Racism Quotes by Shelby Steele

Racist societies enforce the idea of race as home by making race an inescapable fate.

— Shelby Steele

My honest opinion is that blacks have to fight much harder for their individuality than whites do.

— Shelby Steele

There's a little racism out here, always was, and always will be.

— Shelby Steele

If you're getting harassed, it's not helpful to know that racism has generally declined in America, when you're still experiencing it. That…

— Shelby Steele

Racial identity is simply forbidden to whites in America and across the entire Western world. Black children today are hammered with the…

— Shelby Steele

You know, one of the ways we adapted to not being free was to think that our group identity was again, the…

— Shelby Steele

I grew up in a time when there was real segregation. And blacks during the 50s and so forth took a lot…

— Shelby Steele

Thomas Sowell, among many others, has articulated the power of individual responsibility as an antidote to black poverty for over 40 years.…

— Shelby Steele

Barack Obama's strategy is to get away from anything having to do with race as quickly as he can. His fear is…

— Shelby Steele

The great drama at the core of American race relations is always the same: Can black Americans ever be truly equal -…

— Shelby Steele

I think we have come to a place in black America, sadly from my point of view, where we have once again…

— Shelby Steele

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites…

— Shelby Steele

The great white advantage has been living inside history, adapting to its constant demands, nurturing the values and the habits of life…

— Shelby Steele

Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and then another 100 years of segregation. I grew…

— Shelby Steele

You are, in fact, stigmatized as a racist, because, after all, you have know acknowledged that your nation practiced racism explicitly for…

— Shelby Steele

In America, many marginally competent or flatly incompetent whites are hired every day -some because their white skin suits the conscious or…

— Shelby Steele

Whites know never tell blacks what you really think and what you really feel because you risk being seen as a racist.…

— Shelby Steele

I am a black American, I say, and thus announce my atavistic connection to all others who live as black Americans, to…

— Shelby Steele

Well, when you think about it black American culture evolved over three and a half centuries. Every minute under which they lived…

— Shelby Steele

Part of our identity is the idea that racism is still there and that we are vulnerable to it. So, the question…

— Shelby Steele

Normally, 'black responsibility' is a forbidden phrase for a black leader -- not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea…

— Shelby Steele

So white guilt is not a guilt of conscience; it's not something that you get up in the morning and say, my…

— Shelby Steele

Racism and bigotry generally are the great driving engines of modern American liberalism. Even a remote hint of racism can trigger a…

— Shelby Steele

Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self-reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a…

— Shelby Steele

Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us.…

— Shelby Steele

Racism was once just racism, a terrible bigotry that people nevertheless learned to live with, if not as a necessary evil then…

— Shelby Steele

We have laws on the books. If somebody's discriminating against you, I strongly advocate suing them. That's the most effective thing you…

— Shelby Steele

In looking at difficulties in the black American community over the years, it has always astounded me how much white Americans take…

— Shelby Steele

But blacks make little to no progress and, worse, the preoccupation with injustice only leaves them eternally inconsolable and cut off from…

— Shelby Steele

And if you want to make many of our black leaders angry, just tell them that racism is not the number problem…

— Shelby Steele

Emmitt Till had walked into a cultural narrative in which his role was already tragically written. It was a narrative designed to…

— Shelby Steele

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton cannot write a timeless letter to us from a Birmingham jail or walk, as John Lewis did…

— Shelby Steele

I wrote a piece in the New York Times back in the Nineties saying that racial discrimination ought to be a criminal…

— Shelby Steele

America still has a race problem, though not the one that conventional wisdom would suggest: the racism of whites toward blacks. Old…

— Shelby Steele

Our vulnerability is that both blacks and whites can use our impossible racial authenticity against us. Both races can throw up our…

— Shelby Steele

Now, white America is using blacks, exploiting them, enabling their dependency so that they can say, we are innocent of racism, and…

— Shelby Steele

I'm not going to play a racial game. With me, you're going to meet a guy named Shelby Steele, and you will…

— Shelby Steele

When blacks become humanly visible, when their true beliefs are known, their mask shatters and their symbiotic bond with whites is broken.

— Shelby Steele

Where race is concerned, America has had a horrible, a wretched history and that came to account in the 1960s, with the…

— Shelby Steele

Racism is endemic to the human condition, just as stupidity is. We will always have to be on guard against it. But…

— Shelby Steele