A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America – Four Essays on the Civil Rights Era, Affirmative Action, and the Politics of Racial Guilt

by Shelby Steele

From the author of the award-winning bestseller The Content of Our Character comes a new essay collection that tells the untold story behind the polarized racial politics in America today. In A Dream Deferred Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom in the United States--the first one being segregation--emerged from the civil rights era when the country was overtaken by a powerful impulse to redeem itself from racial shame. According to Steele, 1960s liberalism had as its first and all-consuming goal the expiation of America guilt rather than the careful development of true equality between the races. This "culture of preference" betrayed America's best principles in order to give whites and America institutions an iconography of racial virtue they could use against the stigma of racial shame. In four densely argued essays, Steele takes on the familiar questions of affirmative action, multiculturalism, diversity, Afro-centrism, group preferences, victimization--and what he deems to be the atavistic powers of race, ethnicity, and gender, the original causes of oppression. A Dream Deferred is an honest, courageous look at the perplexing dilemma of race and democracy in the United States--and what we might do to resolve it.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Race, Cultural, Book Club, Economics

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Shelby Steele (born January 1, 1946) is an African American author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, specialising in the study of race relations, multiculturalism and affirmative action. In 1990, he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in the general nonfiction category for his book The Content of Our Character.

Reviews

[Sheri · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was recommended in a conversation about race with my son's partner. She noted Steele as a reasonable black conservative voice and was curious about my take. Unfortunately, I feel like I've already read this book. Seriously. McWhorter's Woke Racism is essentially Steele's 1998 commentary 22 years later.

And, like McWhorter, I agree with about 65-80% of what Steele says; if anything he gets extra kudos for prescience but also I suffer with the same frustration: Why is it that continually in discussions around race in America do we polarize and argue for the totality of individual cause and relief or structural cause and relief? Can none of us imagine that we are both restrained by the structure (and therefore need structural solutions) AND ALSO that individual characteristics (abilities as well as belief about whether our actions will be effective) impact our struggle for equality and opportunity? It is, in my never very humble opinion, precisely the presence of both factors (and their interaction) that makes solutions so difficult. And instead of granting this and moving toward discussion, we so often dig our heels in about "our cause". Sigh.

The only other comment I have about this book in particular is that, while it is four separate essays, they really just re-hash the same argument over and over (white liberalism is born of guilt and a desire to perform "non-racist"-ly simply for individual vindication, not out of a desire for real change; this leads to black dependance and entitlement, rather than growth and development). I think the shortest one would have sufficed; the rest of the 170 pages were reptition for me.

With that said, and feeling like so much of this is re-hash, I will simply include the quotes I found most useful along with commentary where I feel it is necessary:
"Shame pushed rthe post-sixties United States into an extravagent, autocratic, socialistic, and interventionish liberalism that often bertrayed America's best principles in order to give whites and American insitutions an iconography of racial virture they could use against hte stigma of racial shame."

"black American leaders were practicing a politics that drew the group into a victim-focused racial identity that, in turn, stifled black advancement more than racism itself did."

"group love (in one form or another) is a preoccupation in black life because of the protective funtion it serves, because we want to use the matter of love as a weapon of shame, and thus as an enforcer of conformity."

"structuralism pushed social reform ahead--it really made the civil rights movement possible--by expanding the concept of moral complicity to include passive attitudes and even silence." Writing in the 90s; this extrapolation of structural to the extreme--which is what Kendi does later with anti-racism is prescient--and does appear to reject any individual attempt at change or empowerment. I agree with this rejection of the totalism argument and push back against anti-racism (later endorsed by McWhorter). However, Steele seems to take the other side that there is no way to embrace structural change within this context of "you are with us or you are against us"...he notes that it "projects a monolithic determinism on the world" and "anyting can become a structure that automatically 'vicitimizes' certain claasses of people". This fear of abuse does not allow us to hear legitimate complaints. It is just as stifling as the victimization that Steele seeks to prevent.

