When aggression meets submission the result is slaughter. A review of Shelby Steele's White Guilt.
White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
by Shelby Steele
HarperCollins (May 2, 2006)
Hdbk., 192 pgs.
ISBN: 0060578620
Just recently, after declining a funding request from one of Chicago’s numerous beggars, I heard a most peculiar thing. The man yelled at me as I walked away: “I’m sorry I’m not white.” At first I assumed he was talking to someone else; then I saw that he wasn’t. His tactic must have been an attempt to shame pedestrians into giving him more change. Presumably, as the man did not look like a novice to this ancient profession, it must be a strategy that, with the exception of this occasion, works, which tells us quite a bit about the psyche of Caucasian Americans.
Shelby Steele, in his new book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, expounds upon the mindset of both groups while exploring our nation’s obsession with race. He outlines the interplay between white guilt and black power along with the pernicious effects this dynamic has upon both populations. The author grew up in a time when discrimination was not a shadowy thing. He witnessed it firsthand at baseball practice, and in his father’s having to deal with the customs of the southern towns they’d visit.
As Steele came of age, he was directly affected by the monsoon of changes altering America. Right before his senior year in college, Steele heard comedian Dick Gregory give a speech equating those blacks known as “good men” — or those who worked hard and were responsible — as being Uncle Toms. Their devotion and diligence was the yoke which bonded the black man to his oppressors. Therefore, to defy societal expectations was the road to individual freedom. Steele was powerfully impressed with this analysis and acquired a sense of freeform rebellion. He quit his high paying summer position, even though it was the best job he ever had, and vowed to no longer be a good man like his father. His self-sabotage amounted to a rejection of white authority. Luckily, his rebellion did not last long. Time, along with his stint as an employee of the welfare state, changed his views and allowed him to become the scholar who penned this excellent book.
Throughout the text, Steele combines remembrance with observation as a means to elucidate interracial relations. He defines white guilt as being a complete vacuum of moral authority wherein a stigma is cast upon an entire group of people regardless of what they do or say. In the 1960s, it flourished in whites due to the very real historical wrongs of segregation and slavery. By the end of that decade, due to the growing passivity of whites, the black leadership no longer echoed Dr. King. They became radicalized, and there was no shortage of white politicians, intellectuals, and glitterati (recall Leonard Bernstein) ready to sprawl before their collective feet and regain their moral goodness. For many Caucasians, irrational hate for your own race and your ancestors has now become a mechanism for self-esteem and purity.
When aggression meets submission the result is slaughter, and that’s exactly what has happened to the pride of white America over the course of the last four decades. Rage has become the preferred weapon for obtaining concessions from white politicians, and shame prevents rational minds from protesting these tactics. Steele compares the state of many whites to that of Kafka’s main character in The Trial, who is guilty of a crime solely because he has been accused. Black activists insisted that acquiring skills and education alone are not acceptable solutions; our government must actively raise them up. This demand is a reason why so many ashen faced elites embrace “diversity” and affirmative action. It allows them to acquire power while amassing feelings of personal superiority. Even corporations have gotten into the game:
Yet to gain employment today in most American institutions whites must somehow pledge allegiance to “diversity” as if to demonstrate a white identity of contrition and deference. Even in the corporate and military worlds — not to mention academia — no white goes far without genuflecting to diversity. Nevertheless, beyond an identity that apologizes for white supremacy, absolutely no white identity is permissible.
The government internalized the stigma and dishonor of the majority population, and flooded black neighborhoods with lakes of redemptive spending. That the programs and grants issued were ineffective, or even made things worse, was largely irrelevant as the actions were designed to restore feelings of righteousness in politicians and their appointees. They became part of the solution and those of us who questioned their counter-productive, and steroidal, inflation of government were dismissed as being racist (and still are today).
To procure power, and as a way to impress upon others their own moral superiority, many whites pretend that history never happened and claim that without their noblesse oblige blacks would descend into the abyss. Steele accurately observes that their attitude is merely just a new form of white supremacy as it renders whites wholly responsible for the failures and successes of those they see as being below them. It suggests that blacks cannot possibly fend for themselves.
Due to our country’s remarkable ascent from the nadirs of slavery and segregation, the devotees of white guilt have had to fabricate concepts like institutional racism and white privilege. Without them, they could not continue to proclaim that the most fair and prosperous nation on the planet is actually a Death Star of hate and injustice. Apparently, racism is so entrenched in our culture…that one cannot even see it.
