I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I am a middle-class black, a college professor, far from wealthy, but also well removed from the kind of deprivation that would qualify my children for the label ‘disadvantaged.’ Shelby Steele Read Quote
Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us. Beyond that, it’s always interesting to note that it expanded the idea of democracy. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Our families have fallen to pieces. 75 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, without a father. Shelby Steele Read Quote
So white guilt is not a guilt of conscience; it’s not something that you get up in the morning and say, my God, I feel guilty about what happened to black Americans. Rather it is the fact that in relation to black Americans you lack moral authority. Shelby Steele Read Quote
And if you want to make many of our black leaders angry, just tell them that racism is not the number problem that black Americans face. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I remember being a teenager, I never thought that I’d live in a society that was not segregated. It happened. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Well, when you think about it black American culture evolved over three and a half centuries. Every minute under which they lived under oppression and they adapted to dealing with the fact that those freedoms were going to be cut off. They had to somehow make a life within all of those restriction, and they did. Shelby Steele Read Quote
The only thing that makes me interesting as a writer is that I’m just talking common sense. The most ordinary, everyday sort of common sense. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I’ve tried to be graceful and I’ve tried to make sure my arguments are grounded in reason and insight. Shelby Steele Read Quote
