude may seem as little more than a nuisance, it is, in fact, deeply violent. In The Violence of White Entitlement and the Hypocrisy of Earned Merit, Jackson and MacDonald explore how white people hold the assumption that white experiences, cultural norms, and perspectives are the default or "normal" standard. In other words, they centre themselves. They centre themselves in everything. Without even realising it, white people's default is to see themselves as the main characters of every narrative and the centre of every debate, issue, and indeed, the world itself. So what might we deduce will take place when issues about the experience of oppressed groups are the topic of the day? White society will carry on doing what it usually does: it will centre itself.

But why is this violent? Is it really anything more than spoiled brat behaviour? And surely there's lots of white people who raise important questions and debate seriously? Why should we assume their prompt for evidence or explanation is a sign of white entitlement?

Well that's just the thing...

White entitlement often masquerades as fairness or even intellectual thinking. As a result, the common stance of whiteness, when faced with the narrative of the oppressed, is skepticism. It is turning truth into a debate, to take a stance of over-critical attitude towards the witness of oppressed groups.

Because of the way white entitlement masks itself as genuine good-faith questions or thoughtful critical analysis, a refusal to engagement with it can easily come across as unreasonable, proof of a weak argument, or even a sign of the "opponent" trying to hide something. Case in point, when one refuses to explain oneself to the white middle aged man in the Facebook comments, they often throw a tantrum, or see the lack of engagement as sign of their being right (undefeated). The white male model is, typically, gladiatorial. "Meet me in my arena of choice, fight me using my weapons of choice, otherwise I assume you're throwing in the towel and I have won! I am victorious!"

There are so many problems with this line of thinking. For one, it centres the will, method, and even measuring scales of white thinking. Secondly, it sets the white person up as the one who must be pleased; as the one who's approval you must earn to be deemed legitimate.

The Rigged Trial

We see this dynamic playing out in the Palestinian genocide every day. The West likes to frame the Palestinian genocide as a debatable topic, with a relentlessly skeptical tone reserved only for the Palestinians. Their suffering is treated as a theory - there for us to poke holes in. Palestinians and their allies are pressed to attend debate battles in white arenas to prove their worth. White society frames the occupation of Palestine like it's negotiable, like there is nuance or several valid perspectives. The Palestinian genocide in the hands of white society is a court trial wherein the jury is already bought off, the judge is directly related to the murderer, and the outcome of the trial already decided.

Even when the oppressed do accommodate the white person's demand, even when they demonstrate an unbelievable patience in appealing to the bloated carcass that is White ego, even when they submit their evidence to this insane and unreasonable request, they are met with slammed doors and more hoops to jump through. So many walls of bias and indoctrination: decades, centuries of racism. No amount of evidence can ever penetrate that delusion. And yet, the white voice continues to clamour: "More! Give me more evidence! Dance for me once more!"

The White ego says: "Because you have not convinced me (which actually means, because you have not broken through my biases and propagandised thinking), I deem your testimony as illegitimate. Or, at best, just one of many perspectives."

And thus, with one fell swoop, the white person has set themselves up as judge of reality. Deciders of what is right and wrong. They may not even realise they're doing it, but by listening to their own entitlement over the voice of the oppressed and abused, they are doing just that. Crowning themselves king and judge of what is true and accurate. If we pick that apart for a second: white people are claiming that they understand and know the situation better than the actual people inside Gaza Concentration Camp.

Not only that, but when white voices are challenged on their arrogance, they mostly respond with hurt feelings, soreness, defensiveness, or aggression. They act as though they're suddenly the victim, instead of seeing the correction as a learning opportunity. And so, they never learn.

As we watch the white colonisers who call themselves "Israelis" complain about feeling unsafe, sobbing on TV and making the genocide they are committing something that's all about them, we are simply witnessing an extension of white, victimhood mentality. That's a part of white entitlement too. "Give me what I want or else I've throw a toddler tantrum right here on the shop floor for everyone to see. Extra snots and all."

