In his recent book, “Shame: How
America’s Past Sins have Polarized Our Country,” Shelby Steele argues
that White guilt, the terror that Whites experience of being labeled a
“racist,” has harmed the Black community:
- It has spawned a new white paternalism toward minorities since the 1960s that, among other things, has damaged the black family more profoundly than segregation ever did.
Steele claims that this paternalism was worse than anything
that he had experienced under segregation. How did this serve to undermine the
black family? Steele argues that white instituted programs, along with their
narrative of victimhood, have served to disempower those people whom white
guilt had influenced:
- Post-1960s welfare policies, the proliferation of “identity politics” and group preferences, and all the grandiose social interventions of the War on Poverty and the Great Society—all this was meant to redeem the nation from its bigoted past, but paradoxically, it also invited minorities to make an identity and a politics out of grievance and inferiority. Its seductive whisper to them was that their collective grievance was their entitlement and that protest politics was the best way to cash in on that entitlement—this at the precise moment when America was at last beginning to free up minorities as individual citizens who could pursue their own happiness to the limits of their abilities. Thus, white guilt was a smothering and distracting kindness that enmeshed minorities more in the struggle for white redemption than in their own struggle to develop as individuals capable of competing with all others.
According to Steele, “white redemption” was the Leftist/progressive
attempt to occupy the moral high-ground by demonstrating that they aren’t
racist, but those who oppose them are racists. It also served as a strategy to
manipulate the “oppressed” by reminding them of their victimization long after
it was an issue. Steele argues that the victimization identity along with the
Welfare State has undermined black initiative:
- We should not be smothered, as we have been, by the new paternalistic liberalism that emerged in the mid-1960s—a guilt-driven liberalism that has imposed itself through a series of ineffective and even destructive government programs and policies. We should be left to find our own way as free men and women in this fast-paced and highly competitive society.
Steele’s thoughts echo the words of the famous abolitionist
Frederick Douglass, who had advised:
- Everybody has asked the question. . ."What shall we do with the Negro?" I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature's plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall. And if the Negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!
The victimhood narrative, especially now that the door of
freedom has finally swung open, has disempowered much of the black community by
teaching dependency and blame in place of initiative and hard work.
Yet, the problems are real, whatever their cause. Instead of
impersonal programs that serve to alleviate white guilt, we need interpersonal
love. This love must be motivated by a desire for the best of the other person
and not the need to feel good about ourselves, although loving might make us
feel good.
It is also a love that is not paternalistic, that insists on
usurping the moral high-ground for oneself. Instead, a true love is regarded as
a privilege, by the one who loves, to participate in the gift of God. It is a
love that understands that it is more blessed to give than to receive, a love
that does not look down on its recipients. It is a love that heals all of us.
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