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How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era
HarperCollins
May 2006
192 pages
ISBN: 0060578629
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In 1955 the murderers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi
youth, were acquitted of their crime, undoubtedly because
they were white. Forty years later, O. J. Simpson, whom many
thought would be charged with murder by virtue of the DNA
evidence against him, went free after his attorney portrayed
him as a victim of racism. Clearly, a sea change had taken
place in American culture, but how had it happened? In this
important new work, distinguished race relations scholar
Shelby Steele argues that the age of white supremacy has
given way to an age of white guilt -- and neither has been
good for African Americans. As the civil rights victories of the 1960s dealt a blow to
racial discrimination, American institutions started
acknowledging their injustices, and white Americans -- who
held the power in those institutions -- began to lose their
moral authority. Since then, our governments and
universities, eager to reclaim legitimacy and avoid charges
of racism, have made a show of taking responsibility for the
problems of black Americans. In doing so, Steele asserts,
they have only further exploited blacks, viewing them always
as victims, never as equals. This phenomenon, which he calls
white guilt, is a way for whites to keep up appearances, to
feel righteous, and to acquire an easy moral authority --
all without addressing the real underlying problems of
African Americans. Steele argues that calls for diversity
and programs of affirmative action serve only to stigmatize
minorities, portraying them not as capable individuals but
as people defined by their membership in a group for which
exceptions must be made. Through his articulate analysis and engrossing recollections
of the last half-century of American race relations, Steele
calls for a new culture of personal responsibility, a
commitment to principles that can fill the moral void
created by white guilt. White leaders must stop using
minorities as a means to establish their moral authority --
and black leaders must stop indulging them. As White Guilt
eloquently concludes, the alternative is a dangerous ethical
relativism that extends beyond race relations into all parts
of American life.
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