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Shelby Steele

White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (P.S.) Paperback – May 29, 2007

by Shelby Steele (Author)

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"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

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.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“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)

From the Back Cover

Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.

ASIN : 0060578637
Publisher : Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (May 29, 2007)
Language : English
Paperback : 181 pages
ISBN-10 : 9780060578633
ISBN-13 : 978-0060578633
Item Weight : 6.4 ounces
Dimensions : 8 x 5.32 x 0.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,226 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #18 in Minority Demographic Studies
- #38 in Civil Rights & Liberties (Books)
- #47 in African American Demographic Studies (Books)

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1,963 ratings

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Ed Brodow

Absolutely a knockout!

Reviewed in the United States on August 29, 2018

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I was impressed with Shelby Steele's "A Bound Man," but "White Guilt" really knocked me out. He describes white guilt as a self-serving effort by liberal whites to feel better about themselves, not to atone for a moral crime. Black militancy, he says, is an effort to profit from white guilt—much easier than assuming responsibility. Coming down against "social justice," he regards it as a way of avoiding taking responsibility by depending on the largesse of whites. "And so we became slaves again, our fate the responsibility of others." "The greatest black problem in America today," he argues, "is freedom." I liked his comparing black insufficiency in reading and writing with excellence in sports and entertainment. If the latter works, why can't the former? Steele offers an original take on both the history of race in America and the bifurcation of politics into liberal and conservative camps. He describes the cultural war as a war between the Right—grounded in principle and values—and the Left—focused on dissociation from America's racist past. The American Right is enjoying a political and cultural ascendency, he says, because (1) the Left has "ceded its old territory—compassionate Jeffersonian liberalism—to the right, thereby ceding to it precisely the democratic principles and values of individual freedom and responsibility that have made America a great nation," and (2) "today's right understands that racism, sexism, and reckless militarism are morally wrong." He surprised me by complimenting George W. Bush's reference to the "bigotry of low expectations." Steele says Bush "offered a new theory: dissociation from the racist past through principle and individual responsibility rather than at the expense of these things." Steele became a conservative because liberals asked him to believe in dissociation instead of "demanding principles as the road to black advancement." He dislikes affirmative action because it provides an "incentive for mediocrity and a disincentive for excellence." Favorite quote: "If I've learned anything in all of this, it is that if you want to be free, you have to make yourself that way and pay whatever price the world exacts."

272 people found this helpful

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applewoodTop Contributor: Blues Music

White Guilt Is Still Just Racist Guilt

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2018

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I really enjoyed Shelby Steele's writing - an intelligent, articulate, almost stream of conscious-like rap connecting lots of dots about growing up black in a bigoted racist America which transformed (in the late 60's) into a white guilt (yet still obsessed with race) America. He makes a good case that it was pretty bad back then and that people don't realize how good they have it now, how a black person can go into any eating, drinking, lodging, entertainment or shopping venue they want now - as long as they can afford it, but that this change has come with an unintended price; that this freedom has undermined the once tightknit cultural identity that came by default with being black in America (and so as a result we see the self-segregation and identity politics prevalent today to try and reclaim some of that solidarity). And even more significantly ushered in an era of black cultural decline; the weakening of black individuality and responsibility.

Steele's point is that the 60's (where white supremacy/racism morphed into white guilt and desire to disassociate with the past) was the turning point where blacks were absolved from having the responsibility of trying to keep up with the white norms (which due to their disadvantaged place after slavery was a really high bar to reach). The result was a great slackening in the culture (low expectations and the handicapped participation of affirmative action) - and this slackening has gone on to spread to other cultures in America today (even all the way up to the White House...).

My only complaint is the somewhat broad brush Steele paints with by implying all whites must feel the guilt for America's racist past (being an immigrant myself I know I feel very little guilt for American slavery or the Jim Crow history, and my wife who was born and raised here doesn't feel any guilt...), but the points he makes about the negative effects of this white guilt on ALL Americans is well taken, and makes for an essential contribution to the discussion of race and culture in America.

"....This power to shame, silence, and muscle concessions from the larger society on the basis of past victimization became the new "black power." Then, as this power supported the next generation of civil rights leaders, it evolved into what we call today "the race card." (p. 55)

"When America acknowledged its racism, it effectively made blacks into the nation's official and, seemingly, permanent victims - citizen-victims, as it were, for whom demands of responsibility were verboten lest the larger nation seem to be oppressing them all over again." (p. 55-56)

"Since the sixties, black educational weakness has been treated primarily as a problem of racial injustice rather than as a problem of blacks rejecting or avoiding full responsibility for raising their performance levels. Thus we got remedies pitched at injustices rather than at black academic excellence - school busing, black role models as teachers, black history courses, "diversity" reading lists, "Ebonics", multiculturalism, cultural "inclusive" classes, standardized tests corrected for racial bias, and so on. All this but no demand for parental responsibility, for harder work on reading, writing and arithmetic." (p. 64)

