Shelby Steele Says the Unsayable in re Race Relations

This Shelby Steele article is pure genius.  It has more wisdom on race relations in America today than a decade's worth of NY Times yammering.

Here are key excerpts with my translations and/or observations I've made here over the years.

We blacks have lived in a bubble since the 1960s because whites have been deferential for fear of being seen as racist. ...  It causes whites to retreat into deference and blacks to become nothing more than victims.

Yup, if the rules are stupid and/or stacked so that everything is racist, well, we're not gonna engage.  No engagement means no progress.

 What is remarkable about this response is that it may foretell a new fearlessness in white America—a new willingness in whites (and blacks outside the victim-focused identity) to say to blacks what they really think and feel, to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal. 

This is both so sad and too long in coming.  You can't demand to be taken seriously and also be treated like children as well...pick one.  If this is true, which i doubt it is, blacks should welcome this...being treated fairly and honestly, despite a difficult message, is the sign of acceptance.

 To a degree, black America’s self-esteem is invested in the illusion that we live under a cloud of continuing injustice.

This is an incendiary claim and rubs a raw wound, but it has much truth to it.   There is alot of black failure out there - broken families and all that, but also in collective performance.  I've pointed this out before - Baltimore, Newark, Detroit...places where blacks run the show have deep deep problems and lag the nation in livability by a wide margin.  When you mismanage whole cities and doom whole generations of kids to poorly educated status, well...better look for the BIG excuse.