The Deceits of Racism

...Desperate to demonstrate their virtuousness, win forgiveness and regain their imperative, white liberals began to endorse "an engineered racial equality" through various affirmative-action schemes...

...and felt blacks had survived "the same bigotry that was crippling him...

...His father, an Ashkenazi, idolized Martin Luther King Jr...

...He speaks, too, of his own malignant suspicions that he lost out on a prestigious fellowship in his college years because he was white and the judges were looking for a black...

...Berger's book tries to offer the kind of introspection Clinton failed to elicit...

...For example, he argues that the "classless society" of the Soviet Union was a reaction to the inequities of feudal Russia, that the "Aryan supremacy" of Nazi Germany was a reaction to that nation's humiliation after World War I, and that America's goals regarding diversity and multiculturalism were a reaction to its being ashamed of its racism in the 1960s...

...His reasoning goes like this: After the Civil Rights Revolution of the 1960s, whites were stripped of their moral authority...

...Steele perceives a Hobbesian bargain between white liberals and what he calls the black "grievance elite": By supporting affirmative action, liberals can get the moral absolution they crave, while civil rights leaders can ignore the treacherous problems of black achievement and push instead for entitlements and group preferences...

...Working the crowd like a talk-show host, Clinton explained himself this way: "What we are trying to do here is drop a pebble in the pond and have it reverberate all across America, because I honestly believe this is a good country full of good people...

...Americans are simply not ready to talk about these things in public," Maurice Berger observes in White Lies...

...In addition, Steele might have told Clinton that—whatever the injustices blacks have suffered in history—success is not something guilty whites can arbitrarily confer upon them...

...Are America's racial problems only about white attitudes...

...They went heavy on the empty but amiable platitudes...

...In December 1997 he went to the University of Akron to engage 60 ordinary citizens and several prominent authors in a heart-to-heart encounter session...

...24.00...

...To be honest about race demands that one be honest about one's racial attitudes...

...Most of the people on stage that day declined to donate their racial notions for use as laboratory specimens...

...We have a long way to go...

...These personal pieces— interspersed with the words of writers like James Baldwin and the voices of everyday New Yorkers—are engaging and credible...

...Everyone wins—except, of course, black students who too often remain uncompetitive...

...The way to move toward a more equal society is through stronger competition by African-Americans for the best jobs and places at the best colleges...

...What we didn't predict was the way these programs would expand to include an ever-widening array of groups with an ever-widening list of grievances...

...His case is compelling, and it is a pity he wasn't there when Clinton met with nine conservatives in the White House to discuss race a few weeks after the Akron meeting...

...If black equality were truly the goal, wouldn't policy focus on educational development before college...

...As predicted, the whole extravaganza changed exactly nothing...

...As I recall it, affirmative action made sense to many of us in the '60s as a temporary way to hasten integration...

...Yet ultimately, blacks must win this game themselves...

...Maybe, but the Akron program—part of the President's Initiative on Race— didn't work...

...As for talk therapy, well, the President's Initiative on Race ended with a whimper a few months ago...

...And to this day," Steele thunders, "the liberal looks at black difficulties—high crime rates, weak academic performance, illegitimacy rates, and so on—and presumes them to be the result of victimizing forces beyond the control of blacks...

...Reformed public schools are important and so are public programs that can help stabilize urban family life...

...Shelby Steele flails away at the very issues Berger tiptoes around—using all the subtlety of an air raid siren...

...Steele might have explained that—if nothing else—there is merit in obliging blacks to compete directly with whites...

...Will a new chorus of white mea culpas make minority children perform better in impoverished urban school districts...

...Indeed, without the revelation of this ugly stuff, serious racial discussions are bound to fall flat...

...And he doesn't seem all that enamored of the bare-your-soul school of racial redemption...

...Meanwhile, as universities offer admissions preferences to black students...

...But he can't stand their "moral self-preoccupation...

...Furthermore, Steele contends, while white liberals hold their own children to high competitive standards as a matter of survival, they exempt black youngsters from the same rigors...

...Still, for all his hyperbole, Steele gets it about right...

...By contrast, in A Dream Deferred...

...What we didn't expect was the absence of a fully integrated society three decades after the Civil Rights Revolution ended...

...The conservative does not deny this as a possibility but refuses to presume it...

...He angrily argues that this fixation on absolution has actually made white liberals dangerous to blacks...

...And if equality of performance between blacks and whites were the goal, wouldn't blacks be held to the same standards as whites precisely so they could achieve that equality...

...Americans can publicly ponder the deceits and ironies of racism forever, but— at this point in our history—will it really change anything...

...His mother, who was Sephardic, tried to deny her own dark color by scorning blacks...

...In attempting to undo our bigotry, it is ultimately these personal, and somewhat banal, attitudes that are our greatest enemy," Berger writes...

...It's a crucial question, yet none of the conservatives in the room exactly slam-dunked it...

...The fear of revealing these dirty secrets has hindered race talk for decades...

...The sad fact is, heartfelt words can't buy us absolution, and neither can another 30 years of Federal social engineering...

...Steele says, "this student group has the highest dropout rate and lowest grade point average of any student group...

...It is simply racist to assume blacks may never rise to the challenge...

...Bill Clinton thought so...

...As evidence, he cites the phenomenon of white Americans who tell pollsters they plan to vote for a black candidate, but once inside the voting booth, pull the lever for a white one...

...Reviewed by Joseph Dolman Editorial writer, "Newsday" Can talk therapy save America's race-tormented soul...

...185 pp...

...Their official rationalization was black victimization...

...Berger also introduces us to an assistant principal who tells him in the ninth grade that "schvartzes are slow learners...

...We can only achieve real absolution through policies that promote honest-to-goodness racial equality...

...The values that lead to success must be internalized...

...Well, wait a minute...

...Had we done nothing, it would have been eons before the Alabama state police hired its first black trooper or the University of Georgia built a substantial black enrollment...

...Yet without the principles of individual merit, hard work, delayed gratification, and personal responsibility, blacks can never achieve true equality...

...He perceives a white nation in denial—hypersensitive to charges of racial bigotry but reluctant to admit and to change its own racist attitudes...

...Forall their richness, though, where are they supposed to take us...

...Berger and Steele do make one point in common...

...As a black conservative, Steele says he appreciates white liberals for one thing: They grasp that history has given them a responsibility to overcome racism...

...Liberal absolution may have been part of the equation from the very start, but for most Americans, I believe, the basic principles of affirmative action simply seemed pragmatic and fair...

...A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America By Shelby Steele HarperCollins...

...Will more white contritionmean that someday our prisons won't be disproportionately filled with minority men...

...Clinton kept asking the group: If we end affirmative action, what do we put in its place...

...That is something the grievance elite might want to remember the next time it heads to Washington to lobby for some tired old racialpreference program...

...He hoped the colloquy would put some common racial fallacies on the table for dissection and lead to a better understanding among the citizenry...

...In short, New York's black populace amounted to something of a Rorschach test for the couple...

...Born to Orthodox Jewish parents, he was raised in public housing on Manhattan's Lower East Side...

...In a series of artful vignettes, he describes the development of his racial views...

...One quarrel: Steele is sometimes given to overstatement...

...They each observe that white people—racists and liberals alike—tend to interact with blacks in ways that satisfy their own needs first...

...What we didn't foresee was the political pressure that would mobilize to carve group rights into stone—like an heirloom handed down for generations...