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White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era – A Race Relations Scholar's Meditation on Personal Responsibility
In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of "white guilt" and neither has been good for African Americans.
Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.
Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.
181 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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About the author
Shelby Steele
10 books301 followersShelby 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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 363 reviews
July 26, 2011
These days, it seems political books become outdated quickly, and this one is over five years old. So it was a gamble for me to pick it up now, but the title keeps cropping up on lists of important political works and being referred to as foundational to political “conversions,” so I thought it was about time I read it. Fortunately, it remains fresh and poignant, and I think that is in large part owing to Shelby Steele’s ability as a writer. Most authors of political books frankly do not write in compelling ways. They can cite statistics, sustain an argument, and even persuade me on some points, but they can’t tell a story. Not so with Steele, who is not just an intellectual and a political researcher but a real writer. Here he is writing a work of social and political commentary, but he does it through the overarching framework of a kind of story, a story to which he has been witness, and that’s what makes the book so interesting.
Some have said the book is too disjointed, skipping back and forth in time as it does, but as I said, Steele is doing more than writing a social treatise, he is telling a story, and stories need not be chronological: the flashbacks help us understand the present moment. While he probably repeats his central ideas more than he needs to, he at least repeats them with literary flourish. The story he tells is the tale of how the promise of the civil rights era was destroyed by white guilt, “the enormous vacuum of moral authority” left in the wake when institutional racism was toppled. When this happened, whites strove to disassociate from their racist past, and blacks were led by “this new black consciousness…into a great mistake: to talk ourselves out of the individual freedom we had just won for no purpose whatsoever except to trigger white obligation.”
He describes how this drive toward disassociation on the part of whites gave birth to a new kind of racism. “Whites are blind to blacks as human beings today,” Steele writes, “not out of bigotry but out of their obsession with achieving the dissociation they need to restore their moral authority. And when they find a way to dissociate from racism—‘diversity,’ politically correct language, political liberalism itself—there is little incentive to understand blacks as human beings.” As whites dissociate with tools such as affirmative action, “black students are effectively Sambo-ized. They are assigned an inferiority so intractable that nothing overcomes it, not even good schools and high family incomes.” He describes the “great internal contradiction of white liberalism: that its paternalism, its focus on whites rather than on blacks as the agents of change, allows white supremacy to slip in the back door and once again define the fundamental relationship between whites and blacks.”
White Guilt is not just the story of a nation, however, it is Steele’s own personal story of his journey from black radical to “black conservative,” a label he resents. It is a highly introspective and often emotional book. I have read Thomas Sowell’s sustained arguments against affirmative action. They are reasoned, well researched, substantiated by multiple studies and statistics, and relatively calm. Steele, however, makes no reference to statistics and offers no specific evidence for his claims about the ill effects of white guilt. Instead, he offers a powerful rhetoric, which is in some ways just as convincing as Sowell’s academic attack, because it is so personal and makes such an emotional impact.
This is a powerful and persuasive book, at least it was for me. But I suppose Sowell had already years ago intellectually persuaded me of the central ideas Steele presents here. If I had read this in absence of that prior reading, I may or may not have found it so persuasive, but I am quite sure I would have still found it well written, well-reasoned, and occasionally poetic. It is hard, for example, not to be swayed by the excerpted passage with which I will conclude this review. This passage follows one in which Steele points out that while black deficiencies in education have been treated as an injustice and responded to with a focus not on higher standards and harder work but on injustice remedies such as bussing, multicultural classes, and “standardized tests corrected for racial bias,” the same is not true for the fields of sports, music, and entertainment:
“People wrongly dismiss black achievement in these areas for reasons that can be ascribed only to racism—that our compelling excellence follows from a mere genetic advantage. The fact is that we are good at sports and music because we subject ourselves to unforgiving standards of excellence and then work ferociously to meet those standards. Ruthlessly, we allow absolutely no excuses. The same poverty and deprivation that afflict us when we walk to school in the morning afflicts us later in the same day on the playground or in the tenement basement where we practice obsessively on a cheap electric keyboard. The difference is white guilt makes no appearance on that playground or in that basement. There is no carnivorous white need standing between us and the pursuit of excellence. No pity. Thus, excellence is allowed to entice us with its own intrinsic joys and rewards, and we come in thrall to it. Suppose Marvin Gaye or Duke Ellington or Richard Wright or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Condoleezza Rice or millions of others (all people from humble beginnings born in the age of open racism) had let their pursuit of excellence be somehow contingent on the ministration of white guilt, on the spiritually withering interventions of needy, morally selfish white people betting on the cliché of black inferiority rather than on the natural human longing for excellence that resides in us all?”
Some have said the book is too disjointed, skipping back and forth in time as it does, but as I said, Steele is doing more than writing a social treatise, he is telling a story, and stories need not be chronological: the flashbacks help us understand the present moment. While he probably repeats his central ideas more than he needs to, he at least repeats them with literary flourish. The story he tells is the tale of how the promise of the civil rights era was destroyed by white guilt, “the enormous vacuum of moral authority” left in the wake when institutional racism was toppled. When this happened, whites strove to disassociate from their racist past, and blacks were led by “this new black consciousness…into a great mistake: to talk ourselves out of the individual freedom we had just won for no purpose whatsoever except to trigger white obligation.”
He describes how this drive toward disassociation on the part of whites gave birth to a new kind of racism. “Whites are blind to blacks as human beings today,” Steele writes, “not out of bigotry but out of their obsession with achieving the dissociation they need to restore their moral authority. And when they find a way to dissociate from racism—‘diversity,’ politically correct language, political liberalism itself—there is little incentive to understand blacks as human beings.” As whites dissociate with tools such as affirmative action, “black students are effectively Sambo-ized. They are assigned an inferiority so intractable that nothing overcomes it, not even good schools and high family incomes.” He describes the “great internal contradiction of white liberalism: that its paternalism, its focus on whites rather than on blacks as the agents of change, allows white supremacy to slip in the back door and once again define the fundamental relationship between whites and blacks.”
White Guilt is not just the story of a nation, however, it is Steele’s own personal story of his journey from black radical to “black conservative,” a label he resents. It is a highly introspective and often emotional book. I have read Thomas Sowell’s sustained arguments against affirmative action. They are reasoned, well researched, substantiated by multiple studies and statistics, and relatively calm. Steele, however, makes no reference to statistics and offers no specific evidence for his claims about the ill effects of white guilt. Instead, he offers a powerful rhetoric, which is in some ways just as convincing as Sowell’s academic attack, because it is so personal and makes such an emotional impact.
This is a powerful and persuasive book, at least it was for me. But I suppose Sowell had already years ago intellectually persuaded me of the central ideas Steele presents here. If I had read this in absence of that prior reading, I may or may not have found it so persuasive, but I am quite sure I would have still found it well written, well-reasoned, and occasionally poetic. It is hard, for example, not to be swayed by the excerpted passage with which I will conclude this review. This passage follows one in which Steele points out that while black deficiencies in education have been treated as an injustice and responded to with a focus not on higher standards and harder work but on injustice remedies such as bussing, multicultural classes, and “standardized tests corrected for racial bias,” the same is not true for the fields of sports, music, and entertainment:
“People wrongly dismiss black achievement in these areas for reasons that can be ascribed only to racism—that our compelling excellence follows from a mere genetic advantage. The fact is that we are good at sports and music because we subject ourselves to unforgiving standards of excellence and then work ferociously to meet those standards. Ruthlessly, we allow absolutely no excuses. The same poverty and deprivation that afflict us when we walk to school in the morning afflicts us later in the same day on the playground or in the tenement basement where we practice obsessively on a cheap electric keyboard. The difference is white guilt makes no appearance on that playground or in that basement. There is no carnivorous white need standing between us and the pursuit of excellence. No pity. Thus, excellence is allowed to entice us with its own intrinsic joys and rewards, and we come in thrall to it. Suppose Marvin Gaye or Duke Ellington or Richard Wright or Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Condoleezza Rice or millions of others (all people from humble beginnings born in the age of open racism) had let their pursuit of excellence be somehow contingent on the ministration of white guilt, on the spiritually withering interventions of needy, morally selfish white people betting on the cliché of black inferiority rather than on the natural human longing for excellence that resides in us all?”
