Shelby Steele, Hoover Institute fellow and Bradley Prize winner, brands today’s racial discourse a "moral panic" fueled by critical race theory—a "100% negative" framework he calls an "illness" mirroring white supremacy. He dismisses systemic police racism claims, citing his own bias-free encounters, and blames Black struggles on the "shock of freedom," not oppression, while criticizing Obama’s election as white guilt-driven symbolism. Steele argues victimhood now drives politics over progress, contrasting it with historical Black agency like Duke Ellington’s resilience, and warns corporations like Amazon exploit racial narratives for moral posturing. His core message: true advancement demands shedding dependency on identity-based grievance. [Automatically generated summary]
So, I am just delighted to have this man on as a guest.
There's obviously no such thing as the best political writer alive, but if anybody asked me to name the four or five best political writers alive, the first words out of my mouth would be Shelby Steele.
He is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Fellow at the Hoover Institute.
He has won the Bradley Prize for his contributions to the study of race in America.
His books, if you've never read one of his books, they're short and they are absolutely beautiful.
Shelby Steele, thank you so much for coming on.
Well, thank you so much for that introduction and thanks for having me.
So I've been watching what's going on in our country, and it seems to me I've been kind of describing it as a moment of moral panic.
And it seems to be a moral panic that centers, among other things, on race.
And it reminds me of things I've read about the McCarthy era, the witch hunts.
I'm wondering if you think there is truth in that description.
And if you think there's truth in that description, why is it happening now?
Easy, easy question.
No, I think it if you look at the span of American history, in the 60s, that racial tension that had always been really at the heart of American life and culture came to a head and it transformed,
it introduced, along with the principles of democracy, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, it introduced morality as a source of entitlement, power, rights.
You had to be somehow on the side of the good.
And one of the things we've done is make that a source of power in society.
You can't, when I was coming along, you grew up, your identity became your identity.
Today, growing up, you have to somehow moralize your identity.
You have to define yourself in a way in which you are on the side of virtue, on the side of the good.
And it's, I think the polarization, or much of the polarization that we see today in America is between the sort of traditional way of growing up, maturing, being a member of a free democratic society on the one hand.
And on the other hand, this search for moral, for a virtuous identity, a virtuous way of being in the world that is above race.
And race sort of is the issue that all of this, it seems to me, pivots on.
But why?
I mean, it does seem, I'm not saying that everything's great between the races.
I've never heard of any place where everything was great between the race, but it seems that I'm old enough to remember, as you are, things being much, much worse than they are.
If things have gotten this much better, why should there suddenly be this upsurge of panic now?
I don't think it's a real panic.
You're right.
I remember when it was.
I grew up in the 50s and the 60s and on the south side of Chicago, and when race was a ferocious, you know, every aspect of your life was determined by what your race was and so forth, where you could live, where you could eat, on and on.
And the protest movement started slowly, built, and finally, I think, achieved the great success.
Today, you know, we're sort of, we don't know quite what to do.
We don't know how to really define ourselves, how to put ourselves, plant ourselves in the world.
And so We're at least at this moment, I think we're a little bit lost.
Not sure I answered that question, but well, I mean, it's a question then of not knowing where your identity lies, I guess, and seizing on something to try and establish it.
You've talked about critical race theory.
You've said it's a currency with which whites can buy innocence in the marketplace and a currency which blacks and other minorities can exercise power in the political arena.
What struck me about that description is it doesn't describe it as something that can help anybody.
Do you believe that there's anything positive in critical race theory?
Critical Race Retreat00:13:51
I believe it's an absolute 100% negative.
It's an illness.
It's a sad, tragic leftover of the ugliest part of our history.
It duplicates.
Believe me, no slave owner, no southern segregationist could articulate white supremacy better than the critical race theorists do.
They're far better at it, far more nuanced and elaborate in their definition, their sense of Black entitlement this time around.
They duplicate, long to be like the white supremacists of the past.
And they're exercising that kind of power within our institutions as we speak.
