Dr. Steele traces the roots of today’s polarization to the 1960s, which he says were “arguably the worst crisis of moral and cultural authority in [America’s] history.” The slogan “Never trust anyone over 30” could have arisen only in a period of deep skepticism and alienation.
Dr. Steele is right to say that it all began with race: “The civil rights movement was the first movement in the 1960s to win legitimacy because its charges against America were so blatantly true.” Legal discrimination unquestionably violated statements about equality that have always haunted the republic, and the moral thrill of battling “bigotry” quickly spread to the battle against other newly invented “isms.”
Dr. Steele writes that these battles became part of the spirit of his generation: “America’s evil would always provide us with a sense of purpose and destiny and even moral superiority.” However, for blacks, he says those battles were a bad bargain because they made victimhood a permanent part of their identity. Blacks became “more wedded to the idea of themselves as oppressed than to the reality that they are freer than ever,” and they adopted “a strategy that only keeps us victims even when the world, hesitantly or not, invites us to live as men and women.”
Dr. Steele writes that agreeing to become perpetual victims turned blacks into “contingent people,” whose fate depended on other people’s goodwill. The racial preferences by which whites expressed their goodwill also meant that no black could really claim to deserve success: “There is at least a whisper of doubt over my entire generation of educated blacks–a whisper, frankly, of inferiority.”
Part of the problem was “black pride.” Too many blacks believed that afros and swagger could replace hard work and competence. “Group identities that compensate for the deprived background of the individual with a grandiose vision of the group,” he writes, are a false hope.
But playing the victim is irresistible: For blacks, “grievance against their former oppressor is leverage, entitlement, and even self-esteem within the larger society. It is power.” Where there are victims, there must be oppressors, and blacks quickly learned that whites lived in terror of being thought of as oppressors. Blacks learned they could humiliate and exploit whites by threatening to withhold the blessing that whites craved: recognition that they were not “racists.”
“Poetic truth”
But how do you sniff out and exploit oppressors in a world in which oppression has diminished to almost nothing? By creating a giant lie–by believing what Dr. Steele calls “poetic truth.” Just as poets take license with the truth to achieve artistic effects, the Left distorts the truth so it can keep peddling tales of oppression. Dr. Steele sees America differently:
If you are a black and you want to be a poet, or a doctor, or a corporate executive, or a movie star, there will surely be barriers to overcome, but white racism will be among the least of them. You will be far more likely to receive racial preferences than to suffer racial discrimination.
For the Left, however, “the victimization of blacks (and other minorities) is always the larger truth of American life, a truth so much a part of America’s fundamental character that it must always be taken as literal truth even when the facts refute it.” The basic poetic truth is that all failings of blacks and Hispanics are due to white oppression, but new truths are added all the time. Since the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, it has been established that white vigilantes hunt down and kill unarmed blacks. 2014 gave birth to the poetic truth that white policemen murder unarmed blacks with impunity. This year will no doubt produce its own crop of poetry.
Phony truths of this kind make it impossible for the Left to understand their own country, but they give it tremendous leverage because, as Dr. Steele explains, there is “so much moral and political power in the idea of delivering blacks from their tragic past.” Poetic truth is a lie that supports an ideological position, but it is also the essential buttress for “political correctness,” which Dr. Steele describes as follows:
It has no other purpose than to project these sins [of racism, etc.] as the essential, if not the eternal, truth of the American way of life. Then political correctness tries to bully and shame Americans–on pain of their human decency–into conformity with this ugly view of their society.
Anyone who points out that blacks face very little discrimination is a dissident who must be put down, and poetic truth gives the Left “the power to shame and stigmatize all who oppose it.” As Dr. Steel emphasizes, the poetic truth isn’t about truth; it’s about power.
How whites think
But what’s in it for whites? They still set the bounds of political discussion. Why paint such a dark picture of their own race? Dr. Steele argues that it is because condemning their own race is how liberals exhibit virtue.
All whites have been trapped by a shift in what it means to be moral. Until the 1950s, private virtue was the measure of goodness. As the ’60s mentality took hold, goodness began to depend on explicit opposition to all the alleged American evils, especially “racism.” The expression of certain views–rather than virtuous acts–became an important moral standard. You could still get in trouble for ordinary misbehavior, but you could be fired from your job and stripped of respectability merely for expressing forbidden views.
Very few whites actually do anything that could be considered “racist;” today it is all words. Whites must therefore constantly watch what they say because a few syllables can put them at the mercy of liberals and non-whites, who have the power either to pass sentence or forgive. This infuses the lives of whites with a special terror: “The terror of being seen as racist–a terror that has caused whites to act guiltily toward minorities even when they feel no guilt.”
Among the many things whites must not say–and even Dr. Steele says it at his risk–is that since “racism” is not a major barrier to blacks, they generally get what they deserve. For liberals, anyone who denies pervasive “racism” is, himself, an unwitting or even deliberate accomplice to “racism.” The only route to virtue is to recognize the deeply oppressive nature of the country and to denounce it at every opportunity. The perverse result, says Dr. Steele, is that only by denouncing their own country and race can whites enjoy “the good opinion of themselves as decent and socially concerned people.”
The only way whites can be sure of never being tarred as “racist” is to endorse race-preference programs and claim to worship “diversity.” But for Dr. Steele, even though “affirmative action” is supposed to help brown people, it helps only white people. Throwing incompetent non-whites in over their heads does them no good, but it is “a shield against charges of racism and sexism.” Non-whites are pawns in these rituals of expiation.
http://www.amren.com/features/2015/03/what-explains-the-black-white-divide/
For these reasons, which come down to one, white moral supremacy, there can only be meaning discourse, for me, by having such discourse with one who is both intelligent and not white.