August 15, 2020
I had my first "honest dialogue about race with a black man" not too long ago. I was working with his guy and we had plenty of time to talk. I told him that I resent the guilt trip that I feel, that because I am white I have a kind of original sin. And that I am somehow supposed to atone for my privelage based on the sins of my fathers. It was a great discussion. Sadly, I heard this story on npr the other day about a study that showed that whites were less likely nowadays than previously to engage in conversation with blacks because of a fear of coming across as racist.
From the book:
"in the o.j. simpson murder trial, johnnie cochran used the fact that detective mark furman lied on the witness stand about ever having used the N word to assert that the entire mountain of evidence pointing to Simpsons guilt was likely contaminated with racism. So powerful was global racism in the case that even the possibility that this implausible caricature might be true was given more weight than solid dna evidence linking simpson to the murders."
And think about this:
"if a young black boy cannot dribble well when he comes out to play basketball, no one will cast his problem as an injustice and he will be told to practice more. . . but if the boys problem is reading and writing, academics will argue that his weakness reflects racism"
From the book:
"in the o.j. simpson murder trial, johnnie cochran used the fact that detective mark furman lied on the witness stand about ever having used the N word to assert that the entire mountain of evidence pointing to Simpsons guilt was likely contaminated with racism. So powerful was global racism in the case that even the possibility that this implausible caricature might be true was given more weight than solid dna evidence linking simpson to the murders."
And think about this:
"if a young black boy cannot dribble well when he comes out to play basketball, no one will cast his problem as an injustice and he will be told to practice more. . . but if the boys problem is reading and writing, academics will argue that his weakness reflects racism"
June 29, 2020
This book, written 14 years ago, accurately captures what is happening today. Steele traces through the events after the Civil Rights movement and provides a very interesting framework that describes how the concept of white guilt has hurt blacks in America by providing a new form of oppression -- reliance on whites to fix their problems for them. Whites substitute thoughtful reform with band-aid solutions for the appearance of "diversity" rather than addressing the root causes of the problems. Interestingly, white guilt has become a tool not just in race relations but in other social issues that prevent people for taking responsibility for themselves. I'd highly recommend this book for its insights -- I learned a lot.
July 27, 2020
White Guilt by Shelby Steele is an attentive and nuanced look at race relations in the United States, and how our policies since the 60s have only proven to further divide us.
This book is a must read - especially for those who have also read such books as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be Antiracist by Ibram Kendi.
Black conservatives are a small and silenced minority. Voices like Ben Carson, Brandon Tatum, Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Joel Patrick, the Hodge twins, and Shelby Steele himself are called Uncle Toms and race traitors for merely choosing to think outside the box that our society had placed Black people into. In the words of Joe Biden: "You ain't black if you don't vote [democrat]."
Progressive liberalism tells Black conservatives they are not allowed to consider the statistics, offer realistic solutions for their community, or stand up for family values else they be named as traitors to their community - how can we stand for this obvious oppression? And let's ask ourselves - why does progressive liberalism silence Black conservatives? Control? Power? You be the judge.
It's time to start thinking of our fellow humans not as blacks or whites or any other race - but as brothers and sisters. One race, unified by our mutual humanity. We are only divided by what we let ourselves be divided by.
I highly recommend reading this book and watching the documentary Uncle Tom for the history of black conservativism in the United States.
"Most any time race is given importance, positively or negatively, people are hiding from their true motivations. In the time of racism, whites said blacks were inferior so as not to see their own desire to exploit them, their true motivation. In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
"In the age of white guilt, white blindness has been driven not by racism but by the white need to dissociate from racism. Whites are blind to blacks as human beings today not out of bigotry but out of their obsession with achieving the dissociation they need to restore their moral authority. And when they find a way to dissociate from racism - 'diversity,' politically correct language, political liberalism itself - there is little incentive to understand blacks as human beings. Dissociation makes whites human again."
This book is a must read - especially for those who have also read such books as White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo and How to be Antiracist by Ibram Kendi.
Black conservatives are a small and silenced minority. Voices like Ben Carson, Brandon Tatum, Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Joel Patrick, the Hodge twins, and Shelby Steele himself are called Uncle Toms and race traitors for merely choosing to think outside the box that our society had placed Black people into. In the words of Joe Biden: "You ain't black if you don't vote [democrat]."
Progressive liberalism tells Black conservatives they are not allowed to consider the statistics, offer realistic solutions for their community, or stand up for family values else they be named as traitors to their community - how can we stand for this obvious oppression? And let's ask ourselves - why does progressive liberalism silence Black conservatives? Control? Power? You be the judge.
It's time to start thinking of our fellow humans not as blacks or whites or any other race - but as brothers and sisters. One race, unified by our mutual humanity. We are only divided by what we let ourselves be divided by.
I highly recommend reading this book and watching the documentary Uncle Tom for the history of black conservativism in the United States.
"Most any time race is given importance, positively or negatively, people are hiding from their true motivations. In the time of racism, whites said blacks were inferior so as not to see their own desire to exploit them, their true motivation. In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
"In the age of white guilt, white blindness has been driven not by racism but by the white need to dissociate from racism. Whites are blind to blacks as human beings today not out of bigotry but out of their obsession with achieving the dissociation they need to restore their moral authority. And when they find a way to dissociate from racism - 'diversity,' politically correct language, political liberalism itself - there is little incentive to understand blacks as human beings. Dissociation makes whites human again."
July 14, 2010
George Will's blurb refers to it as an "essay", which seems about right. blew it up into stand-alone book by recapping where he was driving when he thought of the key idea, what was on the radio that day (Clinton impeachment news -- one of his key points of evidence is that Clinton survived a "sex scandal" [I remember it as a perjury-in-sexual-harassment lawsuit-case scandal, but ok:] but would never have survived a credible report of having used racist language, whereas Eisenhower supposedly freely used the "N word" on the golf course with pals and was never hurt by it, but would have been out on his ear for a sex scandal).
Not sure the JFK history really supports that conjecture about how things were 50 years ago, but his larger point that open racism has become taboo in polite society is thankfully unarguable. Author has of course no problem with that but does object strenuously to affirmative action and other indicators of what he takes to be white liberals' continuing belief in their own (moral) superiority and view of Blacks as perpetual victims in need of rescuing for which they should be grateful. He's especially aggravated by Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion in the U. Michigan affirmative action case [need affirmative action 25 more years and then we can be race-neutral in admissions and hiring etc.:].
It's a point of view you have probably seen/read/heard before but still not in majority in mainstream media, and IMO worth attending to. As a book, though.........I could have done without the personal history of his journey from angry 60's campus radical to excellence-promoting, "ethnic literature" course-slamming professor, and the whole thing could have been half as long if he trusted the reader to pay attention rather than repeating many times with italics for emphasis that the real point of affirmative action, great society programs etc. is to serve as public evidence that the modern white person is DISSOCIATED from the legacy of racism, rather than to actually help actual Black people.
Not sure the JFK history really supports that conjecture about how things were 50 years ago, but his larger point that open racism has become taboo in polite society is thankfully unarguable. Author has of course no problem with that but does object strenuously to affirmative action and other indicators of what he takes to be white liberals' continuing belief in their own (moral) superiority and view of Blacks as perpetual victims in need of rescuing for which they should be grateful. He's especially aggravated by Sandra Day O'Connor's opinion in the U. Michigan affirmative action case [need affirmative action 25 more years and then we can be race-neutral in admissions and hiring etc.:].
It's a point of view you have probably seen/read/heard before but still not in majority in mainstream media, and IMO worth attending to. As a book, though.........I could have done without the personal history of his journey from angry 60's campus radical to excellence-promoting, "ethnic literature" course-slamming professor, and the whole thing could have been half as long if he trusted the reader to pay attention rather than repeating many times with italics for emphasis that the real point of affirmative action, great society programs etc. is to serve as public evidence that the modern white person is DISSOCIATED from the legacy of racism, rather than to actually help actual Black people.
August 22, 2020
Before reading this book I felt a little guilt about not feeling guilty. I am not racist but the world is telling us that if you aren't actively proving that, then you are. I have been really struggling with this but now I have peace of mind.
