Since the official formation of the United States of America in 1776, here is the ‘common sense’ introspection on ‘character’ by the people living in America by those that are willing and able to learn and work. This does ‘not’ apply to those who, for whatever reasons, are unable to learn and work. Constructive or destructive thought and behavior chooses you. Your choice it to accept it…or not.
When we succeed, is it due to entitlements or by filing grievances to reap rewards and gifts, or do we take responsibility for our own advancement?
When we fail do we take responsibility for our own behavior and/or poor performance in school, or do we place the blame elsewhere?
When we fail, do we depend on blaming ‘the system’ for ‘stacking the cards’ against us making us ‘a dependent’, or do we instead learn from ‘the system’ what it takes to become independent?
When we fail, do we accuse others for our failure, or do we refuse to stop trying?
When we fail, do we manipulate or blackmail others making them feel guilty for our own failure, or do we look inward and fight to strengthen our own weaknesses?
When we fail, do we cower and call ourselves victims because we have too often been told that it is too difficult, we cannot do better and we will always need help, or do we stand up each and every time we get knocked down reclaiming our independence no matter what the cost?
When we fail, is it due to cruel and prolonged unjust treatment, or is it because nobody ever bothers to tell us the truth?
When we fail, do we resort to emotional, inflamed rhetoric to persuade ourselves and others, or do we reason with ourselves and others using logic and insight?
When we fail, is it due to the society we live in, or due to the decline of the family in society and how we were raised?
When we fail, do we “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” These were the famous words spoken by former President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 1963.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCES: AMERICAN ACADEMIC, SHELBY STEELE and SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE NEWSPAPER MAY 15, 2006 and THE SONG: WHAT’S GOING ON BY MARVIN GAYE, 1971
Shelby Steele was a literature professor at San Jose State University in California, and until the late 1980s, he embraced a political belief system that was solidly liberal. However, he came to feel marginalized by liberals who always figured he was an “automatic” supporter of liberal thoughts and values just because he is African American.
When he did not always ‘fall in line’ with the progressive, ‘prevailing attitude’, group think, he became, in his words, “the skunk at the picnic.” By 1991, Steele had left San Jose State, stopped teaching and turned his focus toward social criticism. He says, “I lost almost all the friends I had. I alienated myself from the academic world almost entirely because it’s a left-wing world.”
It was then Shelby Steele got his first taste of being stigmatized by the label he calls “black conservative — one of the worst things you can be labeled in American society because white liberals get offended, white conservatives are embarrassed and blacks feel betrayed.” He goes on to say, “Black identity since the ’60s has been a totalitarian identity. It’s enforced. And if you don’t subscribe to the party line, then you are a betrayer and a dissident, and you are treated as badly as the dissidents were treated in the Soviet Union during most of the 20th Century.”
Steele does not see himself as a black conservative. He calls himself a ‘free-market conservative’, in favor of small government, with libertarian views on abortion rights. Steele says, “I’ve got political views on some things that put me on the left, others that put me on the right.”
Shelby Steele was reared in Chicago by a white mother, who worked as a social worker, and a black father, 46 years his elder, who drove a truck. Starting with a paper route in sixth grade, growing up he always held a job. Steele says, “I had bought my own clothes since the seventh grade, and paid the main portion of my college tuition. When people try to discredit you, they look for every reason under the sun to do it. I’ve been black every minute of my life…happily so. My mother was the one who told me, don’t you ever forget you’re black. There were never any delusions in my family about being black.”
Steele’s children have sometimes suffered the anger and controversy that his writing provokes, and he says, “I regret that.”
But Steele is proud that he has contributed to a dialogue that he finds necessary. Steele says, “I think of myself as someone who just happens to be part of an inevitable historical correction. If I give myself credit for anything, it is simply that I sort of saw this coming — and began to really explore it and think about it and articulate it. It’s a shame that whites and blacks can’t have any dialogue on the subject of race, that white guilt clouds cross-racial relationships like a lingering ether. There’s a stalemate between the races: a tacit agreement that each side keep its distance. We’re very programmed to keep that conversation within narrow limits. And I hate that. It cuts me off from people. I’ve caught my share of hell in writing what I’ve written, however, it has also provided me with the great benefit that I can talk to anybody now about anything, racially and otherwise. And people feel comfortable with me. They know whatever we talk about I’m not going to hold it against them, get angry and tell them they’ve defamed my whole race.”
Steele admits he does not know everything about race relations and says, “I’m ignorant about certain things. So what. Inform me then but don’t put me down. I wish more blacks had that point of view.”
MAY 15, 2006