"It was reform that demanded no principles from its beneficiaries and no sacrafice from its supporters--the fruit of a liberalism with little moral authority but much moral vanity."

"This paradox--arguing against your own capacity to help yourself as a way of helping yourself--has been a theme of black politics over the last thirty years."

"Black politics, since the sixities, ahs been based on this hidden incentive to repress individuality so as to highlight the profitable collective identity." Yes, somewhat. And this has brought power to those at the top of the black political structure. And this has created groups that profit. I would argue that the collective grouping also gives a sense of identity and pride. It seems to me that the nihilism of the inner city 90s (and so loudly lamented by people such as Cornell West) can be linked to this identity of "nothing I do will make a difference." And, I think the changes wrought in with #BLM brings about a different sense of empowerment; "maybe I do have the power to make a change."

"when interventionism becomes a faith, when it is implemented to transform people, it oppresses and defeats them instead." So here is the woke racism as a religion that McWhorter touts 20+ years later; and also THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT THIS TRANFORMATION LEADS TO OPPRESSION. In the American case, we have not seen much large scale improvement in the lives of lower class black people since the 60s and that does not indicate that this is always true or that it would lead to oppression in every situation.

Steele goes on to argue that both redemptive liberalism and segregation blacks "are left to meet our difficulties without full agency over them" and "negotiate solutions to our problems through a self-absorbed white society." Yes. This is precisely the anti-racist structural point with which McWhorter also struggles. By arguing that this liberal solution is compounding the problem (a point with which I don't disagree), Steele is himself evoking the structural/anti-racism trusim that the status quo (racist society as deliberately structured by the founding fathers) seeks to preserve itself. We CANNOT SIMPLE OVERCOME EXISTING SOCIETAL PATTERNS BY INDIVIDUAL WORK ALONE. The structure repeats and supports and sustains itself. The fact that the way that we have attempted to make change further perpetuates the problem is, in fact, more evidence that we need to find structural solutions. NOT evidence to put it all on the individual.

"welfare policy has clearly been an incentive to teenage pregnancy" WHAT? This is a very strong opinion given with no evidence. Steele theoretically links entitlement to lowered expectations and collective group identity as reasons to wallow in underachievement. That, I can buy on a theoretical level...but then he decides to claim that welfare (which was reformed not so long after these articles were written) CAUSES teen pregnancy? Maybe it is simply because I am reading this 25 years later, but it has become very obvious that welfare is not a reward and the welfare-to-work "solution" to "motivate" folks has not really improved anything.

"this means simply seeing those who suffer social problems as first of all human beings and American citizens, so that whatever the source of their problems may be, their needs are understood to be human and not racial." YES. YES. And always there is not a "one size fits all" solution that will work. People are individuals and they are limited by their structural placement. We always need to work to help the individual as much as possible.

"Diversity, multiculturalism, affirmative action, and the propreity of political correctness are all icons of white racial virtuousness that never engage the independent will, character, or determination of blacks."

"it is really this idea of historic grievance turning into entitlement in today's world--and for people with little or no experience of discrimination--that joins one to this elite." WHAT? Steele is really arguing in the 90s that most blacks have "little or no" experience of discrimination? How is that I have witnessed many moments of microdiscrimination; I have had many conversations with POC who note the omnipresence of discrimination. Steele uniformly discredits many people's lived experience by claiming this and it is fundamentally not true.

"A UNICEF holiday card picturing children from many cultures standing together in warm harmony...represents a worldview that is fundamentally impossible." WHY? Yes, we have historically been plagued by war and in-group/out-group fighting. But should we succumb to the belief that peace and harmony is FUNDAMENALLY IMPOSSIBLE? Certainly Steele's argument about blacks needing to take responsibility for their own advancement comes across as slightly more threatening when his inner belief that groups CANNOT peacefully co-exist is made more blatent.