I don't have to prove to the world that I am not a racist white person. The best thing I can do for people who feel marginalized or discriminated against is to see them as an individual with their own opinions, thoughts, feelings and experiences. I can also support policies that encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions and for lifting themselves up. We can't lift people higher than they are willing to work to lift themselves. White or black.
Highly recommend.
I don't have to prove to the world that I am not a racist white person. The best thing I can do for people who feel marginalized or discriminated against is to see them as an individual with their own opinions, thoughts, feelings and experiences. I can also support policies that encourage people to take responsibility for their own actions and for lifting themselves up. We can't lift people higher than they are willing to work to lift themselves. White or black.
Highly recommend.
May 7, 2021
Every page of this book makes either an ad-hominem argument, attacks a straw person, or falsely generalizes from anecdotes. Every page. It dismisses wide swathes of scholarship as “cliche” or “lowering the standards” without even bothering to justify its claims with research or social scientific evidence. It sounds compelling, and a lot of what it has to say about specific manifestations of white guilt in individual instances are compelling enough, and offer object lessons in how white people often disguise their own racism, but as an overarching thesis that proposes to explain so much of American life all at once, it is lacking.
Regarding straw-person and ad-hominem argument: Steele needs to take his interlocutors more seriously, and choose them more carefully. Just belittling obviously simple-minded opponents like his colleague “Betty” or Maureen Dowd is not dialogue. What would he say to Ta Nehisi Coates about a Bill Cosby and respectability politics, or James Baldwin or Toni Morrison on white blindness (Steele dismisses both of their later work he dismisses as overly race-conscious)? I agree there ARE flaky progressives but defeating them is NOT the same as defeating progressivism per-se.
Re: not citing sources: Just alleging that something magical happened in 1964 that effectively ended racism in the United States is mythology, not history. Racism is an economic strategy, not just a set of social norms, and it’s an economic strategy that has worked and continues to work in far more insidious and material ways than he seems willing to contemplate. Steele has overcome them in some ways in his own life: he refuses to see how it could be any different for anyone else had they only tried harder.
What he has to say about “ethnic studies” is almost purely contemptuous elitism without any even pretended justification. The binary established here between “traditional” and “progressive” is a false dichotomy that ignores the ways critical scholarship and creative endeavor can challenge forms of white supremacy and racism Steele dismissively describes as “nebulous.”
What most worries me about a book like this is the way white people can coopt its central points for racist purposes. That’s not Steele’s responsibility - he’s clearly speaking sincerely - but it is still a problem to be aware of.
Regarding straw-person and ad-hominem argument: Steele needs to take his interlocutors more seriously, and choose them more carefully. Just belittling obviously simple-minded opponents like his colleague “Betty” or Maureen Dowd is not dialogue. What would he say to Ta Nehisi Coates about a Bill Cosby and respectability politics, or James Baldwin or Toni Morrison on white blindness (Steele dismisses both of their later work he dismisses as overly race-conscious)? I agree there ARE flaky progressives but defeating them is NOT the same as defeating progressivism per-se.
Re: not citing sources: Just alleging that something magical happened in 1964 that effectively ended racism in the United States is mythology, not history. Racism is an economic strategy, not just a set of social norms, and it’s an economic strategy that has worked and continues to work in far more insidious and material ways than he seems willing to contemplate. Steele has overcome them in some ways in his own life: he refuses to see how it could be any different for anyone else had they only tried harder.
What he has to say about “ethnic studies” is almost purely contemptuous elitism without any even pretended justification. The binary established here between “traditional” and “progressive” is a false dichotomy that ignores the ways critical scholarship and creative endeavor can challenge forms of white supremacy and racism Steele dismissively describes as “nebulous.”
What most worries me about a book like this is the way white people can coopt its central points for racist purposes. That’s not Steele’s responsibility - he’s clearly speaking sincerely - but it is still a problem to be aware of.
December 16, 2008
Steele articulates the perspective of the now more vocal conservative black middle class products of the civil rights movement. He gives his take mostly from personal experiences and does a good job in drawing the direct comparisons as he sees them. He falls into the tempting trap that most "intellectuals" can't avoid - attacking people of opposing views with some amount of demagoguery. A theme that he returns to throughout the book is the difference in America's social mores between President Eisenhower's term and that of Bill Clinton. He shows his conservative values early on by suggesting that Eisenhower's reported use of the word 'nigger' and Clinton's infidelity on the job would have gotten the other impeached if their offenses had been reverese (he hints that both misdeeds are impeachable in his mind but does not come out and say so).
All told, it's a good commentary on failed black leadership in the wake of the civil rights assassinations of the late 1960's and the almost tangible white guilt that resulted. He loses me when he suggests that if an incident is not explicitly racist that it essentially does not count and is not as bad as the racism he grew up with. Further, his wholesale indictment of affirmatve action (while consistent with his peers' views) is off base. He takes liberties in supposing to know certain peoples specific motivations and he wholly misrepresents the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of the University of Michigan. I'd give it four stars if i agreed with his premises... but i don't.
All told, it's a good commentary on failed black leadership in the wake of the civil rights assassinations of the late 1960's and the almost tangible white guilt that resulted. He loses me when he suggests that if an incident is not explicitly racist that it essentially does not count and is not as bad as the racism he grew up with. Further, his wholesale indictment of affirmatve action (while consistent with his peers' views) is off base. He takes liberties in supposing to know certain peoples specific motivations and he wholly misrepresents the Supreme Court's ruling in the case of the University of Michigan. I'd give it four stars if i agreed with his premises... but i don't.
August 8, 2012
Giving account of his personal history and journey and how he became, over time, a self-accepting 'black conservative', Steele confronts the civil rights debacle and insightfully deconstructs how it went wrong and why. Citing 'white guilt' and the ensuing reverse-style racism in the battle for social morality, Steele reveals how whites and blacks have together ruined the promise of the 1960's.
In frustration, Steele says that the American left uses dissociation to apear morally authoritative. He claims that 'white guilt' comes predominantly from the left via entitlements, affirmative action, and 'ethnic-based' college courses.
"At least when they called you a nigger [before the civil rights movement], they didn't expect you to thank them," Steele says of whites who are motivated simply by white guilt. This guilt tells those on the Left that blacks simply cannot be held responsible for their own lives, successes, and failures because of the past sins of the American collective. Further, he writes that when entitlement programs like the Great Society go wrong, white America still feels like they deserve a pat on the back, even though they don't see how telling blacks that they are in need of help from whites is, ultimately, as infuriating as it is racist.
I highly recommend this book.
DJ
In frustration, Steele says that the American left uses dissociation to apear morally authoritative. He claims that 'white guilt' comes predominantly from the left via entitlements, affirmative action, and 'ethnic-based' college courses.
"At least when they called you a nigger [before the civil rights movement], they didn't expect you to thank them," Steele says of whites who are motivated simply by white guilt. This guilt tells those on the Left that blacks simply cannot be held responsible for their own lives, successes, and failures because of the past sins of the American collective. Further, he writes that when entitlement programs like the Great Society go wrong, white America still feels like they deserve a pat on the back, even though they don't see how telling blacks that they are in need of help from whites is, ultimately, as infuriating as it is racist.
I highly recommend this book.
DJ
July 9, 2020
This is what you might call a red pill book, which is probably why it hasn’t got all that many reviews; mainly because people don’t like hard truths a lot of the time. If you’re planning on reading any of the much more popular race related books I’d recommend adding this to the list. Rather than give a highly one sided narrative about how essentially white people are bad, systemic racism is everywhere and everyone else are victims of white racism it gives a much more structured and detailed look into what is really happening and about how white supremacy has morphed into white guilt which is just as powerful and helps nobody, regardless of race. Well worth a read.
August 22, 2021
I didn't agree with everything in this book, but I found the memoir elements fascinating, and Shelby Steele makes a convincing case for the role of "white guilt" in American society. However, he doesn't just support his thesis with societal and personal examples, but also explains how and why particular dynamics came to be. His generational insight is especially enlightening here, because he lived through segregation, Civil Rights, the Black Power movement, ineffective and damaging Great Society reforms, and the increasing polarization of American society. He has personal knowledge of hinge points in American history, understands the youth mindset of the sixties, and has the clarity and personal context to illumine how the phenomenon of "white guilt" developed after the Civil Rights movement and warped efforts towards reform.
