Posted on 11/08/2017 4:31:05 AM PST by RoosterRedux
“We like to say that the real black is the black on the street corner doing drugs, selling drugs and shooting each other,” Steele said. “We don’t question their blackness, but we question the blackness of those who climb out of those situations, who join the American mainstream, who become successful.”
Modern liberalism, he continued, rewards failure and breeds bad faith in people and in America. The more inferior a black person is, he said, the more “black” that person is considered. This cultural dynamic encourages a sense of helplessness, and the helpless like to be surrounded by others who are helpless, he said.
Despite this, Steele contends that he maintains “good faith” in America, and though he was not born free, he considers himself absolutely free today.
“The breaking news here is precisely that, that our oppression is over,” he said. “It’s just over. We can’t organize ourselves any longer fighting against a society that doesn’t want us to be free. Society today wants us to be free. Maybe they love us, maybe they don’t, but they want us to be free, and that is a revolutionary change, a transformation probably only possible in the United States, but we are now free. The problem that we have as blacks, as minorities, is what I call the shock of freedom.”
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
How old is this guy??
“The problem that we have as blacks, as minorities, is what I call the shock of freedom.”
It’s been over 150 years. The shock ought to be wearing off by now.
Shelby Steele Claims That African-American ‘Oppression is Over’
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That’s good, because I’m really sick of being oppressed by the African-Americans.
Heap him in with the others like Mychal Massie, Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Star Parker etc. According to the lib masters, these types of people are just licking the white mans boots. Glad he realized who’s at fault finally.
When the Civil Rights legislation was passed, the last de jure oppression ended. Some blacks took advantage of the new freedom, got educated, got jobs, got married, stayed married and succeeded. Some blacks decided that the above behavior required to be long-term successful was "acting white", and brewed their own "American black culture". That became the "new slavery".
Yes, the above was exacerbated by well-meaning "welfare legislation", but in the final analysis, the choice was theirs.
Shelby had his 70th a few years ago.
The interesting but rarely reported part of his life is that during college and for years after, he was a “self-deluding Black Radical.”
Then he “woke-up and saw the light”, and became a conservative. His Ph D. is in English Lit and he is a retired college professor.
If one black student tells another he is acting white, because the second black student strives for good grades in school, is that not the racism of ‘holding-my-brother-back’?
Shelby Steele is old enough (71) to have grown up with and experienced customary and enforced discrimination against blacks and the civil rights tumult of the sixties as a young man. With genuine insight, Steele has focused on the no longer justified sense of victimization among blacks as fostering a disabling sense of helplessness and resentment against whites. He refers to himself as a “black conservative” and opposes affirmative action.
It will never be over. Leaders and intellectualism the Black community have embraced the Bell Curve and accepted as fact that Blacks as a whole are always going to be at a huge disadvantage.
Look at some of the comments Eric Holder and others have made about “their people” and how he plans to take care of them.
Fake claims of racism and oppression are the tools the Black leadership uses to provide the fake cover of moral authority for their plans for a government enforced, non merit based racial preference system in society.
Ping.
This person seems to equate “oppression’ with all the welfare they all get.
I will happily support any & all efforts to remove welfare from every single black in this country.
I know.
And I know that Shelby Steele is one of the Good Guys. He gets it.
But the article says he was not "born free" and this bothers me. A lot. Over half a million Americans were casualties in a huge war that freed the slaves over 150 years ago.
Shelby Steele was born free. There may be other things to talks about ("I remember segregated drinking fountains ...") but it bothers me when someone says "I was not born free". This is America. You were born free. You have a responsibility to make something of yourself. Shelby Steele has made something of himself. But a lot of others have not -- because "the Man" is keeping them down. It's a stupid way of thinking.
I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.
Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.
But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.
And so on . . . For Steele, whose parents met while working for CORE, these words must have a force and veracity near that of holy writ. And, to be fair, the truth of King's premise cannot be denied, that black Americans were denied their rightful full measure of freedom until they won the balance through the civil rights movement and its triumph in the 1960s.
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