458. White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era

Rating:  ☆☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Scot Reader

Author:   Shelby Steele

Genre:   Non Fiction, History, Politics, Sociology, Public Policy

208 pages, published May 29, 2007

Reading Format:  Book

Summary

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 black Americans.  In this deeply thought analysis and personal recollections, acclaimed scholar Shelby Steele examines how liberal in the United States has undermined the black community by absolving them of personal responsibility thereby debilitating their ability to lift themselves up as equal members of American society.

Quotes 

“It was the first truly profound strategic mistake we made in our long struggle for complete equality. It made us a “contingent people” whose fate depended on what others did for us.”

“Poetic truth—this assertion of a broad characteristic “truth” that invalidates actual truth—is contemporary liberalism’s greatest source of power. It is also liberalism’s most fundamental corruption.”

 

“despite all he had endured as a black in the South in the first half of the twentieth century, he taught the boys that America was rich in opportunities for blacks if they were willing to work.”

 

“One of the delights of Marxian-tinged ideas for the young is the unearned sense of superiority they grant.”

 

My Take

I found White Guilt to be a compelling read, especially in light of the “moment” our country is having with protests and rioting.  Shelby Steele offers a counter narrative to the one projected in the media and advanced by the woke Left, i.e. that America is irredeemably racist and it is impossible for blacks to get ahead in the face of so much discrimination.  Rather than accept this defeatism, Steele posits that the only way forward for black Americans is to embrace a culture of personal responsibility and empowerment.  The guilt of whites has made that harder to achieve as they have low expectations of blacks and seek to make allowances for them that actually serve to depress their initiative.  A “must read” for anyone interested in race relations.