Steele makes excellent points about how infuriating it is when white people's efforts at social justice are all about disassociating themselves from racism, regardless whether their policies, discourse, and attitudes actually benefit Black people, much less respect them as freethinking or autonomous individuals. His excoriating critique deeply resonated with me, given the complete and utter exhaustion I feel towards people using hot-button social issues and buzzwords as a way to prop themselves up as others' moral superiors.
Steele has a lot to say about issues in the Black community, but what I found most interesting and unique about this book is his breakdown of the mixed motives and blindness that go into many white people's efforts towards racial justice. He insists that when people approach racial issues through an attempt to vindicate themselves, seeing their whiteness as something that they must disassociate themselves from, they use Black people as pawns for their own vindication or advancement. He makes particularly strong points about this in relation to the university, and to ways that Affirmative Action doesn't so much benefit anyone as it enables American institutions to save face and claim virtue.
Basically, instead of patting people on the back for being well-meaning or trying to turn the tide of American history, Steele calls them on their crap. I really appreciated this, and I really needed it right now. His excoriating critique of "self-congratulatory moral elitism" perfectly expressed how I feel towards certain people's social media posts, while removing the issues from the personal sphere of my relationships. It was helpful to get his perspective from specific historical and personal angles that I don't have, instead of just arguing in circles in my head.
This book is definitely dated, since it came out in 2006 and doesn't address the continued deterioration of American society or changed dynamics in racial relations after the 2016 election, but I would recommend it to people who want to think deeply about racial politics. Sadly, the white liberals who most need this book's insight are unlikely to read it, due to the author's general conservatism and disbelief in systemic racism according to the terms of the time, but I hope that open-minded people will give it a chance. White guilt is a much better construct for understanding current issues than white fragility, and Steele's personal stories and willingness to be blunt offer a unique perspective that I haven't seen elsewhere in quite the same way.
Steele makes excellent points about how infuriating it is when white people's efforts at social justice are all about disassociating themselves from racism, regardless whether their policies, discourse, and attitudes actually benefit Black people, much less respect them as freethinking or autonomous individuals. His excoriating critique deeply resonated with me, given the complete and utter exhaustion I feel towards people using hot-button social issues and buzzwords as a way to prop themselves up as others' moral superiors.
Steele has a lot to say about issues in the Black community, but what I found most interesting and unique about this book is his breakdown of the mixed motives and blindness that go into many white people's efforts towards racial justice. He insists that when people approach racial issues through an attempt to vindicate themselves, seeing their whiteness as something that they must disassociate themselves from, they use Black people as pawns for their own vindication or advancement. He makes particularly strong points about this in relation to the university, and to ways that Affirmative Action doesn't so much benefit anyone as it enables American institutions to save face and claim virtue.
Basically, instead of patting people on the back for being well-meaning or trying to turn the tide of American history, Steele calls them on their crap. I really appreciated this, and I really needed it right now. His excoriating critique of "self-congratulatory moral elitism" perfectly expressed how I feel towards certain people's social media posts, while removing the issues from the personal sphere of my relationships. It was helpful to get his perspective from specific historical and personal angles that I don't have, instead of just arguing in circles in my head.
This book is definitely dated, since it came out in 2006 and doesn't address the continued deterioration of American society or changed dynamics in racial relations after the 2016 election, but I would recommend it to people who want to think deeply about racial politics. Sadly, the white liberals who most need this book's insight are unlikely to read it, due to the author's general conservatism and disbelief in systemic racism according to the terms of the time, but I hope that open-minded people will give it a chance. White guilt is a much better construct for understanding current issues than white fragility, and Steele's personal stories and willingness to be blunt offer a unique perspective that I haven't seen elsewhere in quite the same way.
October 7, 2017
It's difficult to find the words to describe the insight packed into this relatively small book. While I don't accept the author's implicit charge against people of faith as supporting the former order of "white supremacy" (as a whole; he doesn't seem to distinguish between groups of believing people who supported racism and those that didn't), the rest of his analysis seems astonishingly spot on.
This is one of those books where you already knew much of what he articulates intuitively--you've even said some of those things yourself, but Mr. Steele lays it all out end-to-end and provides a structure, a rationale, that brings coherence to the whole topic. The author expresses it in such memorable terms that the entire perspective takes on a new force.
I quite literally couldn't put the book down and read it to finish in one evening.
This is one of those books where you already knew much of what he articulates intuitively--you've even said some of those things yourself, but Mr. Steele lays it all out end-to-end and provides a structure, a rationale, that brings coherence to the whole topic. The author expresses it in such memorable terms that the entire perspective takes on a new force.
I quite literally couldn't put the book down and read it to finish in one evening.
July 16, 2022
Fabulous. It was not a quick read, probably because I wrote down every relevant quote that I came to. One of my favourite authors is Thomas Sowell, because 1) He changed his evil ways, that is he rejected Marxism as a personal philosophy (Shelby goes into length about cultural Marxism and changed his personal philosophy) and his work is based on facts,not what is the flavour of the day. Shelby Steele writes about facts. The style of writing is exceptional. At times I almost felt that I was reading a novel. He is a gifted author. It occurred to me some time ago that if a white person wrote Steele's or Sowell's books he would be excoriated and accused of racism, cultural appropriation and whatever cliches that the sjw's are mouthing. That's probably why I enjoy Sowell, Steele, Jason Riley, John McWhorter and Walter Williams. How come they're never invited on The View?
April 16, 2020
I thought I knew a little bit about anti-racism work but it turns out I didn’t know a whole lot. One of the biggest things I learned from this book is to ask yourself the following question: “do you care more about appearing not to be racist or about actually not being racist?” White guilt has led to dissociation and dissociation has led to all kinds of problems.
June 10, 2020
Amazingly insightful and honest. Finally a perspective that promotes understanding of the true nature and the roots of continued racial tensions over promotion of the same failed narrative. While potentially uncomfortable to hear for some, any honest retrospective cannot help but see truth in the author’s observations and conclusions.
June 8, 2020
Everyone needs to read this book!
I cannot believe this book isn't more popular. How has this passed under the radar? I will recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about race in America.
I cannot believe this book isn't more popular. How has this passed under the radar? I will recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about race in America.
December 20, 2020
Steele makes some great points in this clearly and intelligently written book. He tackles profound issues in ways that are logical and easy to follow, connecting the zeitgeist of the sixties with white guilt, black militancy, and the deeper need for all to take full responsibility for themselves, past, present, and future. This book, along with White Fragility, covers so much ground that many others only brush the surface of.
My only issue with Steele's thinking is that he cynically assumes every effort by whites to deal with racism is motivated by a larger, usually political, desire to regain moral authority as a nation. This fails to wrestle with the true desire of many individuals to forge personal integrity in regards to how we treat others. Racism is wrong, not just because of the moral high ground whites lost, but because it truly cheapens all of us by casting some as inferior or some as superior.
My only issue with Steele's thinking is that he cynically assumes every effort by whites to deal with racism is motivated by a larger, usually political, desire to regain moral authority as a nation. This fails to wrestle with the true desire of many individuals to forge personal integrity in regards to how we treat others. Racism is wrong, not just because of the moral high ground whites lost, but because it truly cheapens all of us by casting some as inferior or some as superior.
September 3, 2007
One of my favorite interns this summer, who is now studying law and social justice at UCLA, opened my ears to the discussion of modern day race issues in America. The passion and emotion he displayed in our many conversations on the subject inspired me to pick up the book White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era.
I didn't agree with all of Steele's assertions, but I did read the book from front to back in one sitting (my flight to Cleveland). The premise of the book is that whites, particularly in governments and universities, are making issues of racial disparities worse by acting upon "white guilt". White guilt includes the desire to reclaim moral authority from prior generations, and the fear of ruining their reputations by being deemed a racist. With these offset motivatiosn, whites have miscalculated the formula to solving today's issues. In fact, Steele argues that white guilt has further exploited blacks by treating them as victims and never as equals.
