White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era

Shelby Steele

Oct 2009 · Harper Collins

About this ebook

"Not unlike some of Ralph Ellison’s or Richard Wright’s best work. White Guilt, a serious meditation on vital issues, deserves a wide readership.” — Cleveland Plain Dealer

In 1955 the killers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted because they were white. Forty years later, despite the strong DNA evidence against him, accused murderer O. J. Simpson went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. The age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt—and neither has been good for African Americans.

Through articulate analysis and engrossing recollections, acclaimed race relations scholar Shelby Steele sounds a powerful call for a new culture of personal responsibility.

Ratings and reviews

Shelby thinks that since he's a conservative black that makes him the arbiter of who is moral, good and virtuous, but is simultaneously unaware of the irony in his describing whites on the right side of history as "supremacists" because if they support measures to lift up black people it must be because they think black people are then "inferior"? laughable. Without A., acknowledging a divide between poor people being disproportionately black/minority, B., poor kids lacking similar opportunities as their better off peers and C., any sort of mention of class issues (rich/poor) he loses much of his credibility. He gets credit for his personal experiences and he's right about Affirmative action, though he utterly fails without suggesting any better alternative and loses credibility for that as well. It would be 2 stars but he also finds time for petty personal attacks against a professor from 20 years before this book was written. Disgusting.

Highly recommend. It's like he wrote this book yesterday.

Very insightful!!

About the author

Shelby Steele is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University, and is a contributing editor at Harper's magazine. His many prizes and honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, an Emmy Award, a Writers Guild Award, and the National Humanities Medal.