Witness: Blacks, whites, and the politics of shame in America -- by Shelby Steele

Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal) ^ | October 26, 2005 | Shelby Steele

[EveningStar]

Probably the single greatest problem between blacks and whites in America is that we are forever witness to each other's great shames. This occurred to me in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when so many black people were plunged into misery that it seemed the hurricane itself had held a racial animus. I felt a consuming empathy but also another, more atavistic impulse. I did not like my people being seen this way. Beyond the human mess one expects to see after a storm like this, another kind of human wretchedness was on display. In the people traversing waist-deep water and languishing on rooftops were the markers of a deep and static poverty. The despair over the storm that was so evident in people's faces seemed to come out of an older despair, one that had always been there. Here--40 years after the great civil rights victories and 50 years after Rosa Parks's great refusal--was a poverty that oppression could no longer entirely explain. Here was poverty with an element of surrender in it that seemed to confirm the worst charges against blacks: that we are inferior, that nothing really helps us, that the modern world is beyond our reach...

[Clemenza]

True, but sometimes merely by sharing our life experiences get us into trouble as well. You may not mean to offend people, but someone will always get offended. In my case, I tend to offend folks on the religion threads without intending to, but the effect is the same.

People have historically segregated themselves by cultures, subcultures and religion. A major difference in this country is that, whatever the ethnic group, the second generation at least picks up a working knowledge of English and takes up a love of football, hotdogs, and discount shopping at big box stores. In a sense we have a shared culture, on the other hand we don't. No offense to my Southern friends, or my Califonicator friends, but this New Yorker experiences culture shock even when among WHITE folk in those areas.

[sheik yerbouty]

"Undocumented shopping".

[USAFJeeper]

He really isnt talking about the flood except that it exposed a problem in the black community.

In a microsm (sp) I saw a minority woman in Houston who had gotten government housing there. She promptly declared "This is how the rich people live, I am not going back to New Orleans when I can get more here".

Its an entitlement mentality that allows generations of New Orleans lower income people to remain in public housing and subsist mainly on welfare. I see the problem coming that a lot of lower income housing was destroyed along with large middle class, white communities (St Bernard). When they rebuild they are not going to rebuild older shotgun houses that lower income people could afford. Instead they will build better larger homes that will affect the demographics here in New Orleans.

Already the need is so desperate for workers that Burger Kings are offering 8 dollars an hour and $500 a month for a year as a bonus. Thats a $6,000 bonus to work at Burger King. Target is begging for workers offering $12.25 an hour. Its insane. You see more signs offering work at rates substantially above minimum wage than you do hurricane cleanup signs!

The problem here is that the lower income classes are living high on the hog right now with the FEMA, Red Cross, private moneys. You get $2000 initially, then $2300 every three months for living expenses from FEMA. The state governments, subsidized by the feds are giving food stamps out like Halloween candy. Red Cross is handing out cash. Lower income people with the entitlement mentality see no reason to go out and work and lose out on all the free cash.

Anecdotally, friends who own businesses have actually gotten phone calls from employees saying they were not returning because they did not need the job right now!

Sorry to get so long winded, but this is a discussion we have in our office right now. In fact some of our lower paid operators (computer) could make more money at Target and dont need the college they have!

[isthisnickcool]

This is understandable given the unforgiving pas de deux of mutual witness between blacks and whites in which each race prepares a face for the other and seizes on the other's weaknesses with ravenous delight.

This line he wrote is pushing it. Really a bit of crap.

It's in no way shape or form my fault regarding what happened to anyone in New Orleans. Whether they be black or white. It was a huge natural disaster. I have absolutely no guilt about it nor have I given much thought to the complexion of the people hurt. Only that they were Americans and needed some help. And I helped.

With that said it's indeed an absurd, asinine, insane and stupid idea to build a city in a large hole surrounded by water. So why do it again?

If the subject is poor black folk in New Orleans and the conversation is about their plight in life if finger pointing is demanded I can only say that the "work ethic" I see in many people was lacking. Lacking not because these people are black but because they were stuck in a corner. The old "don't give a man a fish teach him how to fish" adage applies. But instead the politicians in Louisiana didn't construct a system that promoted business growth in poor communities they just pretty much sat there until election time.

We have very successful people of all colors and we have people without much of all colors. Generally, all those folks have the opportunity to succeed in this country if they want to. They just have to have the desire. I'm not stopping them from doing what they want to. Are you?

If we need to do something that helps poor folks let's give them a way to make their own money. Let's pass the Fair Tax Plan and let business explode. As it is now the tax system is racist from what I can see.

[Revolting cat!]

But like everything, it's easier said than done. When the culture around us says it's the race that identifies you, and conventional wisdom affirms it, it near damn impossible to resist it. We know for example, that Tiger Woods does not identify with the ghetto culture and we suspect that Condi Rice doesn't either. And yet, here some black FReepers take offense whenever someone points out some of the pathology of that culture, because (I think) they, like most in this country, don't make a distinction between culture and race.

[RegulatorCountry]

" The generation of today lives off the government and passes down the welfare checks for the next generation to mooch."