"Calls for diversity and programs of affirmative action serve only to stigmatize minorities, portraying them not as capable individuals but as people defined by their membership in a group for which exceptions must be made"
The chapter on affirmative action in colleges is particularly interesting. While this may help to increase the diversity statistics printed on the college brochures the administration proudly boasts, there are very few programs that actually ensure these students are prepared to succeed. This issue reminds me of St. Martin De Porres High School, where I used to volunteer. This is a private school in inner-city Cleveland where students work in a professional setting to offset the cost of a private education. The staff at the school worked hard to find local banks and law firms to employ the students. But after a couple months of employment, it was obvious that the school had failed to arm the kids with the tools necessary for success in a professional setting. From proper attire to business etiquette, the students simply lacked the experience and knowledge to impress their employers. Providing more opportunities for "disadvantaged" kids is important, but society must also charge them with the confidence and support every child deserves.
I don't agree with a lot of Steele's conservative views, especially his praise of Bush's theories on poverty, education, and race. But overall, I think he's igniting an important dialogue on race issues that shouldn't be ignored.
I didn't agree with all of Steele's assertions, but I did read the book from front to back in one sitting (my flight to Cleveland). The premise of the book is that whites, particularly in governments and universities, are making issues of racial disparities worse by acting upon "white guilt". White guilt includes the desire to reclaim moral authority from prior generations, and the fear of ruining their reputations by being deemed a racist. With these offset motivatiosn, whites have miscalculated the formula to solving today's issues. In fact, Steele argues that white guilt has further exploited blacks by treating them as victims and never as equals.
"Calls for diversity and programs of affirmative action serve only to stigmatize minorities, portraying them not as capable individuals but as people defined by their membership in a group for which exceptions must be made"
The chapter on affirmative action in colleges is particularly interesting. While this may help to increase the diversity statistics printed on the college brochures the administration proudly boasts, there are very few programs that actually ensure these students are prepared to succeed. This issue reminds me of St. Martin De Porres High School, where I used to volunteer. This is a private school in inner-city Cleveland where students work in a professional setting to offset the cost of a private education. The staff at the school worked hard to find local banks and law firms to employ the students. But after a couple months of employment, it was obvious that the school had failed to arm the kids with the tools necessary for success in a professional setting. From proper attire to business etiquette, the students simply lacked the experience and knowledge to impress their employers. Providing more opportunities for "disadvantaged" kids is important, but society must also charge them with the confidence and support every child deserves.
I don't agree with a lot of Steele's conservative views, especially his praise of Bush's theories on poverty, education, and race. But overall, I think he's igniting an important dialogue on race issues that shouldn't be ignored.
October 18, 2020
This is the fourth book I have read in my quest to have a better grasp on race and race relations in the USA, as well as of causes and motivations and instigators here. One thing that stands out clearly, is that after Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, there was a clear Marxist takeover of the black race movement.
Such ideas were already crossing my mind, being that many of the tactics being used by BLMorg and ANTIFA were right out of the communist/progressive playbook, a la riots and ridiculous demands and the push for revolution. The brandishing of hammer and sickle in these groups was a hint of what their ideology was.
Anyway, Reed, West, and now Steele make it abundantly clear that it was communists and communist ideology that took over the “Civil Rights” movement after the success of equality under the law was won. I am most thankful to Steele for his book in this regard. After getting more and more testimony of the people present, it is becoming more fact than theory inside my heart and mind.
Steele’s explanation of white guilt and its affects on Western culture, on whites and on blacks was fascinating. His insights are very much worthy of our attention. He traveled from “Leftist” to “Conservative” without really changing much, as society is really what changed.
His writing style was not particularly enjoyable to me, but the information and insight he shared with me was of great value. I think, this far in my studies on these current issues, this is the one I would recommend.
Such ideas were already crossing my mind, being that many of the tactics being used by BLMorg and ANTIFA were right out of the communist/progressive playbook, a la riots and ridiculous demands and the push for revolution. The brandishing of hammer and sickle in these groups was a hint of what their ideology was.
Anyway, Reed, West, and now Steele make it abundantly clear that it was communists and communist ideology that took over the “Civil Rights” movement after the success of equality under the law was won. I am most thankful to Steele for his book in this regard. After getting more and more testimony of the people present, it is becoming more fact than theory inside my heart and mind.
Steele’s explanation of white guilt and its affects on Western culture, on whites and on blacks was fascinating. His insights are very much worthy of our attention. He traveled from “Leftist” to “Conservative” without really changing much, as society is really what changed.
His writing style was not particularly enjoyable to me, but the information and insight he shared with me was of great value. I think, this far in my studies on these current issues, this is the one I would recommend.
June 21, 2012
I give up. It's not that he's a conservative. It's that he keeps going on and on about moral authority and I don't even get what that means. He complains about liberal elitists, then proceeds to get annoyed with someone for suggesting an "ethnic" literature course. It was wrong for the chick to assume he'd be on board just because he's black, but it's equally wrong for him to assume that just because they are ethnic writers he's never heard of they are automatically mediocre. It's like his dig on comic books. Dude has probably never even read Watchmen or Sandman or Kabuki and automatically assumes that comic books are not good literature. He should crack open one of those books before judging them.
He sounds like OSC the way he goes on and on about morality. I'm not saying it's a good thing to skank around like Clinton did, but it seems a lot less worse than, I don't know, not only being racist but doing nothing about the racist infrastructure. I don't think we needed to know about Clinton's affairs. It's not as if he was the only president who did such things. Even Thomas Jefferson had "affairs" with his slaves. I'd say such things were besides the point. I don't know. Perhaps his ideas are flying over my head.
Also White Guilt is stupid because why should you feel guilty over the dumb things your ancestors did? If we learn from the past and work hard not to be that way anymore, I feel like we're on the right track. Trying to get along, to understand each other.
He sounds like OSC the way he goes on and on about morality. I'm not saying it's a good thing to skank around like Clinton did, but it seems a lot less worse than, I don't know, not only being racist but doing nothing about the racist infrastructure. I don't think we needed to know about Clinton's affairs. It's not as if he was the only president who did such things. Even Thomas Jefferson had "affairs" with his slaves. I'd say such things were besides the point. I don't know. Perhaps his ideas are flying over my head.
Also White Guilt is stupid because why should you feel guilty over the dumb things your ancestors did? If we learn from the past and work hard not to be that way anymore, I feel like we're on the right track. Trying to get along, to understand each other.
October 4, 2021
Although written in 2006, i feel like this book is even more relevant today. It takes Shelby Steele, a conservative black man, through his journey in trying to figure out what is going on in our country as it pertains to race. It explains how as we try to "fix" racial issues, we are actually exacerbating the problem. In order to not be seen as racist, whites provide band-aid solutions rather than getting to the core of the problems, as no one is willing to discuss those core problems. These solutions ultimately do more harm than good. (If they actually did any good, why have we not seen any improvement in the plight of blacks over the last 40 years.)
"The greatest black problem in America today is freedom." Freedom comes with the burden of responsibility, thus oppressed groups deny they are free to avoid this responsibility. We are seeing this played out across the country right now. In order to alleviate our white guilt, we choose to take over the burden of responsibility for others, which benefits no one.
"The greatest black problem in America today is freedom." Freedom comes with the burden of responsibility, thus oppressed groups deny they are free to avoid this responsibility. We are seeing this played out across the country right now. In order to alleviate our white guilt, we choose to take over the burden of responsibility for others, which benefits no one.
January 20, 2018
Well written exercise in delusion. The only white guilt justified in these pages is that held by Steele’s cohort. And I’ll give him that—he did a good job of defining white guilt. Unfortunately, his conclusions surrounding this concept cross the lines of negligence and border on conspiracy. Each critique leveled at the imagined white guilt ridden elite is a straw man, the next one weaker than its predecessor. Overall, a remarkable waste of time.
June 17, 2020
Enlightening Perspective from an Individual Whose Life Experiences and Education Being Credibility to His Perspective.
This book should be read by anyone who is under 60 of any race or ethnicity who will gain a perspective on issues of race through the lens of a black man who lived through segregation, is active in civil rights dialogue, and continues to share a reasoned thesis on race in America that is relevant in 2020.
This book should be read by anyone who is under 60 of any race or ethnicity who will gain a perspective on issues of race through the lens of a black man who lived through segregation, is active in civil rights dialogue, and continues to share a reasoned thesis on race in America that is relevant in 2020.