Dr. Steele is right to say that it all began with race: “The civil rights movement was the first movement in the 1960s to win legitimacy because its charges against America were so blatantly true.” Legal discrimination unquestionably violated statements about equality that have always haunted the republic, and the moral thrill of battling “bigotry” quickly spread to the battle against other newly invented “isms.”
Dr. Steele writes that these battles became part of the spirit of his generation: “America’s evil would always provide us with a sense of purpose and destiny and even moral superiority.” However, for blacks, he says those battles were a bad bargain because they made victimhood a permanent part of their identity. Blacks became “more wedded to the idea of themselves as oppressed than to the reality that they are freer than ever,” and they adopted “a strategy that only keeps us victims even when the world, hesitantly or not, invites us to live as men and women.”
Dr. Steele writes that agreeing to become perpetual victims turned blacks into “contingent people,” whose fate depended on other people’s goodwill. The racial preferences by which whites expressed their goodwill also meant that no black could really claim to deserve success: “There is at least a whisper of doubt over my entire generation of educated blacks–a whisper, frankly, of inferiority.”
Part of the problem was “black pride.” Too many blacks believed that afros and swagger could replace hard work and competence. “Group identities that compensate for the deprived background of the individual with a grandiose vision of the group,” he writes, are a false hope.
But playing the victim is irresistible: For blacks, “grievance against their former oppressor is leverage, entitlement, and even self-esteem within the larger society. It is power.” Where there are victims, there must be oppressors, and blacks quickly learned that whites lived in terror of being thought of as oppressors. Blacks learned they could humiliate and exploit whites by threatening to withhold the blessing that whites craved: recognition that they were not “racists.”
“Poetic truth”
But how do you sniff out and exploit oppressors in a world in which oppression has diminished to almost nothing? By creating a giant lie–by believing what Dr. Steele calls “poetic truth.” Just as poets take license with the truth to achieve artistic effects, the Left distorts the truth so it can keep peddling tales of oppression. Dr. Steele sees America differently:
If you are a black and you want to be a poet, or a doctor, or a corporate executive, or a movie star, there will surely be barriers to overcome, but white racism will be among the least of them. You will be far more likely to receive racial preferences than to suffer racial discrimination.
For the Left, however, “the victimization of blacks (and other minorities) is always the larger truth of American life, a truth so much a part of America’s fundamental character that it must always be taken as literal truth even when the facts refute it.” The basic poetic truth is that all failings of blacks and Hispanics are due to white oppression, but new truths are added all the time. Since the shooting of Trayvon Martin in 2012, it has been established that white vigilantes hunt down and kill unarmed blacks. 2014 gave birth to the poetic truth that white policemen murder unarmed blacks with impunity. This year will no doubt produce its own crop of poetry.
Phony truths of this kind make it impossible for the Left to understand their own country, but they give it tremendous leverage because, as Dr. Steele explains, there is “so much moral and political power in the idea of delivering blacks from their tragic past.” Poetic truth is a lie that supports an ideological position, but it is also the essential buttress for “political correctness,” which Dr. Steele describes as follows:
It has no other purpose than to project these sins [of racism, etc.] as the essential, if not the eternal, truth of the American way of life. Then political correctness tries to bully and shame Americans–on pain of their human decency–into conformity with this ugly view of their society.
Anyone who points out that blacks face very little discrimination is a dissident who must be put down, and poetic truth gives the Left “the power to shame and stigmatize all who oppose it.” As Dr. Steel emphasizes, the poetic truth isn’t about truth; it’s about power.
How whites think
But what’s in it for whites? They still set the bounds of political discussion. Why paint such a dark picture of their own race? Dr. Steele argues that it is because condemning their own race is how liberals exhibit virtue.
All whites have been trapped by a shift in what it means to be moral. Until the 1950s, private virtue was the measure of goodness. As the ’60s mentality took hold, goodness began to depend on explicit opposition to all the alleged American evils, especially “racism.” The expression of certain views–rather than virtuous acts–became an important moral standard. You could still get in trouble for ordinary misbehavior, but you could be fired from your job and stripped of respectability merely for expressing forbidden views.
Very few whites actually do anything that could be considered “racist;” today it is all words. Whites must therefore constantly watch what they say because a few syllables can put them at the mercy of liberals and non-whites, who have the power either to pass sentence or forgive. This infuses the lives of whites with a special terror: “The terror of being seen as racist–a terror that has caused whites to act guiltily toward minorities even when they feel no guilt.”
Among the many things whites must not say–and even Dr. Steele says it at his risk–is that since “racism” is not a major barrier to blacks, they generally get what they deserve. For liberals, anyone who denies pervasive “racism” is, himself, an unwitting or even deliberate accomplice to “racism.” The only route to virtue is to recognize the deeply oppressive nature of the country and to denounce it at every opportunity. The perverse result, says Dr. Steele, is that only by denouncing their own country and race can whites enjoy “the good opinion of themselves as decent and socially concerned people.”
The only way whites can be sure of never being tarred as “racist” is to endorse race-preference programs and claim to worship “diversity.” But for Dr. Steele, even though “affirmative action” is supposed to help brown people, it helps only white people. Throwing incompetent non-whites in over their heads does them no good, but it is “a shield against charges of racism and sexism.” Non-whites are pawns in these rituals of expiation.
http://www.amren.com/features/2015/03/what-explains-the-black-white-divide/
For these reasons, which come down to one, white moral supremacy, there can only be meaning discourse, for me, by having such discourse with one who is both intelligent and not white.