"Since the sixities whites have had to prove a negative--they they are no racist--in order to establish their human decency where race is concerned." And yes, this pollutes the discussion, but isn't it better than the alternative? Pre-60s when being a racist was socially acceptable?

And then Steele asserts that white liberalism must "always imagine blacks outside the framework of individual responsibilty". Why is this true? Why must we assert the totalism? Why get so angry about the structural argument that Steele refuses the (to me obvious) move towards "yes, and" rather than "either/or"?

"Eventually collective entitlement always requires separatism." Is this true? I agree (more Coleman Hughes' point than Steele's) that focusing on class is a more productive and less divisive way to grant better access/equality to all Americans and yet, class also allows those in power to continue to repress others. In many ways the lack of collective entitlement of "the poor" enforces separatism among races (pitting lower class groups against each other, rather than against elites).

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is my humble opinion that NO ONE writes on racial issues with more eloquence, clarity, and sheer brilliant insight than Shelby Steele. His first book, “The Content of Our Character,” published in 1990 completely blew my mind. And it is as relevant today as ever. “A Dream Deferred” was published in 1998 and, again, every word of it can be applied to our current state of affairs.

It was tough to narrow down some of my favorite passages from the book. The quotes I list below are from the first half of the book. There were just too many and it was getting too long for this review, so I stopped halfway through. I would highly recommend everyone to read this or any of Steele’s other works as the perfect antidote to all the White Fragility BS out there that is infecting our public discourse.


QUOTES


We often end up evaluating racial reform more by its usefulness to the moral profile of whites than by how well it develops blacks.


This paradox- arguing against your own capacity to help yourself as a way of helping yourself- has been a theme of black politics over the last thirty years.


When a nation wants to redeem itself, it becomes so afraid of its shame that it gives itself the license to fight it with new corruptions.


What is clear is that a group politics devoted to keeping whites on the hook also requires that victimization be a totalism in black life- that it define group identity, become a part of the self image of individual blacks and keep in play a permanently contentious relationship with whites…
When victimization is treated as a totalism, it keeps us from understanding the true nature of our suffering. It leads us to believe that all suffering is victimization and that all relief comes from the guilty good-heartedness of others. But people can suffer from bad ideas, from ignorance, fear, a poor assessment of reality, and from a politics that commits them to the idea of themselves as victims, among other things. When black group authority covers up these other causes of suffering just so whites will feel more responsible- and stay on the hook- then that authority actually encourages helplessness in its own people so that they might be helped by whites. It tries to make black weakness
profitable by selling it as the white man's burden.


But then, once in the color-and-numbers game, the full and complex humanity of blacks--who they really are and what they really need--becomes inconvenient. And this is where the pursuit of moral authority ends in something both pernicious and paradoxical. In the world of interventionism, with all its schemes, formulas, and structural manipulations, blacks are relegated to that most alienated of human categories, “the other." Here they are seen as a different kind of humanity, as essentially unlike "mainstream" white humanity. And the essence of this "otherness" is their injuredness and helplessness. Because the interventions are justified by, and respond to, only these qualities, helplessness becomes the identity they are recognized for.


In post-sixties liberalism it is virtuous to be tolerant of black weakness and to think of blacks as "helpless others" as a way of acknowledging the historic evil of white racism. In other words, this liberalism tolerates black weakness and inferiority because they are the result of white evil. The liberal who has high expectations for his or her own children often feels that he or she cannot "push the issue" with blacks. The white mandate for redemption pressures the liberal to tolerate what holds blacks down. And, in this circuitous way, this liberalism endorses a kind of racism.
Double standards, preferential treatment, provisions for "cultural difference," and various kinds of entitlement all constitute a pattern of exceptionalism that keeps blacks (and other minorities) down by tolerating weakness at every juncture where strength is expected of others.


