Shelby Steele

Shelby Steele (born 1946, Chicago) is an American author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, specialising in the study of race relations, multiculturalism and affirmative action. In 1990, he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in the general non-fiction category for his book "The Content of Our Character". [cite web|url=http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=pastAwards|title="Past winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award|publisher=National Book Critics Circle|accessdate=2007-01-21]

Biography

Steele was born to a black father and a white mother. His twin brother is Claude Steele. Shelby Steele received a B.A. in political science from Coe College, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah.

Political opinions

On race relations

Steele is a self-described Black conservative.cite book|title=The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=Harper Perennial|date=1991-09-01|isbn=0-060-97415-X] He opposes movements such as affirmative action, which he considers to be unsuccessful liberal campaigns to promote equal opportunity for African-Americans. He contends that blacks have been "twice betrayed": first, by slavery and oppression, and second, by group preferences mandated by the government that discourage self-agency and personal responsibility in blacks.cite book|title=White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=HarperCollins|date=2006-05-02|isbn=0-060-57862-9]

Steele believes that the use of victimization is the greatest hindrance for black Americans. In his view, white Americans see blacks as victims to ease their guilty conscience, while blacks attempt to turn their status as victims into a kind of currency with no purchasing power. Therefore, he claims, blacks must stop "buying into this zero-sum game" by adopting a "culture of excellence and achievement" without relying on "set-asides and entitlements."

On Barack Obama

Steele has written a short book "A Bound Man: Why We are Excited about Obama and Why He Can't Win", published in January 2008, which contains Steele's analysis of Barack Obama's character as a child born to a mixed couple who then has to grow as a black man. [Shelby Steele, [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120579535818243439.html The Obama Bargain] , The Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2008] Steele then concludes that Barack Obama is a "bound man" to his "black identity." Steele gives this description of his conclusion:

"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."

Works

Books

*cite book|title=|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=Harper Perennial|date=1991-09-01|isbn=0-060-97415-X
*cite book|title=|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=Harper Perennial|year=1999-11-01|isbn=0-060-93104-3
*cite book|title=|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=HarperCollins|date=2006-05-02|isbn=0-060-57862-9
*cite book|title=|author=Steele, Shelby|publisher=HarperCollins|date=2007-12-04|isbn=1-4165-5917-5

Documentary films

*cite episode
title = Seven Days in Bensonhurst
url = http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/programs/info/813.html
series = PBS Frontline
serieslink = PBS Frontline
credits = Steele, Shelby (narrator)
network = PBS
station = WGBH, Boston
airdate = 1990-05-11
*cite episode
title = Jefferson's Blood
url = http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/
series = PBS Frontline
serieslink = PBS Frontline
credits = Steele, Shelby (writer, narrator)
network = PBS
station = WGBH, Boston
airdate = 2000-05-03

Awards

*National Book Critics Circle Award (1990) in the general non-fiction category for the book "The Content of Our Character". [cite web|url=http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=pastAwards|title="Past winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award|publisher=National Book Critics Circle|accessdate=2007-01-21]
*Emmy and Writers Guild Awards for his 1991 "Frontline" documentary film "Seven Days in Bensonhurst". [cite web|url=http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/jefferson/etc/steele.html|title=Brief information about Shelby Steele|publisher=PBS|accessdate=2007-01-21]

References

External links

* [http://www.hoover.org/bios/steele Shelby Steele's biography at the Hoover Institution web-site]
* [http://authors.aalbc.com/shelby_steele.htm Shelby Steele's biography in the African-American Literature Book Club]
* [http://radio.nationalreview.com/betweenthecovers/post/?q=ZTZlNzEzM2RhYTcwOWQ0Y2I1ZGI3NzZjMTM3NDg1ZTU= Audio interview with National Review Online]