Shelby Steele facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Shelby Steele
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Steele receiving the National Medal of the Humanities in 2004
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| Born | January 1, 1946 |
| Education | Coe College (BA) Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville (MA) University of Utah (PhD) |
Shelby Steele (born January 1, 1946) is an American writer, newspaper writer, and filmmaker. He is also a Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. He studies how different racial groups get along, how different cultures mix, and special programs designed to help people who have faced unfair treatment.
In 1990, he won the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book The Content of Our Character. In 2004, Steele received the National Medal of the Humanities, which is a special award for people who have done great work in the humanities (like history, literature, and philosophy).
Contents
Early Life and Education
Shelby Steele was born in Phoenix, Illinois, a small town near Chicago. His father was Black, and his mother was White. His father, Shelby Sr., was a truck driver. His mother, Ruth, was a social worker. Both of his parents helped start the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), a group that worked for civil rights.
Shelby Steele went to an all-Black elementary school. His grandfather on his father's side was born into slavery in Kentucky. Shelby Steele has a twin brother named Claude Steele. Claude is a well-known psychology professor who has worked at top universities like Stanford.
Shelby Steele earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Coe College. He then got a master's degree in sociology from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Later, he earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah. He met his wife, Rita Silverman, when they were both students at Coe College. Steele was involved in a project called SCOPE, which helped people register to vote.
Before his work as a writer and researcher, Steele taught English at San Jose State University for 20 years.
Shelby Steele's Ideas and Career
Shelby Steele is sometimes called a "black conservative." This means he holds certain views that are often linked to conservative ideas, especially about race. He does not support policies like affirmative action. These policies are meant to help people from groups who have faced discrimination get equal chances. Steele believes these programs have not been successful in helping African Americans.
He thinks that Black people have been "betrayed twice." First, by slavery and unfair treatment. Second, by government programs that give special advantages to groups. He believes these programs can stop people from taking charge of their own lives and being responsible for themselves.
Steele has said:
The great ingenuity of interventions like affirmative action has not been that they give Americans a way to identify with the struggle of blacks, but that they give them a way to identify with racial virtuousness quite apart from blacks.
Steele believes that thinking of oneself as a "victim" is the biggest problem for Black Americans. He thinks that some White Americans see Black people as victims to feel less guilty about past wrongs. He also believes some Black people try to use their "victim" status to gain things, but these gains do not last or truly help. Because of this, he says Black people should stop "buying into this zero-sum game." Instead, they should focus on a "culture of excellence and achievement" without relying on special help or benefits.
Views on Barack Obama
In 2007, Steele wrote a short book called A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. In this book, Steele looked closely at Barack Obama's life. Obama was born to parents of different races and grew up as a Black man. Steele concluded that Obama was "bound" to his "black identity."
Steele explained his idea:
There is a price to be paid even for fellow-traveling with a racial identity as politicized and demanding as today's black identity. This identity wants to take over a greater proportion of the self than other racial identities do. It wants to have its collective truth—its defining ideas of grievance and protest—become personal truth.... These are the identity pressures that Barack Obama lives within. He is vulnerable to them because he has hungered for a transparent black identity much of his life. He needs to 'be black.' And this hunger—no matter how understandable it may be—means that he is not in a position to reject the political liberalism inherent in his racial identity. For Obama liberalism is blackness.
After Obama won the 2008 U.S. presidential election, Steele explained his book. He said the part of the title "Why He Can't Win" was a marketing idea from the publisher. He explained Obama's victory by comparing him to jazz musician Louis Armstrong. Armstrong sometimes acted in ways that made White people accept him. Steele believes Obama's win helped White Americans, who had felt blamed for racism, feel "off the hook."
He said that White America has made great moral progress since the 1960s. He felt that Obama's election was a chance to show this progress.
Views on Israel
Shelby Steele has also shared his thoughts on how the world views Israel. He has been critical of what he calls "world opinion" about Israel.
He wrote:
At every turn "world opinion," like a schoolmarm, takes offense and condemns Israel for yet another infraction of the world's moral sensibility. And this voice has achieved an international political legitimacy so that even the silliest condemnation of Israel is an opportunity for self-congratulation.
Rock bands now find moral imprimatur in canceling their summer tour stops in Israel (Elvis Costello, the Pixies, the Gorillaz, the Klaxons). A demonstrator at an anti-Israel rally in New York carries a sign depicting the skull and crossbones drawn over the word "Israel." White House correspondent Helen Thomas, in one of the ugliest incarnations of this voice, calls on Jews to move back to Poland. And of course the United Nations and other international organizations smugly pass one condemnatory resolution after another against Israel while the Obama administration either joins in or demurs with a wink.
What Killed Michael Brown?
What Killed Michael Brown? is a documentary film written and told by Shelby Steele. His son, Eli Steele, directed it. The film was released in October 2020. It looks at how different races get along in the United States. It focuses on an event in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 involving Michael Brown.
Steele believes there is a "poetic truth" about Michael Brown's death. He said that phrases like "he was executed" or "hands up, don't shoot" were powerful examples of "poetic truth." He meant they were lies that society could believe to gain power. Steele also said that this situation shows where race relations are today, where "the truth has no chance."
The company Amazon first did not want to show the film on its streaming service, Amazon Prime Video. But after people wrote articles in newspapers like The Wall Street Journal criticizing Amazon, the company decided to show the film.
Awards and Recognition
- National Book Critics Circle Award (1990) for his book The Content of Our Character.
- Emmy and Writers Guild Awards for his 1991 Frontline documentary film Seven Days in Bensonhurst.
See also
- Black conservatism in the United States