It was ironic that just after winning our civil rights in the greatest nonviolent revolution in American history (one of the greatest in all history), we had to turn around and impart to ourselves a degree of helplessness in order to justify the programs of redemptive liberalism. Suddenly a people strong enough to win freedom in a society in which they were outnumbered ten to one had to make a case for their own weakness, had to offer up their own helplessness as a vehicle for the redemption of others, had to reimagine themselves and advertise themselves primarily as victims.
Welfare without a time limit or an expectation of work may have shown white America as compassionate, but it also took the problem of poverty away from those who suffer it.


But the price paid for all these interventions is to suppress black individuals with the mark of race just as certainly as segregation did, by relentlessly telling them that their racial identity is the most important thing about them, that it opens them to an opportunism in society that is not available to them as individuals. Black politics, since the sixties, has been based on this hidden incentive to repress individuality so as to highlight the profitable collective identity. The greatest threat to the grievance elite is a society in which the individuality of blacks supersedes their racial identity in importance.


For the most part this generation of black intellectuals-- Cornell West, Derrick Bell, bell hooks, Michael Eric Dyson, and several others-- is monothematic: In a phrase, they "press the contingency." In their work black fate is shown to be contingent on the will of white American institutions to redeem themselves through interventionism… They may be quite different and even individual in the way they present this theme, but in the end it frames all they do and say. And always there is a genuflection to the extraordinary power of racism, which permeate the world of their work as a truth that is both utterly powerful and utterly unexamined. Racism as a kind of deity, an omniscience. What is never seen in their work is a celebration of the extraordinary range of possibility open to blacks today, or the reality of a democratic America in which possibility is ubiquitous even if a degree of racism continues.
When Cornell West says that "race matters" in his book of the same name, he is pressing for race to remain alive as a contingency, as a source of profitable and preferential interventions. He is not simply saying that it matters; he is advocating
that it matter. Would he have said "race matters" back in the fifties when race still meant segregation, when there was no profit in it for blacks? Would he have advocated that race matters to that wretched pantheon of southern governors- George Wallace, Orval Faubus, Ross Barnett, Lester Maddox, and their ilk? They would surely have leaped to agree with him. And the civil rights leaders of that era, who screamed that race should never be allowed to matter, would have seen West as an enemy collaborator.


These societies [reacting to a shameful past or event] then conjured ideas-of-the-good that they hoped would redeem them from the shame. Against the inequities of feudalism Russia would have a "classless society." Against its postwar lowliness Germany would have Aryan supremacy. And against the shame of American racism there would be a new "multicultural," "inclusive" "diversity." Always the idea-of-the-good contrasts the specific shame the society is dealing with.
As a vision of what is redemptive for the shamed society, this idea-of-the-good has three qualities: it simplistically demarcates good from evil so that all who disagree with it are aligned with evil and against their nation's redemption; it is so vague that it imposes no serious accountability, sacrifice, or principle on those who support it; however, it always requires governmental and institutional interventions, if not new governments altogether.
This kind of "good," of course, is a recipe for power. The real goal of those who espouse it is the interventionism it demands from government- and, thus, control over the arms of government.


Because shame is the active ingredient in ideas-of-the-good, they do not win agreement as much as force capitulation.


Freedom has too many disadvantages for a generation bent on redeeming a great shame. In freedom, principle always trumps any idea-of-the-good. Whenever an exception is made to this, we are giving something else a greater importance than the freedom the principle is trying to ensure. If we set merit aside to bring in more blacks or women, then we are saying that the presence of blacks and women is more important than the freedom from race and gender bias that the principle of merit is there to enforce. We are saying that their engineered presence is more important than their freedom to be present or not. And we say this because we need the moral symbolism of their presence more than we need freedom.
Shame gave the United States the need for a "good" that was transcendent and beautiful, and in so doing, it left us with a virtuousness that is the enemy of both freedom and black self-determination.

