Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic satirizes the way modern liberal guilt addresses historical injustices against Native Americans. A boy asks his mom if he and Bobby can play "Cowboys and Indians," and his mother declares that offensive, suggesting instead they play "Ethnic Guilt and Indians." She explains the rules: "The game is to feel just bad enough to feel shame, but not bad enough to change anything substantive."

The final panel shows the boy acting out the game, standing over his friend (dressed as a Native American) and declaring, "You did not die in vain. One day... my descendants will write apologetic college theses on your land." The joke targets the hollow nature of performative guilt -- people who acknowledge historical wrongs and feel bad about them, but whose response amounts to little more than writing academic papers and expressing remorse while continuing to benefit from the status quo. It is a pointed critique of symbolic gestures substituting for meaningful action or restitution.