White guilt and black shame

The American Enterprise recently interviewed Shelby Steele on the issues of white guilt and black shame. It is a very good interview which highlights the problems with the "guilt" that whites carry and the culture of "demand" among blacks.

Here are some quotes from Steele:

"For every white racist, I've met a black one."

"We won a personal victory [in the civil rights movement], then turned right around and put our future in the hands of the larger society."

"There was a profound amount of guilt {among whites]. We knew that guilt was there, and we had a U.S. President who was reeling backwards, putting the responsibility on whites to make things up to us, promising to end poverty. We bought into that, and it made us weak. We bought into precisely the opposite of what we should have done."

"By accepting the idea that government is somehow going to take over the responsibility that only we can take, we relinquished authority over ourselves."

"And so the goodwill of America finally did do to us what slavery and segregation failed to do. It destroyed our family, destroyed our character, and now black America is in a struggle."

"[Affirmative action] smears every single black person... I think affirmative action is the worst cruelty blacks have endured since slavery."

Rather read the entire interview and see how whites and blacks have been put into little squares meant for round objects!

Thanks to Justin Taylor for bringing this excellent interview to our attention.

Just thinking...