[Donn Headley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I teach high school. In other words, I teach young people at the time of their lives when they are wrestling most seriously (sometimes too seriously!) with who each young woman and young man is as an individual, finding that place within the collective society of America. They are learning to be citizens, true. More importantly, they are learning where their gifts and passions lay, those areas where they, as individuals, will contribute most effectively and productively to the flourishing of their community and society. So, I grieve as I read Shelby Steele's book, that, once in college each of these amazing young women and men will be pigeon-holed into some victim-group or another in academia's intersectionality insanity. Steele explains how all this has come about: a grievance industry that plays into the hands of a new white supremacy, just as evil but much more subtle than in our Jim Crow past. In a book that he will build upon with his later "White Guilt" (2006), Steele argues that the promise of Dr. King's democratic civil rights movement (1955-1968) was subverted into the modern equivalent to undemocratic racial-profiling of preferences and affirmative action that rob individuals of minority of responsibility, believing that these individuals "cannot make it" without elite patronage from whites operating under guilt and attempting to avoid shame. While I cannot agree with Steele on every point (e.g., he is pro-abortion), he provides perceptive insights into our race-relations ills and also offers up a solution that gives me hope: the hard work of returning to the democratic ideals of our Constitutional heritage and honoring the fact that every individual, of every ethnicity, class, and condition can seize the day and take responsibility to find her or his realm of service to the community and the nation and the world. That is true integration, so far withheld, but still possible in this "last best hope of Earth."

[Steven H · Rating 4 out of 5]

FOUR ESSAYS FROM THE “CONTENT OF OUR CHARACTER” AUTHOR

Shelby Steele is an American conservative author, columnist, documentary film maker, and Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He wrote in the Preface to this 1998 book, “If there is an insight that unifies the four essays that comprise this book, it is that America’s collision with its own racial shame in the civil rights era is the untold story behind today’s polarized racial policies… Self-betrayal can form the new redeeming idea of social virtue; it can become the basis of a new redemptive politics. These essays contend that the liberalism that grew out of the sixties was such a politics---that its first and all-consuming goal was the expiation of American shame rather than the careful and true development of equality between the races.”

He says, “since the sixties, when the nation was made accountable for its history of racism, white Americans have been without moral authority where racial matters are concerned. The dilemma for the white liberal has been how to display racial virtuousness while lacking the moral authority to assert his or her truest beliefs and values. Where blacks were concerned the liberal could stand for an engineered racial equality but not for the principles of merit, excellence, hard work, delayed gratification, individual achievement, personal responsibility, and so on---principles without which blacks can never achieve true equality.” (Pg. 20)

He asserts, “There is probably no more classic example of specimenization research than the work of William Julius Wilson, particularly his last books, ‘The Truly Disadvantged’ and ‘When Work Disappears.’ When Wilson claims in these works that the loss of industrial jobs in the inner city is the overriding cause of the collapse of inner-city black families, the growth of the black underclass… and so on, he is not giving us the results of objective research. He is offering an ideological and predetermined arrangement of causality, one that is designed to support a demand for interventions from the larger society… He uses no control groups. He does not isolate joblessness as a variable from other variables (welfare without a time limit or work requirement, for example). Instead of rigorous science he works by rough inference and unexamined correlations to support joblessness as the all-determining variable he wants it to be.” (Pg. 24-25)

He observes, “It is a mistake to think that only blacks truly know segregation. Whites know it to not as it victims or even very many as its open perpetrators. But it made whites know---on some level---how simple a thing evil is… how compellingly convenient it can be… Two experiences of American racism, and two kinds of redemption needed---one from the shame of living with or practicing racism, the other from the shame of being subjugated by it.” (Pg. 31-32)

He suggests, “Whatever one may think about rap music, the helpless black specimen/victims of social science and racial politics would not be able to create such a profitable cultural invention… And what enabled this invention to flower into profitability was the full array of ‘conservative’ values---individual responsibility, initiative, discipline, perseverance---that redemptive liberalism sees as ‘victim-blaming’ when applied to poor inner-city blacks. It cannot be coincidental that in those areas of greatest black achievement---music, literature, entertainment, sports---there have been no interventions whatsoever, no co-optation of agency, no idea that some ‘opportunity structure’ will enable blacks to participate.” (Pg. 59-60)