May 23, 2021
Steele, an excellent writer, describes how both white people and black people have leveraged white guilt to their advantage: white people to dissociate from “whiteness” (i.e. racism), and black people to gain resources from guilt-ridden white people.
This system, of course, only perpetuates racism and white supremacy, which is the irony Steele does a great job exposing in this book. The systemic racism no one is talking about is the system in which black people are always understood as the weak, victimized race that needs the outreached hand of a rich, powerful white man to get by in life. Nowadays, liberals seem most proud of their contributions to racial justice. But get down to the heart of it and you find the very white supremacy they pride themselves on opposing.
(As a side note, this is why I can’t stand the tendency for some, notably Tim Keller, to talk about political conservativism and liberalism as both equally deficient worldviews. To me, that’s a lazy way to appease everybody and say nothing. Yes, they both fall short of the means of justification, but let’s talk about the fruit of the Gospel in the world. They both fall short of resembling that too, but they don’t both fall 100 feet short. One falls a bit farther short than the other. Let’s be real.)
I grabbed so many quotes from this book, but here’s one that summarizes the whole book very well:
"Since the sixties, black leaders have made one overriding argument: that blacks cannot achieve equality without white America taking primary responsibility for it. Black militancy became, in fact, a militant belief in white power and a correspondingly militant denial of black power. Black leader after black leader argued that we could not pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, because we 'don't have any bootstraps.' But this humiliating plea for white intervention only projected whites as powerful and blacks as helpless. So, finally, we embraced a black militancy that argued nothing more strongly than our own perpetual weakness—or, put another way, our inferiority. To be a proud and militant black after the sixties, you screamed black power in order to induce the application of white power. And you lived by an ethic that still sees full responsibility as oppression, if not racism, when applied to blacks. Still today, the best way to make a black leader mad is to say to him that black Americans are capable of being fully responsible for their own advancement. This is a black militancy of inferiority that assumes the continuing inferiority of the people it tries to speak for. And this is where it again meshes so perfectly with white guilt, which always assumes a nearly intractable black inferiority."
This system, of course, only perpetuates racism and white supremacy, which is the irony Steele does a great job exposing in this book. The systemic racism no one is talking about is the system in which black people are always understood as the weak, victimized race that needs the outreached hand of a rich, powerful white man to get by in life. Nowadays, liberals seem most proud of their contributions to racial justice. But get down to the heart of it and you find the very white supremacy they pride themselves on opposing.
(As a side note, this is why I can’t stand the tendency for some, notably Tim Keller, to talk about political conservativism and liberalism as both equally deficient worldviews. To me, that’s a lazy way to appease everybody and say nothing. Yes, they both fall short of the means of justification, but let’s talk about the fruit of the Gospel in the world. They both fall short of resembling that too, but they don’t both fall 100 feet short. One falls a bit farther short than the other. Let’s be real.)
I grabbed so many quotes from this book, but here’s one that summarizes the whole book very well:
"Since the sixties, black leaders have made one overriding argument: that blacks cannot achieve equality without white America taking primary responsibility for it. Black militancy became, in fact, a militant belief in white power and a correspondingly militant denial of black power. Black leader after black leader argued that we could not pick ourselves up by our own bootstraps, because we 'don't have any bootstraps.' But this humiliating plea for white intervention only projected whites as powerful and blacks as helpless. So, finally, we embraced a black militancy that argued nothing more strongly than our own perpetual weakness—or, put another way, our inferiority. To be a proud and militant black after the sixties, you screamed black power in order to induce the application of white power. And you lived by an ethic that still sees full responsibility as oppression, if not racism, when applied to blacks. Still today, the best way to make a black leader mad is to say to him that black Americans are capable of being fully responsible for their own advancement. This is a black militancy of inferiority that assumes the continuing inferiority of the people it tries to speak for. And this is where it again meshes so perfectly with white guilt, which always assumes a nearly intractable black inferiority."
June 25, 2021
I've been seeking out African-American voices that offer alternative viewpoints to the critical social justice movement that has been sweeping the country. Shelby Steele did not disappoint. Although this book is now 15 years old, most of it could be published now. (Today, he would have to deal with Trump conservatism though.) Steele has thought deeply and carefully about how the attitudes of both black and white people, both toward each other and toward themselves, have shaped policies intended to help the black community. He shows how, in the wake of the civil rights movement, white guilt and the manipulation of it set the stage for an endless series of failed policies.
Steele intertwines his own personal experiences as a young black man coming of age at the end of the 1960's civil rights movement with the history of racial justice in America. He argues that, at that turning point in the late 60's, the black liberation movement turned away from advancement through self-empowerment and toward the manipulation of white guilt. And, since white people still had plenty of power but no longer had moral authority, their goal became to assuage their guilt and prove that they were not racist. With that unstated and, in most cases, subconscious goal, they began instituting programs that focused on diversity outcomes and on other simple, band-aid solutions to much deeper and more complex problems.
A quote on this:
"Most any time race is given importance, positively or negatively, people are hiding from their true motivations. In the age of racism, whites said blacks were inferior so as not to see their own desire to exploit them, their true motivation. In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
He makes a strong argument for black self-empowerment and for the country as a whole to embrace the principles of individual freedom and responsibility.
One quibble I have is that I think Steele is ultimately too cynical about white liberals' motives. I'm with him when it comes to the general argument that white liberals have an unspoken motivation to dissociate from white supremacy and dispel their internalized guilt, but I think he underestimates the sincere, though often misguided, desire many people have to really make things better.
But all in all, it was a very worthwhile read. I'll undoubtedly be thinking about Steele's ideas for some time to come. If you want to learn something about race in America, put down your copy of White Fragility and pick up White Guilt.
Steele intertwines his own personal experiences as a young black man coming of age at the end of the 1960's civil rights movement with the history of racial justice in America. He argues that, at that turning point in the late 60's, the black liberation movement turned away from advancement through self-empowerment and toward the manipulation of white guilt. And, since white people still had plenty of power but no longer had moral authority, their goal became to assuage their guilt and prove that they were not racist. With that unstated and, in most cases, subconscious goal, they began instituting programs that focused on diversity outcomes and on other simple, band-aid solutions to much deeper and more complex problems.
A quote on this:
"Most any time race is given importance, positively or negatively, people are hiding from their true motivations. In the age of racism, whites said blacks were inferior so as not to see their own desire to exploit them, their true motivation. In the age of white guilt, whites support all manner of silly racial policies without seeing that their true motivation is simply to show themselves innocent of racism."
He makes a strong argument for black self-empowerment and for the country as a whole to embrace the principles of individual freedom and responsibility.
One quibble I have is that I think Steele is ultimately too cynical about white liberals' motives. I'm with him when it comes to the general argument that white liberals have an unspoken motivation to dissociate from white supremacy and dispel their internalized guilt, but I think he underestimates the sincere, though often misguided, desire many people have to really make things better.
But all in all, it was a very worthwhile read. I'll undoubtedly be thinking about Steele's ideas for some time to come. If you want to learn something about race in America, put down your copy of White Fragility and pick up White Guilt.
September 2, 2020
Very thoughtful read. Racism comes in many forms and methods. Do you treat EVERYONE as an equal human being or is it more important to you that everyone recognizes you're not racist by supporting the right policies and politicians, you have read the right books and you have posted the latest trend on Facebook? We are all image bearers, races have been reconciled in Christ, if you are in Christ BE WHO YOU ARE. If you are not, you will never be reconciled to God or each other.
James 2: 1-9 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
James 1: 22-25 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
James 2: 1-9 My brothers, show no partiality as you hold the faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory. For if a man wearing a gold ring and fine clothing comes into your assembly, and a poor man in shabby clothing also comes in, and if you pay attention to the one who wears the fine clothing and say, “You sit here in a good place,” while you say to the poor man, “You stand over there,” or, “Sit down at my feet,” have you not then made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers, has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Are not the rich the ones who oppress you, and the ones who drag you into court? Are they not the ones who blaspheme the honorable name by which you were called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing well. But if you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
James 1: 22-25 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.
