When I read this, I was reminded of the cries of victimhood coming from
so many of my fellow atheists, and the way they exploit the methods and
mentality of the civil rights leaders of our past (consequently
trivializing them and diminishing themselves as well). Don't be
victims! Live your own lives, and let others live theirs. Those who go
through life looking for reasons to be offended invariably find them.
Leave the cross in Soledad alone, leave the Pledge and motto alone. If
others enjoy these things be happy for them!

<quote>
While listening to the radio recently, I heard The writer Christopher
Hitchens' riveting description of Shelby Steele's new book White Guilt :
How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights
Era. I promptly ordered it and have not been disappointed.

White Guilt is a powerful essay that (as George Will says in the cover
blurb) "braids family memories with an acute understanding of national
policies." Will says Steele "demonstrates what went wrong when whites
for their reasons and blacks for theirs, embraced the idea that white
guilt explains blacks' problems and can be the basis of polices for
ameliorating them."

But what happens when our national policies are derived from white guilt
and black anger rather than the universal principles that free societies
aspire to -- freedom for the individual, rights for all individuals,
equality under the law, equality of opportunity, and an inherent right
to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?"

Steele answers this question in an exquisite detail indicative of one
who has spent much time reflecting on the psychological underpinnings of
race relations in the US. He explains that the current dynamic of black
anger and the response of white guilt is a destructive combination,
doing real harm to the development of African Americans. As a way of
explaining "black anger," he describes his early years as an African
American youth who wanted to be a batboy for an all-white YMCA baseball
team. He was eventually rejected by the coach of the team because "no
coloreds were allowed" at the park where the team played the away games.

As a psychologist who works with people with anger problems, I admire
the way that Steele understands and explains his psychological response
to this rejection -- he understands that rather than anger to his
humiliating batboy experience, he felt calm, the calm that comes from
knowing at the time that racism was an "impersonal and immutable feature
of the world, like snow in winter or rain in spring." Anger came only
ten years later, after the world had changed. The change was the civil
rights movement that "disciplined America using democratic principles,
establishing the point that one's race could not mitigate one's rights
as an individual." Steele points out that the term black rage came into
use after the 1964 Civil Rights Bill, not before.

Oppression, says Steele, does not push people to rage or revolution.
"Anger is acted out by the oppressed only when real weakness is
perceived in the oppressor. Anger in the oppressed is a response to
perceived opportunity, not to injustice." This makes sense: people who
act out angrily usually do so when there is no threat of being punished
and every indication that their anger will get them what they want. This
is not always such a bad thing, of course, but black anger and the
responding white guilt is not the psychological dynamic of freedom. It
is a deal between the power hungry left and black leaders who care more
about being thrown a bone and offering fake opportunity to their
followers than they care about freedom, autonomy and excellence.

White guilt leads to "the vacuum of moral authority that comes from
simply knowing that one's race is associated with racism." But according
to Steele, once whites have acknowledged historical racism, they lose
moral authority over everything having to do with race, equality, social
justice and poverty. "The authority they lose transfers to the 'victims'
of racism and becomes their great power in society. This is why white
guilt is quite literally the same thing as black power." It is also why
black anger reinforces white guilt and the circle of victimhood continues.

Case in point: Politicians frequently stir up black anger to gain
further points for their party, not for actually doing anything to
promote freedom and autonomy for blacks. For example, Sen. Hillary
Clinton recently stated that the House of Representatives is being "run
like a plantation." However, it becomes even more obvious after reading
Steele's book that Hillary and her ilk are the plantation.

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?)

To pick an example from my own profession, if psychologists spent their
time telling their patients they were victims of mental illness (or
racism etc.) and that they could only get better by coming to therapy,
how could the patient ever develop autonomy, skills, and the ability to
solve their own problems? It is the same with the race card on the part
of the left -- victimhood will keep blacks maintained in the status quo,
always looking to the left for validation and to enforce their "rights."
But the same democratic principles that Martin Luther King used to
discipline this country in the 60's are the same ones that will enable
African Americans to become truly free and to continue to develop the
personal responsibility and skills needed to solve the social problems
that have plagued blacks in America for some time now.

Bravo, Dr. Steele, for writing such a much needed and intriguing book on
the complexities of race relations.
</quote>