He states, “When Cornell [sic] West says that ‘race matters’ in his book of the same name, he is pressing for race to remain alive as a contingency, as a source of profitable and preferential interventions. He is not simply saying that it matters; he is ADVOCATING that it matters. Would he have said ‘race matters’ back in the fifties when race still meant segregation, when there was no PROFIT in it for blacks? Would he have advocated that race matters to that wretched pantheon of southern governors… and their ilk? They would surely have leaped to agree with him. And the civil rights leaders of that era, who screamed that race should never be allowed to matter, would have seen West as an enemy collaborator.” (Pg. 65)

He contends, “Most of our racial policy in America suffers from ulteriorality because our announced goals---‘diversity,’ ‘inclusion,’ ‘multiculturalism,’ and the like---are only a pretext for unstated and more powerful ulterior goals---pursuing redemption, reclaiming moral authority, appearing the master of contingency, seeking racial monopolies, and winning back the look of equality.” (Pg. 97)

He proposes, “The only way out of this situation, and the corruptions of insurrection and ulteriorality, is to use a strictly HUMAN analysis of our social problems, even when those problems are caused by race. This means simply seeing those who suffer social problems as first of all human beings… so that… their needs are understood to be human and not racial. The United States should now be racially experienced enough to understand that a multiracial democracy simply cannot have an obligation to meet the racial needs of its citizens; its only obligation can be to address their human needs WITHOUT REGARD TO RACE.” (Pg. 105)

He argues, “Out of deference, elite universities have offered the license NOT to compete to the most privileged segment of black youth, precisely the segment that has no excuse for not competing. Affirmative action is protectionism for the best and brightest from black America. And because blacks are given spaces they have not won by competition, whites and especially Asians have had to complete all the harder for their spots. So we end up with the effect we always get with deferential reforms: an incentive to black weakness relative to others.” (Pg. 127)

He concludes in the final essay, “I think it is time for those who seek identity and power through grievance groups to fashion identities apart from grievance, to grant themselves the widest range of freedom, and to assume responsibility for that freedom. Victimhood lasts only as long as it is accepted, and to exploit it for an empty sovereignty is to accept it. The New Sovereignty is ultimately a vanity. It is a narcissism of victim, and it brings only a negligible power at the exorbitant price of continued victimhood. And all the while integration remains the real work.” (Pg. 185)

This book will be of interest to conservatives interested in racial/ethnic issues.

[Cassidy Beamer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because Steele's view on racial disparities and how the government handles them is unlike anything I have ever heard of or read before. The only thing I disliked this book is Steele's use of eloquent language to describe simple practices. This book helped me grow as a person because it forced me to consider how acts of intervention such as affirmative action and group preferences may actually make it harder to achieve equality among all races. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading books about politics, and I would also recommend this book to someone who has a very liberal opinion on how racial disparities should be handled because Steele is black conservative who is opposed to liberal practices such as intervention and victimization.

[Kenneth Barber · Rating 5 out of 5]

Steele, S. (2000). A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in American. New York, NY: HarperCollins World.

