There will be no end to despair and no lasting solution to any of our problems until we rely on
    individual effort within the American mainstream--rather than collective action against the
    mainstream--as our means of advancement.
        -Shelby Steele, The Content of Our Character

Despite an over reliance on personal anecdote and pop psychology, which mars his book, Shelby Steele offers one really terrific insight, that "...the racial struggle in America has always been primarily a struggle for innocence" and therefore :

    Guilt is the essence of white anxiety just as inferiority is the essence of black anxiety.

This perception yields an invaluable analytical tool for examining race relations : always look to see who has cloaked themselves in the mantle of innocence.

The great strides in civil rights came when the peaceful demonstrations of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. were met with violence and even murder.  Clearly whites had much to feel guilty about and blacks properly felt aggrieved, therefore programs were passed.  But then came the riots, some triggered by the assassination of King, and white guilt was replaced by white fear.  Then came the confrontation over use of affirmative action programs and whites, the overwhelming majority of whom had played no part in the oppression of blacks, were able to reclaim title to innocence.  Since then, relations between the races have become much more problematic, with temporary flare ups of white guilt, justified or not, after episodes like the Rodney King beating and the Mark Fuhrman revelations, quickly replaced by white outrage after the King riots and the OJ verdict.  The general trend though is towards a relative lack of guilt, even a lack of sympathy, on the part of whites for the black predicament.  This trend really came to a head in the fight over Welfare Reform, passage of which (with some Democrat support no less) would have been unthinkable just twenty years earlier.

The problem for blacks, as Steele points out, is that blacks have not abandoned the victims role.  "Leaders" like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton continue to make claims for special treatment solely on the basis of skin color and historic bad treatment.  But their claims fall on increasingly deaf ears and unfortunately serve to foster a corrosive atmosphere of black dependence on white largesse.  Helpless victimhood might have some value, though it seems unlikely, if it was still at least winning financial and political concessions from the white majority, but to continue in this beggarly posture even after the spigot has been turned off can not be doing the black community any good.

One interesting newer issue to apply Steele's insight to is the movement for Reparations--compensation to blacks for the economic costs of slavery.  I've stated previously that one reason the idea is worth exploring is because it might help to permanently dispose of this innocence/guilt idea.  A massive cash settlement would in all likelihood both assuage white guilt and buy off black victimhood.  This transaction, no matter what kind of high toned language the actual process was dressed up in, would be exactly as crass, self-serving and distasteful as it sounds here, essentially allowing white America to repurchase the moral high ground for the modern equivalent of forty acres and a mule.  At any rate, you can see how Shelby Steele's way of looking at our racial divide helps to illuminate such an issue and strips away the noble facade to reveal the rather tawdry psychological moorings which really underpin it.  His book is worthwhile for this contribution alone.

(Reviewed:06-Dec-00)

Grade: (C+) Orrin C. Judd

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