White Guilt

March 6, 2006
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.

April 15, 2006
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 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2006
Steele asserts that the primary focus of the civil-rights era was a legitimate quest to remove racial barriers. In the shift to the black-power era, Steele sees a paradigm shift, away from racial uplift and agency, where blacks assume responsibility for themselves, to a "race is destiny" mode. As the counterculture merged with the civil-rights movement, America was exposed for its racial hypocrisy and, consequently, lost its moral authority. Here, "white guilt" became the moral framework for America. Steele argues that liberal whites embraced guilt for two reasons: to avoid being seen as racists and to embrace a vantage point where they could mete out benefits to disadvantaged blacks through programs such as affirmative action. Steele believes blacks made a deal with the devil by exchanging responsibility and control over their destiny for handouts. He sees a deficiency in black middle-class educational achievement, further raising questions about claims of lack of equal opportunity. Despite these omissions, the cultural analysis of America's loss of moral authority for its exposed racism has resonance today.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)