Shelby Steele offers a conservative analysis of the civil rights struggle for African Americans in “A Dream Deferred”. Mr. Steele offers that the civil rights struggle lost its ways after the historical victories of the 1960s by focusing less on continually pushing legislative advancement and progress. The leaders of the civil movement decided to focus on the using the shame of White Americans to advance African American priorities. Shame is a powerful emotion. Americans felt a deep sense of shame over the history of African Americans in the United States. This sense of shame caused political and education leaders to focus on emotional impacts of the civil rights struggle versus creating systems that would create lasting impacts in African American communities. According to Steele, the liberalism that grow out of the 1960s was focused on American guilt versus the careful growth of true freedom between the races. The sense of shame was placed in a place of emphasis in political and academic institutions as a method to purge the stigma of racial shame. Steele criticizes this sense because it permitted areas that required leadership emphasis (inner city crime rates, broken and neglected schools etc) to continue to decline while giving White Americans the “feeling” that they were making a positive impact without any measurable impacts to the focused communities. Mr. Steele uses the example of the University of California, Berkeley’s Medical School in the 1970s. The school administration made a concerted effort to recruit an increasing number of African American students through affirmative action programs. However, after several years of effort, the percentage of African American graduates had declined when compared to other demographics. However, the school administration declined to look at other factors that could have influenced the decline such as the school systems that the students matriculated from. Instead, the affirmative action number were actually increased over several years with no impact to the over all percentage of African American graduates.

Mr. Steele offers that until a change in attitude happens within liberal circles that includes less of an emphasis on emotions versus an emphasis on real measurable standards within the African American community (i.e. public school standards etc), he believes that we will continue to see racial divides within the United States.

I also recommend reviewing the interview with the author on C-SPAN at https://www.c-span.org/video/?115429-....

[Lora Shouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of essays on race and affirmative action.

The author, a self-styled conservative black man, proposes that affirmative action doesn’t really help black people. Its point, he says is to provide redemption for white people from the stigma of racial shame. Additionally, in creating a victim mentality which leads to a culture of entitlement (as a way of attempting to make up for past abuses), it has come to provide a power source for the current black leadership. This seems to be as of about twenty years ago. It has not, however, done much for black people, as the young people have come to rely on affirmative action to get them places in college and jobs to which they would not otherwise have been entitled rather than working hard to earn their places in school and the workforce on their own merits.

He makes his points pretty well. I don’t know if any of this has changed in the past few years. I get the impression that a lot of affirmative action programs have either been done away with or been reduced in recent years, and that other ideas, such as a work requirement for welfare, have been implemented, but I don’t know if the broader changes he was looking for have happened yet.

[Luanne Coachman · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I were rating this book only on the value of its content, I would give a 5. Mr. Steele’s perspective on the interaction between the white need for redemption from slavery and racism and the black need for a show of power after centuries without is an important one. He suggests that these two needs have corrupted the civil rights movement by giving whites the illusion that they are helping black folks with racial preferences and blacks the illusion of real power in the form of the ceding of said preferences leading to a dysfunctional dance that doesn’t really help anyone, and may actually make things worse. His message is that a truly effective resolution to the sins against black folk in the past is for individual whites to vigilantly observe and root out the shoots of racism in their hearts and for individual blacks to seize the many opportunities now available to them and demonstrate their competence. He explores the nuances of these perspectives and to a certain extent the history and psychology out of which the described condition arose. But he also belabors his points. To get a higher remedy from me, this book would need some judicious pruning.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America is a powerful and thought-provoking examination of how misguided policies and identity politics have undermined the progress of Black Americans. Steele eloquently critiques the reliance on victimhood and entitlement, advocating instead for empowerment through personal responsibility and self-reliance. With sharp analysis and heartfelt conviction, he offers a compelling vision for achieving true freedom and equality. Profound, courageous, and deeply insightful, this book is an essential read for anyone passionate about civil rights and the future of racial harmony in America.

[Michael Michailidis · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most informative book on the subject

I am personally distant from the problems expressed in this collection of essays, but living in a global society, I am not unaffected by the solutions that governments use as remedy. It’s not simply the fact that any affirmative action plan will have a hidden cost of disprivileging those it sees as already privileged - people such as myself - but that it also keeps propagating the racialist notion that those lacking in such privilege, are lacking due to their race!

[Jerimiah Baldwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shelby, I can't commend this book enough! Few people understand these issues of race and social divisiveness as well as you. I wish the whole of the country would read these essays, especially the first.