In the opinion of this reviewer, what keeps racial tensions high in America are intra-race conflicts as opposed to the interracial ones. Most likely, if one group of Caucasians discontinued the practice of systematically defaming all other Caucasians, then the strains among us would diminish. The alchemizing of racism from discussions concerning taxation and personal choice does little more than poison our air. When blacks are free from the conspiracy theories and psychologizing of a power-obsessed white elite, we will all get along much better.
White guilt is a phenomenon that contaminates all who come into contact with it. As Steele notes, it has delegitimized the national virtues of industry, initiative, individual responsibility, the delay of gratification, and the need for meritocracy. When one embraces these quintessential values, one does not “act white” or “work for the man,” one betters oneself and the people around you.
Ultimately, the best practice for individuals is to treat others as your equals. Modifying your speech and pretending strangers are sensitive to your every syllable is just absurd. The solution to racial problems is not to kow-tow to certain groups and apologize for crimes you never personally committed; instead, we should simply treat other people with respect no matter where they lie on the diversity flowchart. Skin color has nothing to do with personality or worth. Just as one can be certain that segregation and slavery occurred, one can also be certain that the Lester Maddoxes, Orval Faubuses, and Theodore Bilbos are long dead and will never rise again. It is now an excellent time to bury white guilt along with them.
The only thing owed to reparation-seeking Blacks is a one-way ticket to Africa.
I found this site from searching the Net for discussions of Steele’s White Guilt. What most struck me about the review is this:”In the opinion of this reviewer, what keeps racial tensions high in America are intra-race conflicts as opposed to the interracial ones. Most likely, if one group of Caucasians discontinued the practice of systematically defaming all other Caucasians, then the strains among us would diminish.”
That is my view, one I have discussed and proffered for years. The group in question is the one we have come to know as WASP, particularly when that is understood to demarcate the Elite Anglophile Protestants of tyhe northeast. Ethnic purity is not required, certainly for Germans who are double first cousins to Anglo-Saxons anyway, but even for the Irish, the group that WASPs historically have seen as the most inferior ‘race.’ Ted Kennedy is aperfect example of even the despised Irish being accepted fully into the WASP inner circle and serving its interests and prejudices. Those who are assimilated to WASP culture will think and act in accordance with WASP values and goals, which feature a decided contempt for almost all other white people. In its cultrual war against other white groups, WASP culture is all too happy to use black people as pawns and as weapons.
Steele’s quote, “Yet to gain employment today in most American institutions whites must somehow pledge allegiance to “diversity” as if to demonstrate a white identity of contrition and deference. Even in the corporate and military worlds — not to mention academia — no white goes far without genuflecting to diversity. Nevertheless, beyond an identity that apologizes for white supremacy, absolutely no white identity is permissible,” shows the result of that process. That is what underlies all left of center opposition to the Celtic-Southern thesis, which opposition is invariably little more than an endlessly repeated charge that it is racism to allow white Southerners to have any ethnic-cultural identity that is European and not WASP. My book How Celtic Culture Invented Southern Literature is certain to be hated and feared and smeared by leftist academics and journalists for that reason.
Well you pay for it, I owe blacks nothing.
No one should mistake Steele for a conservative after reading this work. While it has good explanation of how a movement working to assure all Americans their rights under the law was subverted into an ethnic special interest movement to promote socialism, the reader must subject himself to the all-too-common lies and moral relativism that inform the contemporary civil rights movement. The reader should not expect any apologies for the movement’s worst excesses–the tyranny of taxation without representation (Missouri v. Jenkins) and Communists (W.E.B. DuBois and Paul Robeson) on our pastage stamps, either.
Indeed, Steele practices the white guilt-black power game even as he denounces it. His most offensive argument is that American blacks gained the “moral authority” to reject traditional American values by supporting the Communist victory in Indochina, which led to mass murder and genocide in the socialist revolutions imposed on those unfortunate lands when the Communists won. Any person with even a shred of decency would find association with these horrors as irrevocably stripping its proponents of any moral authority whatsoever. Given the rejection of traditional American values, it is small wonder that blacks, who comprise 12% of America’s population, commit 50% of its murders.
