White guilt morally and culturally disarms the West. It makes the First World apologetic. And this, of course, only inflames the narcissism of the ineffectual. Shelby Steele Read Quote
The great white advantage has been living inside history, adapting to its constant demands, nurturing the values and the habits of life that allow one to keep pace. This is the cultural capital that whites too often take for granted and rarely think of insisting on in the former victims of exclusion. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I do not like the Confederate flag. It excludes me, profoundly. And if many good people fought honorably to defend it, I still experience the sight of it as a little racial aggression against me. Shelby Steele Read Quote
The Great Society wanted to make America look like a country in which Little Rock could never have happened. It failed because it was a venture in denial rather than in realistic social transformation. Shelby Steele Read Quote
By some estimates, 80% of rap music is bought by white youth. And this makes for another irony. The blooming of white alienation has brought us the first generation of black entrepreneurs with wide-open access to the American mainstream. Shelby Steele Read Quote
It is quite acceptable for either party to explicitly go after the black, Hispanic, or even the Jewish vote. In fact both parties gain an indispensable moral authority by doing so. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to all who ever lived as black Americans. Religion, caste, class, gender and race can all be atavisms, and they are inherently anti-democratic because they exclude all outside the atavism. Shelby Steele Read Quote
No doubt Israel and America have made mistakes in the Middle East. Certainly, Israel was born at the price of considerable dislocation and suffering on the part of the Palestinians. And yes, there will never be a satisfying answer for this. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Palestinians have balked every time their longed-for nationhood has come within grasp. They have seemed to prefer the aggrieved dignity of their resentments to the challenges of nationhood. Shelby Steele Read Quote
