Speaking the language of moralism, individual freedom and responsibility, contrarian cultural critic Steele builds on ideas he earlier articulated in his National Book Critics Circle Award-winner The Content of Our Character (1990). Today's problem, Steele forcefully argues, is not black oppression, but white guilt, a loose term that encompasses both an attempt by whites to regain the moral authority they lost after the Civil Rights Movement, and black contempt toward "Uncle Tom" complicity with white hegemony, resulting in a shirking of personal accountability. Steele makes a passionate case against the "Faustian bargain" he perceives on the left: "we'll throw you a bone like affirmative action if you'll just let us reduce you to your race so we can take moral authority for `helping' you." But progressive readers will object to his assertion that systemic racism is a thing of the past-and to his praise of the Bush administration's philosophy on poverty, education and race. Though Steele takes a hard, critical look at affirmative action, self-serving white liberals and self-victimizing black leaders, he stops short of offering real-world solutions. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Prize-winning author Steele (research fellow, Hoover Inst., Stanford Univ.; A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America) mixes reminiscences with observations on race relations since the 1950s to argue that America has tragically veered from a quest for civil rights to the defining of blacks as victims, an approach that does not treat them as equals. The United States, he says, has abandoned the moral authority that had cast the faulty ideological truth of white supremacy with that of legal racial segregation as disgraceful conditions both at home and abroad. A failure to face redistributed responsibilities has reenslaved blacks and the nation in manipulated political identities lacking any authority, Steele argues. White guilt, white blindness, black self-destruction, and dissociation have eroded the moral authority at America's core. Consequently, minorities have fallen into a vacuum as social morality battles to reestablish its ascendancy in a deepening culture war. As a means of reimagining black-white relations, collections on contemporary U.S. society or race relations may find Steele's essay on personal and national moral evolution a thought-provoking contrast to Manning Marable's recommended Living Black History. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 1/06.]-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
African-American conservative Steele (A Dream Deferred, 1998, etc.) charges guilty white liberals and their black enablers with unleashing a moral relativism that is corrupting America. The author frames his book around a drive up the California coast during which he pondered the Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky affair. Why is it, he asks himself, that President Eisenhower would have been drummed out of office for a sex scandal like Clinton's, while Clinton would certainly have been impeached if he had used the racial slur Eisenhower allegedly employed on the golf course? The answer, Steele asserts, is a fundamental change in American culture. The success of the civil-rights movement in the 1960s showed that America's power structure lacked moral authority. For white Americans, the only way to regain that authority has been to "disassociate" from racism, which Steele says is now more frowned upon than adultery. The result has whites straining to appear benevolent toward blacks, while African-American leaders take advantage of "white guilt" to gain handouts such as affirmative action. Steele, who made the same points in his National Book Critics Circle award-winner The Content of Our Character (1990), contends that white liberals see blacks for their skin color instead of their individuality. ("Most of today's conservatives," he contends, "sound like Martin Luther King in 1963.") Black leaders, on the other hand, fail to call upon African-Americans to exercise personal responsibility. Steele has some noteworthy insights into the ways blacks and whites relate, but his arguments suffer from his tendency to establish and then gleefully demolish straw men and from his sweeping generalizationsbased on personal experiences. Steele claims, for example, that the racial discrimination he encountered as a child did little to harm his self-image and then applies his experience to all blacks. This is the same form of argument he finds offensive in others. Aims to provoke, but will appeal mainly to those already in the choir.