Steele even claims that the sole reason for anti-black sentiment in this country is the skin color, a lie to conceal the real reason: the failure of blacks to accept American values, as suggested by the leftist authors Francis D. Adams and Barry Sanders in “Alienable Rights.” Absent in all this is the Christian concept of forgiveness after sincere repentance–since white guilt is a source of power, forgiveness is unlikely to be forthcoming despite the fact that most of the black leadership claim to be Christian clergy.
Since the practicioners of white guilt see the destruction of traditional American values as a good thing, they have no incentive to bring this corrupt practice to a halt. Unfortunately, none of our elected officials have the moral courage to stop it, either.
W. Pride I think you might be on the wrong website. This is intellectualconservative.com, not ignorantracist.com.
I am a Southerner and Confederate. You sir are a disgrace. You are obviously unaware of the 64,000 blacks who fought for the Confederacy. And you for sure do not know of the Mexican “Confedrados” who served in the Confederate regiments from Texas. Nathan Bedford Forrest, founder of the Ku Klux Klan disassociated himself from the KKK when they began to terrorise blacks. He was a guest speaker at a Memphis gathering of black Confederate veterans in 1877(?).
BTW I’ve seen your post referring to Jesus on another article. If you actually believed in Him you would at least change your posting name because “pride” is a sin. It was Adam and Eve’s downfall. Maybe you better take a long look in the mirror.
I agree that saying “white pride” is racist but it shows the glaring double standard. When one says black pride or asian pride they are simply proud of their heritage. What is this trash? It is disgusting. I agree with Mr. Woodford that the problem that some blacks have is their inablility to accept American values. The liberal hacks say that we need to accept their culture and embrace them. Well okay, but why can they nnot embrace our culture. I am also disgusted when they use the race card for anything. While applying for various colleges I found myself wishing I was some kind of ethnic minority so I could pay less for my tuition. Racism against the “white man” and white guilt have been institutionalized. The principles of affirmative action are equally as bad as those on which the Jim Crow laws were built. Martin Luther King said he had a dream that one day we would not be judged by the color of our skin but the content of our character. It is time that we finally wake up and make Dr. King’s dream a reality.
Josh,
I don’t understand. On the one hand, you recognize the double standard that keeps white people from saying “white pride” but permits blacks and Asians to profess their own ethnic pride, but on the other hand, you say that saying “white pride” is racist! How can you lament a double standard while perpetuating it?
I’m white and I’m proud to be white, for the simple reason that it is the most natural, healthy thing in the world to be proud of one’s own people. This doesn’t keep me from recognizing the humanity of non-whites, any more than my being happy to be a man keeps me from recognizing the humanity or the special qualities of women.
So many white conservatives these days want blacks, Asians and Latinos to follow our lead and shed their ethinc pride/identities. God forbid! The last thing this country needs is for its minority population to become as self-loathing and lobotomized as its white population. (I think I just threw up a little in my mouth just thinking about it.)
Fortunately, it isn’t going to happen, because minorities rightfully ignore political correctness, which they correctly perceive as a form of white-on-white crime. The downside to this is that they, in their pride, are going to continue to walk all over white people until we come up with a pride to match theirs.
In other words, the only way out of this mess is for white people to stand up for themselves as white people and demand respect. Asking blacks and Latinos to give up their ethnic pride is like asking a sane man to chop off his own hand.
Great comic relief! Thanks!
Both the book and the review are still beholden to White guilt.
I would first like to comment on the artice written by Bernard Chapin, (White guilt) white guilt is merely a reaction of accusation, of wrongs they don’t even know how and why they committed it, i am a black south african, the issue of slavery, racism and morden day slavery(is institutional bondage) which is undetected oppression, is not a political problem, nor social problem, but rather a philosophical problem, racism and oppression streams from the person unconscious mindset or rather reasoning.
America is not dealing with their issues of race properly, one oneside with african-Americans furious at their oppressor (racially and institutionally) and with whites ignorant of how their thoght process does not accommodate or rather allow minority growth, minorities to not want to be fitted into to a system that will recognise them provided the adopt the atributes of the dominant race, affirmative action does not even begin to address that issue, each culture is unique on its own white dominance is cause by the insecurity or rather complex that white have which Laplanche calls cognitive disfunction, that uncosciously motivates them to want to rise above the rest.
So the article by Mr Chaplin is premature scholaship of racial understanding of what is really happening in his own nation, the U.S.A
And it just proves to me as a student that America is far from being as smart as they think they are if they can’t solve such simple issues.
Thank You
M.N