I hope that in our future we will expect the same strength from blacks as we do from whites. I hope that we can move beyond our racial shame and dispense with what you call ulteriorality. However, as you said, "the policy that works is too mean to be just."

What a great work you've created and a what a great gift to the world.

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good experience, this journey showed in many ways where the establishment has gotten it wrong, by providing several illustrations of how and why. Showing in many ways, where there is a choice and a chance for improvement and redemption. Yes it does portray a good reason why preferences are a poor choice no matter who is getting the preferential treatment.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is very enlightening. From his black vantage point, Shelby Steele talks about how America arrived at where we are today. I cannot really explain this book in a few short sentences. However, it opened my eyes to many topics concerning race. It was very informative and I cannot recommend it highly enough!

[Chrisanne]

One of the best definitions of shame and it's purpose that I have ever read (Brenè Brown included). I also think that most people would agree with his comments on "White Redemption" and power. If anything they are worth discussing along DiAngelo. There is a lot to mull over. I may have missed his proposed solutions. I'm not sure.

[David Burnette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shelby adds more context around the work that Sowell does, but argues philosophically and uses lots of anecdotal evidence for his opinions. I agree with his vision but more so bc of what i learned from Sowell. He did make some compelling arguments from time to time though.

[Rafael Suleiman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good analysis of the modern Civil Rights movement.

[Judson Marvel · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely read first published in 1999. Steele has the foresight to recognize trends in rhetoric and the ideas behind them that we currently hear.

[George Polansky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and informative.

[Bradley Courtney]

Shelby Steele is a clear and courageous thinker, brave because he dares tell the truth despite objections and insults to his character.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10

[Scott Stein · Rating 2 out of 5]

So to be fair I am sure this book was beyond informative and amazing for a more intelligent person. I understood a lot but I also had a lot of trouble reading at this level. I don’t consider myself uneducated or slow but I could tell my level of intellect was not on par with the author and that made this a much slower read FOR ME. This book was very deep and well thought out, my rating is more of how I enjoyed reading it and that rating is more on me than anything else.

[Katharina]

This is a very interesting book. It explains how the white people try to help black people but it back fires. Black people come to expect things handed to them and they no longer try to improve themselves. Whereas Asian people have to earn what they have achieved and they have passed black people in many areas. Whites try to help because they feel guilty about the way blacks were treated, and that we owe them something. Blacks want whites to make their life better. In this way, whites are still ruling over blacks. Only the black people themselves can change this by stepping up and proving themselves as individuals. Use their minority privileges' to do better. Use their college advantages to graduate and become functional individuals.
This is a must read for all blacks and whites!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now this is the REAL discussion on race that America needs to have with itself...
A DREAM DEFERRED is a brilliant analysis of how the civil rights movement became corrupted for political gain. It explains how racial discrimination remains alive and well in modern America under the guise of "diversity" and "racial preferences," and how African Americans have lost control of their own destinies by not taking responsibility for problems within their own communities.
Shelby also chides white Americans who support certain destructive policies in order to assuage their "white guilt" and grant themselves a sense of self-righteous moral authority.

[Cedric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically Shelby Steele cops to premises (historically, about what happened to black people in America) but then comes to entirely different conclusions than most black people about what the remedies ought to be. He's entitled- I simply disagree. I constantly found myself saying "ok, ok, ok, ok, WTF?" Good read though. Very interesting. And this same review applies to "Content of our Character..." Basically an expanded rerun of "Content's" precepts.

[Theophilus (Theo) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a self-confessed black conservative, the book acknowledges the multitude of grievances felt in the African American community, but places the onus on us to bring ourselves up. The title is taken from a Langston Hughes poem. If a people's dream is kept from being reached for so long, does that dream just "dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

[Lisa Bowman · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books. It brings a another perspective of affirmative action and addresses stigmas that both races face.

[Gene Ramsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Written by a Black Republican, this book rightly challenged many of my long-held political beliefs.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Looking at today, I believe this is a book that must be read by every American!