July 9, 2019
Exceptional on the diagnostics, but short on the cure. Shelby Steele does exploratory surgery showing the cause of our current dis-ease, explaining how the race-radiation of the past has only caused the cancer to grow in a way that disguises itself as healthy tissue.
The shortcoming is that we're never pointed to the One who can remove our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh, creating one new man in place of two, reconciling Jew and Gentile as well as black and white (see Ephesians 2).
Even so, in an age that is often calling health sickness and sickness health, it is an uncommon common grace to find any doctor who will tell you the truth, and knowing you're sick is invaluable in pointing others to the Great Physician.
The shortcoming is that we're never pointed to the One who can remove our hearts of stone and give us a heart of flesh, creating one new man in place of two, reconciling Jew and Gentile as well as black and white (see Ephesians 2).
Even so, in an age that is often calling health sickness and sickness health, it is an uncommon common grace to find any doctor who will tell you the truth, and knowing you're sick is invaluable in pointing others to the Great Physician.
August 24, 2020
I almost never give a book 5 stars. It is an honor that must be earned by greatness. Mr. Steele has earned 5 stars. This book is well written, humble, thoughtful, engaging, and just beautiful. So many times during my reading I found myself wanting to sit down with Mr. Steele learn more of his thoughts on so many different topics. He is brilliant at taking difficult paradoxes and explaining their complexities and nuances. He explained so many things that I had felt but was unable to put into words. BRAVO Mr. Steele, BRAVO!!!!
May 23, 2021
I doubt this would have been published had it been written by a white man, which actually proves part of the author’s thesis: Blacks now have the moral authority to speak about race. Whites don’t because their admittance to guilt in allowing and perpetuating centuries of racism has lost them the moral authority to legitimately speak out.
I haven’t ever encountered this perspective on race relations before – that of the black conservative. It was very interesting. Steele lambastes both blacks and whites in their actions after the Civil Rights movement. He also sees the nuance in a (white/Western) culture that has both shameful and praiseworthy attributes. Though I’m sure there are valid arguments against some of his points, I really appreciate his respect for the virtues Western society has been built on, and his declaration that it is those virtues that can lead us back from the abyss we are falling into.
This book gives me permission to view people as people, to see our common humanity instead of viewing everyone through the lens of race. YES, there is still more work to be done. YES, I should stand against racism if I see it happening. But I don’t need to feel shame just for being white. My skin color doesn’t define who I am.
Though it was published in 2006, this book is still very relevant today in 2021.
Some good quotes:
So now, as I was coming into greater individual freedom than I had ever known, the new militant black consciousness wanted me to embrace again my race as my destiny. In the age of racism I had wanted freedom as an individual; in the age of white guilt I was learning to want power as a black.
…..
The authority derived from their presumed innate superiority made whites gods of the earth whose every base instinct for plunder, rape, and systemic oppression could be legitimately indulged. But [after the Civil Rights movement] without white supremacy as a source of moral authority, the reverse began to happen. The loss of moral authority went too far the other way, not only denying legitimacy to the plunder of the nonwhite world, but also denying it to that entire set of difficult “character” principles that bring coherence and even greatness to free societies: personal responsibility, hard work, individual initiative, delayed gratification, commitment to excellence, competition by merit, the honor in achievement, and so on. How could these principles be important when they had coexisted so easily with racism? Weren’t they, in fact, a part of the machinery of white supremacy?
In the age of white supremacy, blacks were held accountable to these values and principles even though they were also openly oppressed. Therefore, there was a cultural coherence in America based on these values and principles that applied to everybody despite the presence of segregation. This coherence, in itself, was a good thing, and was surely responsible for much that was great in the character of white and black Americans. Moreover, it might have provided an ideal consensus of values out of which to build a post-white supremacy society. But the delegitimization of white supremacy greatly injured this cultural coherence by taking authority away from the values and principles it was based on. After America admitted to what was worst about itself, there was not enough authority left to support what was best.
……
So the very structure of the liberal faith—that whites and “society” must facilitate black uplift—locks white liberals into an unexamined white supremacy. They can’t really believe in blacks but they must believe in whites. Whites are agents; blacks are agented.
So postsixties American liberalism preserves the old racist hierarchy of whites over blacks as virtue itself; and it grants all whites who identify with it a new superiority. In effect, it says you are morally superior to other whites and intellectually superior to blacks. The white liberal’s reward is this feeling that because he is heir to the knowledge of the West, yet morally enlightened beyond the West’s former bigotry, he really is a “new man.” A better man than the world has seen before.
…..
My belief was that minority writers should be included in our mainstream literature classes by merit. This would mean two things: that they would be respected for their talent rather than endured for their color and that they would be read by all our students on a regular basis. An ethnic literature class would only create a literary ghetto of mediocre writers, an “affirmative-action” class in which even great writers would be diminished.
…..
At the heart of this culture war there remains a terrible contradiction: the new “progressiveness” that America achieved around race after the sixties was accompanied by considerable cultural decline. The problem is that the dissociational left destroys the principles that would realize its goals, and the right lacks the moral authority to enforce those selfsame principles. The result is a kind of impotence.
I haven’t ever encountered this perspective on race relations before – that of the black conservative. It was very interesting. Steele lambastes both blacks and whites in their actions after the Civil Rights movement. He also sees the nuance in a (white/Western) culture that has both shameful and praiseworthy attributes. Though I’m sure there are valid arguments against some of his points, I really appreciate his respect for the virtues Western society has been built on, and his declaration that it is those virtues that can lead us back from the abyss we are falling into.
This book gives me permission to view people as people, to see our common humanity instead of viewing everyone through the lens of race. YES, there is still more work to be done. YES, I should stand against racism if I see it happening. But I don’t need to feel shame just for being white. My skin color doesn’t define who I am.
Though it was published in 2006, this book is still very relevant today in 2021.
Some good quotes:
So now, as I was coming into greater individual freedom than I had ever known, the new militant black consciousness wanted me to embrace again my race as my destiny. In the age of racism I had wanted freedom as an individual; in the age of white guilt I was learning to want power as a black.
…..
The authority derived from their presumed innate superiority made whites gods of the earth whose every base instinct for plunder, rape, and systemic oppression could be legitimately indulged. But [after the Civil Rights movement] without white supremacy as a source of moral authority, the reverse began to happen. The loss of moral authority went too far the other way, not only denying legitimacy to the plunder of the nonwhite world, but also denying it to that entire set of difficult “character” principles that bring coherence and even greatness to free societies: personal responsibility, hard work, individual initiative, delayed gratification, commitment to excellence, competition by merit, the honor in achievement, and so on. How could these principles be important when they had coexisted so easily with racism? Weren’t they, in fact, a part of the machinery of white supremacy?
In the age of white supremacy, blacks were held accountable to these values and principles even though they were also openly oppressed. Therefore, there was a cultural coherence in America based on these values and principles that applied to everybody despite the presence of segregation. This coherence, in itself, was a good thing, and was surely responsible for much that was great in the character of white and black Americans. Moreover, it might have provided an ideal consensus of values out of which to build a post-white supremacy society. But the delegitimization of white supremacy greatly injured this cultural coherence by taking authority away from the values and principles it was based on. After America admitted to what was worst about itself, there was not enough authority left to support what was best.
……
So the very structure of the liberal faith—that whites and “society” must facilitate black uplift—locks white liberals into an unexamined white supremacy. They can’t really believe in blacks but they must believe in whites. Whites are agents; blacks are agented.
So postsixties American liberalism preserves the old racist hierarchy of whites over blacks as virtue itself; and it grants all whites who identify with it a new superiority. In effect, it says you are morally superior to other whites and intellectually superior to blacks. The white liberal’s reward is this feeling that because he is heir to the knowledge of the West, yet morally enlightened beyond the West’s former bigotry, he really is a “new man.” A better man than the world has seen before.
…..
My belief was that minority writers should be included in our mainstream literature classes by merit. This would mean two things: that they would be respected for their talent rather than endured for their color and that they would be read by all our students on a regular basis. An ethnic literature class would only create a literary ghetto of mediocre writers, an “affirmative-action” class in which even great writers would be diminished.
…..
At the heart of this culture war there remains a terrible contradiction: the new “progressiveness” that America achieved around race after the sixties was accompanied by considerable cultural decline. The problem is that the dissociational left destroys the principles that would realize its goals, and the right lacks the moral authority to enforce those selfsame principles. The result is a kind of impotence.
