What is political correctness, if not essentially redemptive speech? Soon liberalism had become a cultural identity that offered Americans a way to think of themselves as decent people. To be liberal was to be good. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness – not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world. Shelby Steele Read Quote
You can do pretty much anything you want to do in America as a black, including become president. Still, the legacy of our victimization, of our suffering and exclusion from the mainstream of American life, has left its mark. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Freedom is just freedom. It is a condition, not an agent of change. It does not develop or uplift those who win it. Freedom holds us accountable no matter the disadvantages we inherit from the past. Shelby Steele Read Quote
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Now, white America is using blacks, exploiting them, enabling their dependency so that they can say, we are innocent of racism, and therefore we are legitimate. Shelby Steele Read Quote
Racism and bigotry generally are the great driving engines of modern American liberalism. Even a remote hint of racism can trigger a kind of moral entrepreneurism. Shelby Steele Read Quote
In theory, affirmative action certainly has all the moral symmetry that fairness requires. It is reformist and corrective, even repentent and redemptive. Shelby Steele Read Quote
So we’ve never had a President of the United States ask anything of black citizens. And I think the reason for that is they’ve all felt that if they presume to do that, that they would be stigmatized as racist. Shelby Steele Read Quote
I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It’s harder now for young blacks to find a closed one. Shelby Steele Read Quote
