Race and Shelby Steele
I found this great article in LaShawn Barber’s Corner. The American Enterprise Institute interviewed renowned author and social commentator Shelby Steele. In this interview Shelby discusses race in America. The entire piece is worth taking time to read and can be found here. There was one part of the interview in particular that caught my attention and that is because of Shelby’s views on Affirmative Action which mirror mine. I have long held the view that affirmative action hurts blacks. Whenever we try to help anybody because of guilt, we end up screwing them up. If you want an example, look at what we did to the Indians: fifty percent unemployment, rampant alcoholism, and unending despair. Anyway read what Shelby Steele has to say about affirmative action.
TAE: You say that as long as we have affirmative action, blacks will never be able to take full credit for their own advancement.
STEELE: Absolutely. It smears every single black person.
Look at me, for example. My enemies say my career would have gone nowhere without affirmative action. I don’t think that’s true, but because there is affirmative action, they can say that. There are no blacks who are free from that stigma, and that’s a terrible thing to do to people who are trying to succeed on their own. I think affirmative action is the worst cruelty blacks have endured since slavery.
At that point, blacks made the worst mistake in our history: putting our faith in the hands of outside saviors. The idea that somebody else can lift you up, can teach you skills, and make you competitive is just ridiculous. That sort of abject dependence has never worked, and it never will.
Blacks do well in sports, music, entertainment, and literature—because there’s absolutely no white intervention, paternalism, affirmative action, or anything else. We’re asked to compete without any assistance, and sure enough, we compete. We succeed. In these areas, whites never intervene, so we ask the best and we get the best. But in colleges and other places, there are a billion excuses. Whites intervene and convince themselves not to ask much of us. It’s the same old vicious cycle.
Not much else to say.
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