September 25, 2019
Five stars. Five Huge Stars! Brilliant. The writing is beautiful, elegant, descriptive, heartfelt, and right on the money with the treatment of its subject matter.
Shelby Steele is a Stanford professor and celebrated author, and is the son of African American civil rights supporters and grew up in 1950s Chicago where his reality was a world in which racism was the status quo and even the good guys, like his well meaning teacher Mrs. Burgess, sought to preserve the structures of power. A baby boomer, Steele came of age in the 1960s when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and ushered in a new era of what he now calls white guilt.
This book is semi-autobiographical but tells the story of white guilt narrated through the arc of a drive Steele took between Los Angeles and the Bay Area while listening to ongoing debates on talk radio surrounding the Clinton-Lewinsky proceedings. His central question was how Bill Clinton could escape the sin of adultery, something that would have been unthinkable for President Eisenhower, while the latter would have survived uttering racial epithets, something that would have completely undone Clinton in the 1990s. Musing on this question led him to write this book.
Steele himself was a black activist in the 1960s and tells about storming the office of his college president and blithely permitting cigarette ash to tarnish the fine rugs adorning that space as he made a number of demands on the college, some of them ludicrous. He recalls an epiphany he had as the president, like so many others across the land, acquiesced to the demands. This was a new era in which whites acknowledged guilt for their past transgressions, and this led to a new dynamic in which whites sought to preserve their power by dissociating from racial history (and by extension militarism and sexism), thereby reclaiming "moral authority and superiority."
But the author also holds blacks' feet to the fire for allowing victimhood to become their mantra with the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others fueling a generation of shaming and blaming as a means for acquiring power, much apart from the humility and personal responsibility advocated by the earlier generation including Martin Luther King, Jr. Their tactic has been to wield white guilt as a sword to make greater and greater demands, usually in the form of money through numberless ineffective government programs such as school busing, housing, and public welfare.
Shelby Steele recounts his gradual, and at times reluctant, transformation from race activist to realist as he came to understand that white guilt actually harms those it professes to help. In other words, a generation of largesse and lack of accountability produced within African American communities disproportionate poverty, fatherlessness, patronizing affirmative action programs, and countless other well meaning measures borne from guilt rather than a sense of principled values such as democracy, hard work, and merit. Of course we see today as much as ever that these policies have failed and racial tensions are again at the forefront of American concerns.
Perhaps my favorite part of the book was a story in which a self-described "architect of the Great Society" confronted Steele after a lecture he gave asking for real equality for the races. The man was visibly irritated and hurt at the suggestion that his liberal programs, though they had largely failed, were a disservice to the African American race. Steele came to realize that the liberal bureaucratic felt unseen, much as Steele feels unseen by the tokenism of programs favoring some races over others borne of a need to dissociate from historic wrongs, but which actually foist harm upon the communities served.
Steele also dishes up some whoop a** on the likes of Maureen Dowd of New York Times fame who illustrated the epitome of white guilt in her screed responding to Justice Thomas's dissent in the Grutter v. Bollinger case written by Justice O'Connor who cobbled together a series of faddish sociology theories to conclude that it is constitutional for a law school (Michigan) to consider race and diversity as a factor in assembling a class. Dowd in essence said Thomas "should be grateful" for his advancement in society because of the programs bestowed magnanimously by [whites]. He goes on to excoriate the tokenism in university departments who increasingly shun excellence in favor of "diversity" even though the result is mediocrity.
As someone who actually lived the black experience, raised in the civil rights era, and who rose the ranks of academia through his own merit, Shelby Steele has a keen perspective on how smug elitism is borne of white guilt. Even the term "black conservative" is used to differentiate through virtue signaling. Just this week several "experts" on white nationalism, all Caucasian, were called before a liberal congress to highlight fears that white supremacy is a threat. Of course this is timed to coincide with yet another presidential election, which is something a "black conservative" woman noted, as she also argued that white supremacy is near the bottom of the list for real live blacks in this country. Of course she drew scorn and derision from her fellow panelists, whose condescension reeked of "racial betters" acting out of the white guilt so beautifully described by this book.
Though written in 2006 White Guilt is refreshingly relevant to this day. Five wholehearted stars!
Shelby Steele is a Stanford professor and celebrated author, and is the son of African American civil rights supporters and grew up in 1950s Chicago where his reality was a world in which racism was the status quo and even the good guys, like his well meaning teacher Mrs. Burgess, sought to preserve the structures of power. A baby boomer, Steele came of age in the 1960s when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed and ushered in a new era of what he now calls white guilt.
This book is semi-autobiographical but tells the story of white guilt narrated through the arc of a drive Steele took between Los Angeles and the Bay Area while listening to ongoing debates on talk radio surrounding the Clinton-Lewinsky proceedings. His central question was how Bill Clinton could escape the sin of adultery, something that would have been unthinkable for President Eisenhower, while the latter would have survived uttering racial epithets, something that would have completely undone Clinton in the 1990s. Musing on this question led him to write this book.
Steele himself was a black activist in the 1960s and tells about storming the office of his college president and blithely permitting cigarette ash to tarnish the fine rugs adorning that space as he made a number of demands on the college, some of them ludicrous. He recalls an epiphany he had as the president, like so many others across the land, acquiesced to the demands. This was a new era in which whites acknowledged guilt for their past transgressions, and this led to a new dynamic in which whites sought to preserve their power by dissociating from racial history (and by extension militarism and sexism), thereby reclaiming "moral authority and superiority."
But the author also holds blacks' feet to the fire for allowing victimhood to become their mantra with the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and others fueling a generation of shaming and blaming as a means for acquiring power, much apart from the humility and personal responsibility advocated by the earlier generation including Martin Luther King, Jr. Their tactic has been to wield white guilt as a sword to make greater and greater demands, usually in the form of money through numberless ineffective government programs such as school busing, housing, and public welfare.
Shelby Steele recounts his gradual, and at times reluctant, transformation from race activist to realist as he came to understand that white guilt actually harms those it professes to help. In other words, a generation of largesse and lack of accountability produced within African American communities disproportionate poverty, fatherlessness, patronizing affirmative action programs, and countless other well meaning measures borne from guilt rather than a sense of principled values such as democracy, hard work, and merit. Of course we see today as much as ever that these policies have failed and racial tensions are again at the forefront of American concerns.
Perhaps my favorite part of the book was a story in which a self-described "architect of the Great Society" confronted Steele after a lecture he gave asking for real equality for the races. The man was visibly irritated and hurt at the suggestion that his liberal programs, though they had largely failed, were a disservice to the African American race. Steele came to realize that the liberal bureaucratic felt unseen, much as Steele feels unseen by the tokenism of programs favoring some races over others borne of a need to dissociate from historic wrongs, but which actually foist harm upon the communities served.
Steele also dishes up some whoop a** on the likes of Maureen Dowd of New York Times fame who illustrated the epitome of white guilt in her screed responding to Justice Thomas's dissent in the Grutter v. Bollinger case written by Justice O'Connor who cobbled together a series of faddish sociology theories to conclude that it is constitutional for a law school (Michigan) to consider race and diversity as a factor in assembling a class. Dowd in essence said Thomas "should be grateful" for his advancement in society because of the programs bestowed magnanimously by [whites]. He goes on to excoriate the tokenism in university departments who increasingly shun excellence in favor of "diversity" even though the result is mediocrity.
As someone who actually lived the black experience, raised in the civil rights era, and who rose the ranks of academia through his own merit, Shelby Steele has a keen perspective on how smug elitism is borne of white guilt. Even the term "black conservative" is used to differentiate through virtue signaling. Just this week several "experts" on white nationalism, all Caucasian, were called before a liberal congress to highlight fears that white supremacy is a threat. Of course this is timed to coincide with yet another presidential election, which is something a "black conservative" woman noted, as she also argued that white supremacy is near the bottom of the list for real live blacks in this country. Of course she drew scorn and derision from her fellow panelists, whose condescension reeked of "racial betters" acting out of the white guilt so beautifully described by this book.
Though written in 2006 White Guilt is refreshingly relevant to this day. Five wholehearted stars!
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