An article by Abigail Thernstrom concerning Shelby Steele's "white guilt" analysis caught my eye today.
The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, it might seem, was about sex and the Oval Office. In fact, race was the real story, Steele argues in his stunning new book, White Guilt. “Race had dramatically changed the terms by which political power is won and held.” Race, not sex, “had become the primary focus of America’s moral seriousness.” It is our racial history that has “effectively renormed American culture around social morality.” Clinton’s generation “invented the practice of using social morality as a license to disregard individual morality.” What came to count was a commitment, first and foremost, to racial equality, not whom you slept with.
This quote by Thernstrom is taken out of context so maybe that explains why it makes no damn sense to me.
How was Clinton's mess not about sex nor lying about sex, but race?
Thernstrom goes on to write about a Washington Post writer who writes on fashion:
[Robin] Givhan (who is also black) is Shelby Steele at 22: a racial exhibitionist who revels in making clear her freedom to indulge in the effrontery that arrogantly insults conventional (white) America.
And of course much of her white readership responds by asking for more. Legitimizing black anger undoubtedly makes them feel racially cleansed.
The condensed version of the story is the writer, Givhan, has used her articles to do more than just write about who is wearing what and how it was worn. She has made social and political commentary in her some of her articles. However, what Thernstrom doesn't tell the readers is, Givhan's race was unknown to the readers until her picture appeared in the Post recently. Most importantly, what Thernstrom doesn't tell the readers is Givhan has received a LOT of criticism for some of her articles.
Thernstrom is just flat out wrong.
Here is a quote I just love with all of my heart:
A new black identity emerged defined by group victimization.
This is an interesting quote from Thernstrom, who has argued, and has faced CONSERVATIVE CRITICISM for arguing, that Blacks have advanced at a rapid pace sine the Civil Rights Act.
Steele is America’s racial therapist who attempts to lay bare the crippled emotional state of whites in positions of power who do bad by attempting to do good.
Sorry, I don't need a therapist who feels guilt, "Black guilt," over how a minority of Katrina victims handled themselves.
Here is another article that came to my attention today.
Dr. Helen Smith writes:
Today's political left, according to Steele, has shifted from the old left approach of individual freedom, principles and responsibility, to the new left of dissociation. This new dissociated left has turned against democratic principles and instead engages in a victim mentality for blacks that keeps them on the plantation. The left's deal is that they will keep throwing out a few bones like affirmative action, as long as blacks will allow themselves to be reduced to their race and the left can take moral authority for "helping" them. As Steele points out, this is a deal with the devil. It results in the impotence of the left in solving social problems and less freedom and autonomy for blacks. How can social problems be solved by telling people that they remain victims because of their race (or gender, for that matter?)
This garbage about Blacks embracing victimhood seems to fly in the face of the recent news of a growing number of Black businesses, and flies in the face of the growing number of Blacks attending college, and flies in the face of the decreasing number of Blacks at or below the poverty level, just to name a few things.
So much garbage, so little time.
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