"When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression." - Franklin Leonard 

There's nothing new about this behaviour. White society has done the same to Black people, immigrants, women, victims of abuse, victims of rape, children, the disabled, the poor, Muslims. They debate the global majority's testimonies, treat the oppressed as unreliable narrators, and get butt-hurt when they're called out on it.

The Murdered As Witness

But imagine having the reality of your genocide debated. Imagine having to suffer losing your children, your limbs, your home, only to then be put on trial and forced to defend your right to even exist. "Oh, you're being killed? Prove it."

Despite the absurdity of this demand, the Palestinians have done something no one should ever have to do. They have recorded their own Holocaust. They are documented their own children dying to prove to the world the truth of their genocide and to reveal the true face of their occupiers.

In real time, without editing or slant, they have broadcasted the truth to the world. They should never have had to do that. They should never have had to appeal to us, plead with us. But they did.

Theirs is a testimony written in blood - their own. Their streets, their skin bear the proof.

And so, when your inner voice rises up to inhabit that spoiled, entitled spirit of white attitude, remember, the Palestinians owe us nothing.

Every time we take a stance of: “You owe us this or that”, this stems from white supremacy. That stems from racism and a white patriarchal mentality of, “I am entitled”. It is an inbuilt attitude of superiority. That attitude of “You have to prove something to me. You have something to prove. You, the oppressed, you, the suffering, you who are the victim of my society's oppression, need to prove to me, need to convince me to get on board”.

The Palestinians owe us nothing.

Not their niceness, not their education and explaining, not acting like perfect victims, not patience, not a mildening of their language, not dying beautifully, not suffering silently, not their politeness, not their screams on video so that our cold hearts might perchance be pierced, not waiting on our dragging feet before they resist their own annihilation, not filming the death of their own children, not coming on our Western tv's and facing down arrogant, sabotaging news reporters, not having to defend themselves.

We owe them everything. We are the ones in debt here.

Whenever your white, entitled, “prove yourself to me” attitude attempts to rear its ugly head, do not mistake it for critical thinking. It isn't you being fair. It isn't you being smart or commanding superior rationality. It isn't you loving peace or being. a good person. Do not mistake your blindness and callousness for intellectual prowess. That is not what's happening here.

Every time that attitude rises up inside you, remember that the Palestinians have nothing more to prove. Their innocence is already a firm fact. They have sealed it with blood.

We are the ones on trial here.

The burden of proof doesn't lie with them, the burden of proof lies with us. Each of us must prove that we are not genocide enablers and complicit. We're the ones on trial here.

Sources:

• Miranda Fricker — Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007)

• Nadine Sayegh — Western Insistence on the Perfect Palestinian Victim and the Condemnation of Resistance (2023)

• Sarah Bufkin — Racism, Epistemic Injustice, and Ideology Critique (2024)

• Charles W. Mills — Theory of White Ignorance (2023)

• Zara Bain — Mills's Account of White Ignorance: Structural or Non-Structural? (2023)

• Time — "Journalists in Gaza Are Documenting Their Own Starvation", (24th July 2025)

• Gloria Wekker — White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016)

• Edward Said — Orientalism (1978)

• Ahmad Ibsais — Palestinians Warned of a Genocide in 2023. Why Weren't We Believed? (2025)

• Joe Feagin — The White Racial Frame (2013)

• bell hooks — Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992)

• Audre Lorde — Sister Outsider (1984)

• Dina Matar — Habitual Media: Interrogating Western Legacy Media’s Complicity in the Epistemic ‘War’ Against Palestinians (2025)

• Brigitte Herremans — Resisting Erasure: Palestinian Literature and Informal Archives (2026)

• Patrick J. Vernon & Charlotte Galpin — Resisting Post-Truth Politics as Epistemicide (2024)

• Bedoor AlShebli, Bruno Gabriel Salvador Casara & Anne Maass — Media Coverage of War Victims: Journalistic Biases in Reporting on Israel and Gaza (2025)

• Mohammed El-Kurd — Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal