Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

by Shelby Steele Narrated by Randall Bain

Overview

A prominent conservative scholar traces the post-1960s divisions between the Right and the Left, taking aim at liberals' victimization of African Americans and their failure to offer a viable way forward for American society
The United States today is hopelessly polarized; the political Right and Left have hardened into rigid and deeply antagonistic camps, preventing any sort of progress. Amid the bickering and inertia, the promise of the 1960s-when we came together as a nation to fight for equality and universal justice-remains unfulfilled.

As Shelby Steele reveals in Shame, the roots of this impasse can be traced back to that decade of protest, when in the act of uncovering and dismantling our national hypocrisies-racism, sexism, militarism-liberals internalized the idea that there was something inauthentic, if not evil, in the American character. Since then, liberalism has been wholly concerned with redeeming modern America from the sins of the past, and has derived its political legitimacy from the premise of a morally bankrupt America. The result has been a half-century of well-intentioned but ineffective social programs, such as Affirmative Action. Steele reveals that not only have these programs failed, but they have in almost every case actively harmed America's minorities and poor. Ultimately, Steele argues, post-60s liberalism has utterly failed to achieve its stated aim: true equality. Liberals, intending to atone for our past sins, have ironically perpetuated the exploitation of this country's least fortunate citizens.

It therefore falls to the Right to defend the American dream. Only by reviving our founding principles of individual freedom and merit-based competition can the fraught legacy of American history be redeemed, and only through freedom can we ever hope to reach equality.

Approaching political polarization from a wholly new perspective, Steele offers a rigorous critique of the failures of liberalism and a cogent argument for the relevance and power of conservatism.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 12/22/2014
Steele (White Guilt), a leading intellectual and senior scholar at the Hoover Institution, inquires into white guilt and liberal dogma, challenging ideas that he finds pervasive on the left. A fixation on the “struggle for white redemption,” Steele argues, warps clear thinking. Moreover, he finds that too many white liberals perceive deferential shame as the antidote to historical evils, as though shame is morally necessary to absolve the nation’s racial sins. Dissociating the nation from its history has thus become a preeminent institutional mission—a mistaken one, in Steele’s opinion. He vividly recounts his encounter with an unyielding white “commitment to black victimization” while participating in a panel discussion at the Aspen Institute. He also remembers the surprise he felt as a young African-American man, watching William F. Buckley debate James Baldwin on Firing Line, to discover he agreed more with Buckley than Baldwin. Yet Steele also finds that many white people fail to appreciate the effect of four centuries of oppression on African-Americans. Steele concludes that economic success for African-Americans must be rooted in self-help and freedom from self-pity, though he unfortunately minimizes the continued economic inequalities standing in the way. Nonetheless, this timely critique warrants attention from anyone troubled by the persistence of racial discord in American life, from Selma to Ferguson. Agent: Carol Mann, Carol Mann Agency. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice

Wall Street Journal
“Shelby Steele is one of the very few writers able to tell home truths about the plight of black Americans.... In Shame, an essay on the political polarization of our country and on the want of progress among black Americans, he has produced his most complex and challenging work.... The irony here is that Shelby Steele might just be a Tom of a different kind—a black Tom Paine, whose 21st-century common sense could go a long way to bringing his people out of their by now historical doldrums.”

New York Times Book Review
“A spirited polemic…Steele delivers this message in an ardent, readable style…Steele…speaks with passion, eloquence and unremitting honesty.”

Publishers Weekly, starred review
“This timely critique warrants attention from anyone troubled by the persistence of racial discord in American life, from Selma to Ferguson.”

Kirkus
“A conservative analysis of political polarization and race relations in America, more thoughtful and less vitriolic than most volleys from either side.”

Claremont Review of Books
“Steele may well have given us his most important book yet.

Library Journal

11/01/2014
Conservative scholar and NBCC award winner Steele argues that the greatest barrier to racial equality today is not overt racism but the savior complex of white liberals.

Kirkus Reviews

2014-12-07
A conservative analysis of political polarization and race relations in America, more thoughtful and less vitriolic than most volleys from either side.As the son of a mixed-race marriage, Hoover Institution senior fellow Steele (A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win, 2007, etc.), who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Content of Our Character (1991), built his moral foundation on the civil rights activism and idealism of his parents. In college, he considered himself "on the borderline between liberalism and radicalism." But as he remained true to what he considered the country's ideals and never succumbed to the anti-American hatred of an evil empire, he found that his notions of freedom and fairness fit better within the conservative camp, which rejected affirmative action and other signs of "paternalism…far more maddening and smothering than anything I had known in full-out segregation." Steele claims that the country must overcome the sins, shames and apologies of the past if it is to move forward, black Americans in particular. Personal experience humanizes his political progression, from his quitting the high school swimming team after a racial exclusion to his trips to Algiers, where he encountered Black Panthers he considered "thugs" and to an Africa that had reaped the charitable benefits of "American exceptionalism." The author maintains that the liberal mainstream has been willing to compromise core values for the sake of "the Good" and for the poetic truths that he believes are illusions of innocence in comparison with the literal truth favored by conservatives. "[T]his is a ‘war' between two foes—today's political Right and Left—that are almost as fundamentally antithetical and irreconcilable as the Soviet Union and the United States once were," he writes in a bit of overreach that doesn't characterize the tone of most of the book. Liberals will challenge Steele's conclusions, but the sincerity of his convictions seems beyond question.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940173552952
Publisher:	Brilliance Audio
Publication date:	02/25/2015
Edition description:	Unabridged

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