White Guilt: by Shelby Steele

In today's politically correct world where no one is blamed for their own circumstances, Shelby Steele takes on many unpopular views concerning today's society in his book White Guilt (HarperCollins, 2006). He offers solid reasoning and enlightenment for both his liberal critics and conservative followers.

The fact that Steele was a child in pre-civil rights America and participated firsthand as a college student in the "black pride" movement lends credibility to his arguments. He claims that because of the blame and outrage white America faced in the wake of the Civil Rights era caused them to give up any "moral authority" and instead replace it with a stance of "white guilt."

He recalls that in his college days he was expected to know what was up to date with the Black Panthers and the black pride movement. He was expected to agree with it all and as one of the few black students to be the face of the movement on campus. For a long time Steele did what was expected, until he realized that he had lost his individual identity and it was replaced with just his race.

He asserts that the promise of an equal playing field created by his parents' generation and the civil rights era was destroyed by the next generation's victimization of minority races. It was thought that because minorities had been held down for so long by the white race that it would be impossible to expect them now to compete fairly, something that Steele's parents' generation believed they could do.

Thus to "level the field," programs such as affirmative action and social welfare were created. Steele worked for a time in one of these programs and saw firsthand that throwing money at the problem and lowering the standards did nothing to help the "victimized" minorities.

He uses the example of a young black boy on a basketball court, if he cannot dribble well the other children aren't going to make concessions for him and lower their standards. He must work hard on his own to better himself and in the end when he becomes great he will have only himself to thank and the satisfaction will be worth it. On the other hand if you take the same boy and put him in a school where he has a tough time reading, money and tutors will be thrown at him and standards will be lowered to make him feel better about himself. Steele believes that on any day the boy would rather be on the basketball court than in the classroom where he'll never be good enough to make it on his own.

Steele also asserts that "white guilt" comes simply from white America's fear of being associated with white supremacy or slavery in any way. As Steele sees it, white guilt takes the responsibility of being successful away from minorities which in turn causes many people to stop trying to better themselves. This is the downfall of many social programs because once they are gone, the people they were helping no longer know how to take responsibility for themselves and ultimately fall to the state they were in before the program.

Although Shelby Steele may hold some uncommon and sometimes unpopular ideas about poverty and race, by telling the stories of his personal experience he ties together his ideas and makes it clear how he came to his conclusions. He offers many convincing arguments from someone on the other side about today's issues that are difficult for even the most "educated" liberal to prove wrong.