“For those who do not already know, this elegant essay will show why Shelby Steele is America’s clearest thinker about America’s most difficult problem. Braiding family memories with an acute understanding of national policies, he demonstrates what went wrong when whites for their reasons, and blacks for theirs, embraced the idea that white guilt explains blacks’ problems and can be the basis of policies for ameliorating them.” — Newsweek
“With his characteristic honesty, clarity and hard-won wisdom, Shelby Steele exposes the social hypocrisies and racial lies that transformed the once promising post-civil rights era into a period of cultural decadence and mediocrity. We owe Citizen Steele our thanks. On questions of race in America—white guilt, black opportunism—he is our twenty-first century Socrates: the powerful, lucid and elegant voice of a refreshingly independent thinker who desires only to see us liberated from sophistry and self-destructive illusions.” — Charles Johnson, author of MIDDLE PASSAGE, National Book Award winner
“There is no writer who deserves black America’s allegiance more than Shelby Steele... Steele’s writing is a marvel.” — John McWhorter, National Review
“Breathtakingly insightful . . . Anyone concerned with the endless standoff that is black-white relations in this country has a duty to read Shelby Steele’s brief, brilliant new book, White Guilt.” — Chicago Sun-Times
“Prophet or polemicist, Steele is a graceful and often compelling literary stylist . . . The effect is not unlike some of Ralph Ellison’s or Richard Wright’s best work. White Guilt, a serious meditation on vital issues, deserves a wide readership.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Piercing and personal... White Guilt is a brilliant little essay, deserving of a large and appreciative audience.” — Washington Times
“As delightful a read as one can find on a book devoted to America’s historically most contentious topic. It is a true gift to find a work that combines a light tone and sharp anecdotes to make the reader repeatedly say, ‘Of course!’” — New York Post
“Thought provoking.” — Library Journal
“Steele has given eloquent voice to painful truths that are almost always left unspoken in the nation’s circumscribed public discourse on race.” — New York Times
“A hard, critical look at affirmative action, self-serving white liberals and self-victimizing black leaders.” — Publishers Weekly
“Psychologically brilliant. . . . An autobiographical meditation on why a significant portion of the black population hasn’t been able to take advantage of the freedoms that belatedly came to it.” — New York Sun
“The cultural analysis of America’s loss of moral authority for its exposed racism has resonance today.” — Booklist
“This is an essay. . . but it is no less valuable for that. . . . The struggle is far from resolved. And, as it continues, we are lucky to have Shelby Steele in it.” — Weekly Standard
With his characteristic honesty, clarity and hard-won wisdom, Shelby Steele exposes the social hypocrisies and racial lies that transformed the once promising post-civil rights era into a period of cultural decadence and mediocrity. We owe Citizen Steele our thanks. On questions of race in America—white guilt, black opportunism—he is our twenty-first century Socrates: the powerful, lucid and elegant voice of a refreshingly independent thinker who desires only to see us liberated from sophistry and self-destructive illusions.
For those who do not already know, this elegant essay will show why Shelby Steele is America’s clearest thinker about America’s most difficult problem. Braiding family memories with an acute understanding of national policies, he demonstrates what went wrong when whites for their reasons, and blacks for theirs, embraced the idea that white guilt explains blacks’ problems and can be the basis of policies for ameliorating them.
There is no writer who deserves black America’s allegiance more than Shelby Steele... Steele’s writing is a marvel.
Piercing and personal... White Guilt is a brilliant little essay, deserving of a large and appreciative audience.
As delightful a read as one can find on a book devoted to America’s historically most contentious topic. It is a true gift to find a work that combines a light tone and sharp anecdotes to make the reader repeatedly say, ‘Of course!’
Prophet or polemicist, Steele is a graceful and often compelling literary stylist . . . The effect is not unlike some of Ralph Ellison’s or Richard Wright’s best work. White Guilt, a serious meditation on vital issues, deserves a wide readership.
Steele has given eloquent voice to painful truths that are almost always left unspoken in the nation’s circumscribed public discourse on race.
Breathtakingly insightful . . . Anyone concerned with the endless standoff that is black-white relations in this country has a duty to read Shelby Steele’s brief, brilliant new book, White Guilt.
For those who do not already know, this elegant essay will show why Shelby Steele is America’s clearest thinker about America’s most difficult problem. Braiding family memories with an acute understanding of national policies, he demonstrates what went wrong when whites for their reasons, and blacks for theirs, embraced the idea that white guilt explains blacks’ problems and can be the basis of policies for ameliorating them.
As delightful a read as one can find on a book devoted to America’s historically most contentious topic. It is a true gift to find a work that combines a light tone and sharp anecdotes to make the reader repeatedly say, ‘Of course!’
The cultural analysis of America’s loss of moral authority for its exposed racism has resonance today.
This is an essay. . . but it is no less valuable for that. . . . The struggle is far from resolved. And, as it continues, we are lucky to have Shelby Steele in it.
Psychologically brilliant. . . . An autobiographical meditation on why a significant portion of the black population hasn’t been able to take advantage of the freedoms that belatedly came to it.
The cultural analysis of America’s loss of moral authority for its exposed racism has resonance today.
Breathtakingly insightful . . . Anyone concerned with the endless standoff that is black-white relations in this country has a duty to read Shelby Steele’s brief, brilliant new book, White Guilt.
Shelby Steele is America’s clearest thinker about America’s most difficult problem.