This is not true of all; too many, but a long way from all. Broad generalizations are going to be offensive. Do you like to be on the receiving end of a broad, negative generalization? I don't, particularly if it doesn't apply.

[EveningStar]

I wish I'd been more exacting in my excerpting from the article. All too many folks at FR are too lazy or too paranoid to click on links. They read only the posted excerpts and go off on irrelevant tangents.

[MEGoody]

BY the incessant drawing of attention TO RACE, we remain racists. We don't see others as simply human beings. When we stop the racist politics and see people as people, then racism won't be an issue.

Bears repeating.

[Arpege92]

"What has happened here is that too many (not all mind you) blacks have relied upon white man/liberal guilt instead of taking responsibility for making their own way and we as a society have suffered."

I wish the fine folks of FR could see my neighborhood. On my street alone, ten black families reside, nine white families reside, and one Asian family reside. It's an upper middle class neighborhood and those with the biggest houses are the black families. My point is that the "too many" is shrinking and I wouldn't have realized this had I not lived in this neighborhood.

[USAFJeeper]

With that said it's indeed an absurd, asinine, insane and stupid idea to build a city in a large hole surrounded by water. So why do it again?

---

I assume this is ignorance speaking? I dont have to enumerate the importance of the port to United States as a whole? The oil industry? Seafood? I know you typed that tongue in cheek. You forgot to put the /sarcasm mark I think.

[RegulatorCountry]

Sorry, that response wasn't intended for you. Clicked the wrong post.

[Arpege92]

You are correct. I have a few of those in my family.

[edcoil]

It makes sense yes, but the damage cannot be un-done.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

IMO- calling people "black" or "African American" is racist and until that stops- racism will continue.

However- there are so many people, of all all skin types and along all political lines, who benefit from segregating people into groups.

[Clemenza]

Where do you live? When I was a kid on Long Island, it was VERY SEGREGATED, with school districts intentionally "redlined" to keep blacks out. I've always found the suburbs of NYC to be very segregated (Montclair and Maplewood in NJ being the exception), moreso than say Seattle, Dallas, Houston, etc.

[Question_Assumptions]

Having "non-authentic" black friends who are reasonably conservative and hardly anti-white, and having talked to quite a few black co-workers over the years, I think that while some black people do overestimate the amount of white racism, I think that white people tend to underestimate it because they just don't see it. And I do honestly think that white people also underestimate the effect that slavery had on blacks by cutting them free from a cultural identity. A lot of urban black culture is really the residual culture of slavery and of being part of the underclass in the South after emancipation. But it's their cultural identity, and they cling to it because they think they have nothing else to turn to and think that adopting mainstream American cutlure is selling out. It's really no different than the Welsh or Scots who resented adopting English culture and so on. In many ways, it's a form of cultural patriotism. But the problem, in this case, is that the culture they are keeping isn't the culture of their distant ancestors but a culture of poverty and the underclass. Blacks need to feel that they have a stake in mainstream American culture and need to stop feeling that becomming mainstream is "selling out". While that does happen, it needs to happen on a much larger scale to see real social change.

[KC Burke]

Because Shelby Steele went to the same college as my son did (but years earlier) I took note of him after reading The Content of Our Character when it first came out in '92. He became a fellow at the Hoover Institute and shares the platform with the likes of Thomas Sowell (the greatest living conservative thinker, IMHO).

Steele's bio from the Hoover page:

Shelby Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.

Steele's most recent book is A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. In A Dream Deferred, Steele argues that too much of what has been done since the Great Society in the name of black rights has far more to do with the moral redemption or self-satisfaction of whites than with any real improvement in the lives of blacks.

Steele received the National Book Critic's Circle Award in 1990 in the general nonfiction category for his book The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. He also has written extensively for major publications including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. He also is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine.

He also is a member of the National Association of Scholars, the national board of the American Academy for Liberal Education, the University Accreditation Association, and the national board at the Center for the New American Community at the Manhattan Institute.

He has written widely on race in American society and the consequences of contemporary social programs on race relations. He has also spoken before hundreds of groups and appeared on national current affairs news programs including Nightline and 60 Minutes.

In 1991, his work on the documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst was recognized with an Emmy Award, the Writer's Guild Award for television documentary writing, and the San Francisco Film Festival Award for television documentary writing. In 2004, Steele was awarded the National Humanities Medal.

Steele holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, and a B.A. in political science from Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I have also read A Dream Deferred which is very profound.

[Question_Assumptions]

Yes, the problems are culture. But people also need to be able to talk about the often-rational reasons why whites are wary of blacks and blacks are wary of whites. In many ways, whites and blacks are actually feeding each other's suspicions and racism and that's gotta stop.

[Arpege92]

Upstate New York....about an hour from New York City. Alot of the families here in my neighborhood work in New York City and commute every day.

[Question_Assumptions]

I've had very candid discussions about race relations with plenty of black people, including co-workers who are not politically conservative. The key is to (A) listen, (B) talk to each other like human beings, and (C) to be polite and respectful. If one looks for a civil discussion of race relations, one can find one if one is civil.