| This thread has been locked, it will not receive new replies. |
| Locked on 11/08/2017 7:43:25 AM PST by Sidebar Moderator, reason: |
Posted on 11/08/2017 4:44:48 AM PST by Strac6
WASHINGTON -- African-American writer and social critic Shelby Steele argued on Thursday that black oppression is over in the U.S., while calling on blacks to stop blaming racism for their own inability to harness freedom.
In a pointed speech at the Heritage Foundation, Stanford University Hoover Institution senior fellow Steele also described the Black Lives Matter movement as “a comfort zone where people land because they are afraid of freedom.”
“Liberalism, I think, has effectively become the new racism,” Steele said. “It mimics segregation by seeing blacks as helpless inferiors. Black inferiority is its greatest sort of cause … and it has tended to hide reality behind empty idealism in a way that belittles blacks, keeps them down, debilitates them. It literally demands dependency from them.”
Steele is most well-known for his 1990 essay collection The Content of Our Character, a meditation on race relations in America, which earned him the National Book Critics Circle Award for general nonfiction.
“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.”
He explained that the fantasy of freedom is that when you arrive, you automatically live in a paradise where all stresses dissolve and happiness comes fully and naturally. The reality, he said, is that freedom shows a person how small and ill-equipped they are. There are no longer any excuses to make and no one to blame, he added.
“You can chase the American dream in any form that you would like to consider doing so,” he said.
Steele admitted that many African-Americans may have educational disadvantages to their white counterparts due to the legacy of slavery and discrimination, but he said that life is not fair, and that in order to succeed in an ultra-competitive world today a person must have skills and talents. They can’t get by on the color of their skin alone, he said. He called on blacks to re-invent themselves as people who can exploit freedom and not be intimidated by it, a group of people who can educate themselves and “erect a structure” that will allow them to flourish under freedom.
“Black America today does not know itself outside of victimization,” he said, adding that African-Americans are no longer humiliated by white racism but rather an inability to adapt to freedom. He asked where “hammering away at white people” gets others.
All Americans, he continued, are responsible for their own fate and for making something of themselves.
“And if you don’t do it, you can’t blame it on white people and think that somehow that gives you a self-esteem. No, it won’t,” he said.
He holds a Ph. D. and is a retired professor.
Dr. Steele calls himself a "black conservative." He opposes policies such as affirmative action, which he considers to be unsuccessful liberal campaigns to promote equal opportunity for African Americans. He contends that blacks have been "twice betrayed:" first by slavery and oppression and then by group preferences mandated by the government, which discourage self-agency and personal responsibility in blacks.
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.
No duh.
What a fantastic article! Thanks for posting. Dr. Steele points out what conservatives have been preaching for some time now, that liberals equate being black to failure. Liberals thrive on that and codify it. This man needs more press and more exposure on the national level.
I would say thrice.
First by slavery and oppression and then by group preferences mandated by the government, and then by Liberals who purport to champion them, but in truth act as the new slave owners taking from them and giving nothing back except lies and deceit.
Liberals oppress them by keeping them down in a permanent underclass and blaming their failures on Whitey.
“Liberals oppress them by keeping them down in a permanent underclass and blaming their failures on Whitey.”
Exactly what the oil-rich Arab states do with the Palestinians, except they blame Israel for all the problems.
I have no problem in day to day exchanges with black folk.
N*****s are another matter......and those come in all races
Things are NOT going to improve once AFRICAN Americans discover their freedom.... Want to know the future of America.?? Look to South Africa...
Things are NOT going to improve once AFRICAN Americans discover their freedom.... Want to know the future of America.?? Look to South Africa...
Blacks here in the US are NOT Africans. Their problems are not genetic they are cultural.
There are tons of middle class blacks who are just like us (but with better tans). The South Africans were never like the whites down there.
He may mean that he was “slave” to the sense of victimization imposed upon him by “Liberalism”.
Fair number of white people need to hear this message too.
Bkmk
He speaks and writes most eloquently. Unfortunately, his presumably targeted audience (domestic black savages) not only can't read, they also can't speak the language.
He needs to have somebody translate his message into street vernacular, or even better yet, deliver it to the dum-masses as "hip-hop".
“Educational disadvantages’ ???
I challenge him on that statement.
Someone has to show me the chairs-desks-pens-pencils-notebook paper-notebooks-lights-heat-teachers-and most of all THE BOOKS that blacks are given to ‘learn’ from, compared to white students.
My father worked at a printing company that printed the USAFI texts & answer books.
My brother had his own graphics company & they did a very large number of textbooks set up & all were triple proof read as a standard. He ran that company for over 25 years, employing about 60 + persons year around. He retired 10 years ago, but textbooks were a fairly large part of his business. I would bet anything I have that he didn’t set up graphics for 2 different textbooks....Never did & never would.
I never have been inside a book store on campus where there were 2 stacks of textbooks-—one for blacks—one for whites.
The FREE CHANCE to get an education is the same for both groups.
The fact that blacks have been steeped in the idea that having an education & not spending another generation living on welfare paid for by the taxpayers makes them an “Uncle Tom” is disgusting & it is time for that nonsense to end.
I want to see a demonstration on a large stage—televised—where a candidate has the guts to pile up all the different supplies/desks/books, etc that apply to ‘getting an education’ into 2 piles and finally opens the door to people understanding that the basic ingredients are just the same.
IF blacks continue to tell their kids that ignoring an education is OK, then they will only sink further into the muck & mire of their own creation. As it stands now, it is a self-perpetuating system.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.