SHELBY STEELE ASKS: RACISM—FACT OR FAITH?

In a provocative article over the weekend Shelby Steele of The Hoover Institution argues that “While racism continues to exist, it no longer stunts the lives of blacks” in America. Steele explains, with Sowellian logic (cf. Thomas Sowell’s “The Vision of the Anointed”), why this is not conventional wisdom: “Yet a belief in the ongoing power of racism is, today, an article of faith for ‘good’ whites and ‘truth-telling’ blacks. It is heresy for any white or black to say openly that, today, underdevelopment and broken families are vastly greater problems for blacks than racism, even though this is obviously true. The problem is that this truth blames the victim. It suggests that black progress will come more from black effort than from white goodwill—even though white oppression caused the underdevelopment in the first place” (Los Angeles Times). Steele concludes: “Today we live in a terrible ignorance that will no doubt last until we take race out of every aspect of public life—until we learn, as we did with religion, to separate it from the state.” For a counter-point see Goodwin Liu’s LAT op-ed, “The Meaning of Brown vs. the Board.”