I mean, the corporations, universities, the entire education establishment are enthralled to these people and to this blatant retreat, this collapse into racism as a sort of means by which we attack racism.
I mean, you had this film, What Killed Michael Brown, which I have to admit, I have not had a chance to watch yet, though I will.
And at first, Amazon wouldn't show it.
Why are corporations so bought into this?
I mean, does this help them thrive in some way?
Is it good for corporations to have this race theory and to basically shut down?
I mean, all you were doing was taking an honest look with your son Eli, who made the film with you.
You were taking an honest look at the Michael Brown killing.
Why is that anathema to a corporate entity like Amazon?
Because Amazon and other corporate corporations want to dissociate themselves from America's past.
And in doing that, in condemning America and separating themselves from it, they gain power.
They gain, they establish their innocence, they establish racial innocence to their brand.
They're trying to make Amazon not just a huge, vast corporation, but a vast corporation working for the good.
And all the more reason why you should deal, buy products from them, and so forth and so on.
So it is a cynical, cynical business move in a larger sense.
Universities started this, and now, again, one institution after another, Black Lives Matter basically offers this sort of imprimatur of innocence too.
They sort of sell it to middle-class white America, support us, support all of the critical race ideas we have as a way of showing that you are not racist.
And the tragedy is that whites buy this and this becomes white guilt, where they're terrified of being seen as a racist.
And so they go along with things that destroy the great principles that made America, that made America great in the first place, and that also ended up freeing slaves and giving blacks their freedom.
So it undermines the great achievements of the civil rights era and so forth.
Sad, sad moment in racial history.
It really seems, I'm glad to hear you say it because it really has seemed like this to me.
And sometimes I feel like I'm talking into, I'm talking to myself.
But, you know, I've read, I think I've read all your books.
I think it's in the book Shame.
You tell this absolutely devastating story.
You were the captain of the swim team in high school and suddenly found out almost by accident that everybody in the swim team, you were the only black member of the swim team, and all the white players had been invited to spend weeks with your coach at his lake house and you had just been left out.
And it's an especially devastating story knowing who you are now, knowing you're one of the premier intellectuals in the country.
And you just kind of read this story and think like, wow, that's such a terrible way for us to treat one another.
When you hear people now complaining, you know, I mean, I feel for this, a basketball player, say, who is pulled over and mistreated by the police and feels like, you know, how wealthy do I have to become?
How famous do I have to become before people leave me alone?
Do you feel that this is still a problem, this kind of offhanded treatment of people when people complain about the police?
Is there something that a white guy doesn't understand when he hears about this?
Not at all.
It is bogus.
Again, I've lived all my life as a black male in the United States of America and many parts of the country, and it's bogus.
I've been stopped.
I had my share of police stops and tickets and so forth.
I've never been in any way accosted because of my race by a white police officer in the United States of America.
The thing that is most fascinating that people forget today is that since the 1960s, white America has made a greater moral leap forward in its racial sensibilities, its commitment to racial fairness and open-mindedness than any society in human history.
This is simply not the America I grew up in.
It is vastly better.
I can do anything I want to do.
I can become anything I want to become.
I have never, the problem that we as blacks have today is what I call the shock of freedom.
Watch out that you, but that you get what you ask for.
We got freedom.
We got freedom.
Now it is upon us to take it, to use it, to make it a part of our lives, to take advantage of it, to be thankful for it.
But freedom scares you if you come from a group that's been oppressed for four centuries and doesn't really have in many ways developed the principles, the cultural norms you need in order to succeed in freedom.
So that is our problem.
Our problem is not racist cops.
Our problem is that we don't yet know fully, we haven't organized ourselves culturally to take advantage of the incredible freedom we now enjoy in this society.
Most Americans today, if my experience is any indication, actually root for Black people, wish us well in overcoming what was obviously a horrific past.
Most people I run into and have in my adult life, again, have goodwill and wish the best.
We, on the other hand, as Blacks, whamp, freedom makes you responsible for yourself.
Freedom puts a burden on you.
