With a reply
Steele, Shelby
Shelby Steele Replies Martin Kilson is arguing with a phantom of his own making. Yet I am grateful for his letter because it so vividly illustrates the distorting powers of the enemy-memory that...
...If it is true that racism is still a barrier for blacks (and I believe it is), then it is also true that we are no longer a powerless people "conditioned and calibrated" by vicious whites...
...Individuals don't get civil rights legislation passed...
...But I feel sure that Kilson is not labeling me in this way because his heart is convinced of my right-wing conservatism...
...We must 522 • DISSENT COMMUNICATION struggle on both fronts, individually and collectively— though the burden of educational and economic development will fall more on the individual and the burden of struggling against racism more on the group...
...Is it impossible to imagine that I might simultaneously encourage more individual initiative among blacks and also support government programs and interventions that contribute to black uplift...
...Yet I am grateful for his letter because it so vividly illustrates the distorting powers of the enemy-memory that I discussed in my essay...
...I suppose the real question is, why does he need to think of me in this way...
...I especially favor programs that intervene in early childhood—earlier even than Head Start—to instill the attitudes and skills in parents as well as children that make it possible to break the cycle of poverty...
...Kilson is signaling the good readers of Dissent that I am not the sort of man to whom they should listen...
...groups do...
...I wish Mr...
...But then he attributes to me the "claim" that this can be done without "reference to America's racist past and this past's current vestiges...
...And behind this labeling I sense a certain fear...
...I think the enemymemory is a problem for blacks, and I also believe that a knowledge of it is as likely to inspire compassion as hostility in whites...
...FALL • 1990 • 523...
...We don't have one problem...
...At the end of his letter Kilson throws me a nice bone before delivering his last kick...
...Nor did I say that racial development was the only response to racism...
...I also think it is a mistake to fret terribly much about whether whites will use what we say against us...
...And if he read mine, why would he fabricate such a statement and paste it to my forehead...
...I am one of them, an enemy he remembers...
...Kilson fails to understand my point: both racism and a lack of development are problems for blacks...
...And here I can only stop and wonder at the man...
...I also never said that "no public policy solution is applicable" to black problems...
...Even I, as a well-known pet of the neoconservatives, cannot bring myself to flatter whites in this way...
...Racism still exists...
...Kilson that my essay was on the enemy-memory, one aspect of black difficulty...
...But the effect of indulging it is absolutely to straitjacket the discussion of racial problems in America...
...I think it's all a matter of tactics...
...Having read my Kafka very well, I know that it can be futile to deny accusations that aren't true in the first place...
...He agrees that blacks must "ultimately" master individual initiative— a sporting if qualified concession...
...My answer is that he mischaracterizes my arguments and then attacks the mischaracterizations...
...There are hints of the slave mentality in such a preoccupation...
...What essay did he read...
...individuals do...
...In his letter I see myself built up and transformed by his imaginings, dressed in a conservative suit of his making...
...It is also the lens of this memory that he is peering through when he continually calls me a neoconservative and a right-winger—code for being outside the church...
...I can only remind Mr...
...It is absurd to assume that one essay can address this and public policy questions as well...
...And if it is just, it will not be weakened by any amount of self-examination...
...we have two, and the two are not mutually exclusive...
...This is the sort of license Kilson grants himself by casting me as stooge for some imaginary cabal of neoconservatives who loathe government programs...
...I believe he fears that whites will take this statement as license to minimize these barriers and so absolve themselves of obligation to their former victims...
...One will note in his letter the virtual tribute he pays to the continuing power of white racism to constrict black life: "Life chances of most black individualistic achievers are intricately conditioned and calibrated by myriad vicious racist patterns and motifs...
...We either have a just cause or we don't...
...If one does not look critically at black life for fear of giving solace to hostile whites, the result is both blindness and silence...
...To suggest that the memory of oppression can cause blacks to exaggerate the barriers they still face is, by Kilson's lights, a dangerous thing to say...
...Groups don't learn to read well or open businesses...
...But then quite apart from the tactics of racial politics, Kilson feels that I am simply wrong...
...Nevertheless, let me announce that I do not think of myself as either of these things...
...It is not...
...I think it is the enemy-memory that leads Kilson to see lizards and call them dragons...
...Yes, he seems to think, now he has me...
...Kilson to know that I, too, share this fear, as I believe many whites do as well...
...What Kilson misses as he places blacks in this Skinner box of racist conditioning is the vast power he is ascribing to whites and the corresponding impotence he is ascribing to blacks...
...How boring to lead one's intellectual life under the flag of a wisdom that is no more than received...
...I said nowhere in the essay that civil rights legislation "magically resolved" the "violent racist past" under which blacks lived...
...This is precisely the sort of self-defeating paradigm the enemy-memory pulls forward from the past and imposes on the present...
Vol. 37 • September 1990 • No. 4