"The greatest black problem in America today is freedom. All underdeveloped, formerly oppressed groups first experience new freedom as a shock and a humiliation because freedom shows them their underdevelopment and their inability to compete as equals. Freedom seems to confirm the ugly stereotypes about that group - especially the charge of inferiority - and yet the group no longer has the excuse of oppression. Without oppression - and it must be acknowledged that blacks are no longer oppressed in America - the group itself becomes automatically responsible for its inferiority and noncompetitiveness. So freedom not only comes as a humiliation but also as an overwhelming burden of responsibility. Thus inevitably there is a retreat from freedom..." (p.67)

"But the death of white authority also meant that something culturally enormous - something that had brought great cohesion and coherence to society - began to go out of the world. If white Western societies were racist and imperialistic, they were also the centers of an indisputably great civilization (one that absorbed contributions from many other races and cultures). But when white supremacy was delegitimized, white did not simply lose the authority to practice racism. The loss of authority generalized well beyond that so that whites also lost a degree of their authority to stand proudly for the values and ideas that made the West a great civilization despite its many evils." (p.108-9)

And finally we come full circle to where white supremecy can reassert itself in the form of a fully dissacociated and purified PC liberalism, as New York Times columist Maureen Dowd displayed in her scathing response to Justice Calrence Thomas' dissent in the University of Michigan affirmative-action case. "Dowd illustrates 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. 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 the agents; blacks are the agented." (p.147-8)

169 people found this helpful

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P.Dizmang

White Guilt

Reviewed in the United States on August 18, 2018

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This was one of the best books I’ve ever read. It helped me understand so much about our country, racism, feminism, sexism. I grew up in the 50s, experienced the 60s. Our country has gone through so many moral changes. I’ve gone
from being raised In a strongly Democratic, Catholic family, leaving my Catholic religion, to re-joining my beloved Catholicism and becoming a new conservative person. I feel the present Republican Party under President Trump is putting me back on track.

155 people found this helpful

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A MUST READ!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reviewed in the United States on November 30, 2017

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This book was a real eye opener for me and helped me understand the current political situation in our country and the reason for the "Big Divide"! I was previously unaware of Shelby Steel and saw him on a TV interview. Now I wish I had discovered him sooner. I plan to get his most recent book. I would also like to extend a thank you to and encourage others to read Thomas Sowell, Jason Reilly and Burgess Owens. They have collectively help me get my head screwed on correctly and provided me with much needed understanding

114 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Veritas

An intelligent discourse about hypocritical white guilt

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 18, 2020

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Shelby Steele is one of those who has done it lived it analysed it and outlined the hypocrisy and damage done by so-called 'liberals' to the black community. He is another Booker T Washington.

3 people found this helpful

Midasin

Perceptive as ever ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 23, 2008

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Clear discernment of a wrong turn taken after the Civil Rights victories of the mid 1960s. See what I mean by reading these quotes:

'Black America faced two options. We could seize on the great freedom we had just won in the civil rights victories and advance through education, skill development, and entrepreneurialism combined with an unbending assault on any continuing discrimination; or we could go after these things indirectly by pressuring the society that had wronged us into taking the lion's share of responsibility in resurrecting us. The new black militancy that exploded everywhere in the late sixties - and that came to define the strategy for black advancement for the next four decades - grew out of black America's complete embrace of the latter option.' (p.58)

'Authentic black militancy, of the sort that Malcolm X at times seemed capable of, always embraced responsibility as power itself. It demanded only the freedom and equal treatment under the law that would allow responsibility to be the same fount of hope, power, and advancement in blacks that it was for others. If Malcolm X railed ferociously against white America, he never called for a redistribution of responsibility for black uplift to whites or American institutions. His was a self-help black militancy that was naturally sceptical about what others would actually do for blacks. You might call it "hard-work" militancy, since it was built around the difficult principles of self-sacrifice, delayed gratification, family unity, individual initiative, entrepreneurialism, and so on. ... . What made this militancy authentic was that it truly sought to restore an oppressed people to human dignity through real development and without an enmeshment with or dependency on the guilt of whites.' (pp.59, 60)

Everyone should read this!

21 people found this helpful

russell bowes

Essential reading for understanding the impact of the Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 12, 2020

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Brilliant book. Even though it was written in the 2000s I felt it could have been written about today. Reading it helped me understand how white liberals and leftists fear of looking racist leads to the "soft bigotry of low expectations". Essential reading.

john p bower

Confirms a lot of what whites think

Reviewed in Canada on January 9, 2021

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A thoughtful discussion of the issues surrounding BLM and similar issues. The truth seems to be that as long as we keep agreeing that (insert your minority here) is being treated unfairly and that if you disagree you are racist (a really quick way to shut down discussion) then nothing much will improve. The minority will become more convinced that they are being mistreated so the cycle continues. As long as we (the silent majority made up of people of all colours, faiths and ethnicities) keep our mouths shut we will continue to be terrorized by BLM, ANTIFA, LGBTQ activists, and so forth to the detriment of all.

One person found this helpful

J B

By far the best book I have read in a long time.

Reviewed in Canada on August 12, 2020

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The depth of thought and connection of ideas is breathtaking. Not only does this book illuminate issues of race, diversity, and culture, it helped me understand the American political and religious landscapes better than I have ever understood them before.

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