More white guilt?
JC
I hadn’t heard of Shelby Steele’s new book, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era, but caught a review at The American Daily. The reviewer’s tone is a little scary, but then again, The American Daily is a conservative publication (always good to be familiar with the other side, I say! ;)).
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.
I’m sorry, but I can’t agree that whites are stigmatized as a whole regardless of what they do or say. That comment is so indicative of the victim mentality that Carmen and I have heard time and time again — it seems like a real backlash to all of the conversation around race and diversity, where [some] whites are basically saying, “Well look at us, we are blamed for everything. Feel bad for us.” Well, I am not prepared to feel bad for whites for their guilt, and I am also not willing to *make* anyone feel guilty — those discriminated against (POCs, women, GLBT folks, those on the lower rungs of the social-class, immigrants to the US, etc etc etc) need to realize that the situation is more complicated than merely blaming “the man.”
More after the jump…
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.
Sad that “genuflecting” to diversity is seen as a necessary…which implies that it’s not really that important or valuable — just that you *have* to, lest people call you racist and wonder about you. :(
There is one statement that I completely agree with though, and it is that white identity is usually one that apologizes for white supremacy (if it apologizes at all), and that there isn’t much beyond that. Sure, that is a problem. But the answer is not in reviving white pride — whatever that is. I think that shifting the conversation — again, from blaming whites for everything to actually understanding why we have the dynamics we have today and really having people own up to their own beliefs and biases — that is what is going to improve things for us. I can’t tell you how many conversations I have been in where whites are on the defensive and people of color, offense. We continually fall into these roles because it is all we know.
There are so many reasons why we have to stop this cycle. The most important one being — it doesn’t get us anywhere! :| Also, talking in such black and white, cut and dry terms just doesn’t do it. It’s more complicated than saying whites are privileged, everyone else is not. Check out Addicted to Race’s interview in Episode 18 with Alice Sandosharaj. She explores the idea of cultural capital, and how privilege is more complex than “just a white thing.” Let’s get more complicated people….I for one, am tired of hearing about the man and how guilty people feel about racism. :|
eric daniels wrote:
Shelby Steele has been running that same game for the past 20 years, That white guilt gave rise to Black Power and we took advantage of it and became victims. Steele asserts if we followed Dr. King’s vison and asked for nothing but fairness we would be beter off, Steele’s rants remind me of Defense Attroney blaming the victim instead of the accused for the crime.
Steel is no tool of the right wing he REALLY belives that Black Americans should suffer in silence with no type of social uplift by goverment whatsoever and anyone who challenges his assertion is holding Black People back, he like many Black Conservatives first blamed Black folks our failures, now they blame White Liberals for giving us..
1. Affrimitive Action
2. Welfare
3. Head Start
4. Civil Rights
5. Breakdown of the Black Family
And with Bill Cosby’s (HE SPOKE TO STEELE RECNTLY) rants that White Liberals are the reason that we have gone astray , It couldn’t have been the results of past policies in this society that were legally enforced in many ways in this country until 1964 (or whenever your town decided to act right) Steele and his black conservative brethen treat Black Americans like children who can’t think for themselves or have any moral compass so in many ways they are as bad as the so- called white liberals they criticize.
Posted 06 Jul 2006 at 12:36 pm ¶
mtevc wrote:
people want to say that black folk should be a-ok now since emancipation was oh so long ago…but as our friend above points out, black people weren’t really emanicipated until we got the right to vote…
Posted 06 Jul 2006 at 11:02 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
mtevc: And don’t forget that having the right ON PAPER doesn’t mean that people could actually vote, or for that matter run for office or vote for people in office who represented their needs and interests.
There are still disenfranchised voters out there, and have been forever. Usually the reasons are socioeconomic (the poorest neighborhoods don’t have the same voting equipment/ access to their representatives / political clout/ political awareness/ media outlets as their wealthier neighbors), but in the US, there is Venn diagram where the poorest people are often (but not always) the ethnic minorities, and vice versa.
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 8:23 am ¶
brad wrote:
Yeah, Shelby Steele is just like Dinesh D’Souza, a paid brown faced intellectual who spouts support for racist ideology. Steele advances the theory in his new book that the world has gone downhill since the end of acceptance of white supremacy. The man is a fool. I’m sure all of the people in the Congo who died because of the policies of Belgium’s King Leopold must have felt a great deal of satisfaction that their deaths to enrich Leopold was a good thing for civilzation.
Steele seems to dismiss the simple facts of the Cold War that saw the Soviets and the U.S. fight proxy wars across the globe in Third World Countries. Those wars continued until the downfall of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, Afghanistan was one place where a proxy war took place as was Iraq. The U.S. helped train Osama in Afghanistan and supported Saddam in Iraq’s war against Iran. So, how did those two thing come back to bite us?
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 11:24 am ¶
mtevc wrote:
how do Steele and D’Souza sleep at night…
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 3:05 pm ¶
brad wrote:
mtevc:
I’m sure they both sleep quite well in their million dollar homes with the knowing that the gravy train keeps rolling from their wealthy patrons. Look at Ward Connerly. He his so-called civil rights group was funded by Richard Scaife, GOP billionaire. Like the Cylons, the bad guys have a plan…;-)
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 5:35 pm ¶
mtevc wrote:
ward connelly on the uncle tom gravy train
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 11:38 pm ¶
nonwhiteperson wrote:
It’s not black and white; there were White allies in the Civil Rights Movement and Whites need to hear more about them and minorities buy into their own oppression. In fact, hegemony is the idea that subordinate groups buy into their own oppression:
Theories of hegemony attempt to explain how dominant groups or individuals can maintain their power — the capacity of dominant classes to persuade subordinate ones to accept, adopt and internalize their values and norms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony
A consensus culture developed in which people in the working-class identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Gramsci#Hegemony
Even post-colonialist theorists agree that de-colonized nations benefited in some ways from colonizers, for example, from technological or political advances. There is hybridity in every relationship and give and take.
Shelby Steele is a Black conservative. Notice that he and D’Souza are sponsored by the Hoover Institute and that Malkin and Coulter are not sponsored by any think tanks. The fellows of think tanks are taken more seriously and have more serious effects on society.
Posted 08 Jul 2006 at 2:26 pm ¶
nonwhiteperson wrote:
However, dominant groups or individuals (called “hegemons”) have the most power and responsibility to change the system. Most people are both oppressed and oppressors in different ways.
Posted 08 Jul 2006 at 2:34 pm ¶
eric daniels wrote:
As a White conservative once told me, You can’t very well have a “white boy (his words) agrue against social policies that would benefit that minority
Posted 12 Jul 2006 at 7:19 pm ¶