It is, as Sartre said, the great French philosopher, it is an anguish.
You have to choose.
You have to make decisions.
You have to prepare yourself.
You have to try to anticipate the future.
You're responsible for your fate.
That is entirely responsible.
Well, when we were under the thumb of segregation and slavery, we weren't responsible.
That's the definition of oppression, to take that away from you.
We have it now, but it scares us.
It scares anybody who would come from that background where we have a kind of deprivation.
We have to overcome that, become effective in a free society.
Wow.
You know, you wrote recently, I think, I'm pretty sure it was in the Wall Street Journal.
You wrote, you said, who are we without the malice of racism?
Can we be Black without being victims, which struck me as a deeply profound question.
In some ways, it's the question of any persecuted group that wants to assimilate.
It seemed to me that that assimilation was actually well underway.
I mean, you looked at, I've looked at the musical Hamilton, and I thought, here's somebody embracing the history of a country that didn't always embrace him.
And yet there's now this incredible reaction.
Is it this fear of losing Blackness without victim?
Can you be Black without being a victim?
I mean, I'd like to ask you the question.
Yes.
My focus on being Black is on overcoming.
I'm proud of being Black because my people overcame four centuries of oppression to get here.
No mean achievement.
I'm very proud of that.
Many of the Black leaders today, on the other hand, cling to the idea of us as victims because we can use that against the larger society.
We can say, you're still racist.
See, you were always racist and you continue to be.
And therefore, my victimization is also my entitlement.
You owe me.
And so we feel as blacks, that's really our only source of power in American life is our victimization.
And so here we have this terrible irony.
We embrace our victimization as though it's the essence of blackness.
And you couldn't have a worse thing to identify, to build your identity out of than the idea of yourself as a victim.
And you pass this on to your children as though you're proud.
We don't pass on an idea of blackness as overcoming, as taking responsibility, as assuming, taking one's fate in one's own hands.
I like people like Duke Ellington, so many jiasmen, who made himself out of nothing into one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.
Ralph Ellison, the greatest, wrote the greatest American novel of the 20th century, Invisible Man.
These are people who nothing stopped them.
They prevailed.
That's the Black identity to me.
But what we hear about all the time, again, is that we're behind in every walk of life and we continue to be victimized by a now systemic racism that's supposed to be like a cloud around everywhere.
No, we've got to meet the challenge history has given us, take responsibility for our freedom and do something with it.
I have to say, one of the most shocking scenes I have ever read is the scene in Tanahizi Coates' book where he says that to his son.
He passes his victimhood on to his son.
I thought I would put a bullet in my foot before I said that to my kid.
Why did the election, well, I should put it this way.
It seems to me that the election of Barack Obama set us back in some way.
Do you think that's true?
And if so, why?
Because he was elected only because he was black.
He wasn't elected because he was presidential material, because he had some sterling resume that would lift him at his young age into the White House.
None of that was in play.
His achievements were virtually nothing.
He was articulate, but he never said anything of substance.
He was an empty suit in the classic sense.
But he was an opportunity for white America, this white America so riddled with shame over its history that any black who could sort of halfway string three words together is fine.
And so America was, I had people, I wrote a book on Obama.
I had people on the book tour who would come up and sell to me, well, I agree, he's got problems, but I don't want my grandson to think I did not vote for the first Black president.
Well, that's white guilt.
That's when your motivation is not Black people or their development, your motivation is your own innocence of racism.
Whites today long for an innocence of racism more than anything else.
They feel compromised by a lack of it.
And so the tragedy is they need to exploit Blacks all over again, but this time as victims that they can save, that they can redeem, they can bring them out of their long tunnel of darkness and be all the better for it and win back that moral authority that they lost back in the 60s.
Hope You Write Again00:00:16
Shelby Seal, I got to stop there.
I love talking to you.
I hope you will come back.
I also hope my one complaint about your career is that you don't write enough.
I hope you'll write more.
But if you're not going to write more, just come back and talk some more.
It was great talking to you, and I appreciate your coming on.