MARK LEVIN, HOST: Hello America, I Am Mark Levin and this is "Life, Liberty & Levin," I have a great guest, Shelby Steele, how are you, sir.
SHELBY STEELE, SENIOR FELLOW, HOOVER INSTITUTION: I am good.
LEVIN: It's a great honor to see you.
–– ADVERTISEMENT ––
STEELE: Thanks for having me.
LEVIN: I have been a fan of yours for years and years, first time we're meeting.
STEELE: Well, it's mutual.
LEVIN: Thank you. You are an author, columnist. You've done documentary films. You're a senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution. You specialize in the study of race relation, multiculturalism, affirmative action. You were born in Chicago - January 1, 1946. Your father, Shelby, Senior was a truck driver; met your mother, Ruth, as a social worker while working for Congress of Racial Equality. You hold a PhD in English from the University of Utah, an MA in Sociology from Southern Illinois University, a BA in Political Science from Coe College at Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Your latest book - it is a great book, too, is "Shame: How America's Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country." You're a pretty courageous man in my view, you write things beautifully, your logic is outstanding.
STEELE: Well, thank you.
LEVIN: And yet, some people consider it controversial, I don't. I consider it common sense. I'll give you an example. You wrote a few months ago in "Wall Street Journal" on this so-called protest with the football players taking the knee during the National Anthem.
STEELE: Yes.
LEVIN: Among other things you said, "It's not surprising then that these black football players would don the mantle of protest," because you say protest is something that black Americans have had to do for Civil Rights. You look at Martin Luther King. You look at Jackie Robinson in sports, and so forth and so on, and you say, the surprise was that it didn't work this time.
"They had misread the historic moment, they were not speaking truth to power, rather they were figures of pathos, mindlessly loyal to a black identity that had run its course," so you say in the article, "Look, protest is a good thing." Protest sometimes is necessary, right, to get vote, to get equal rights, to draw the attention of society and so forth, but this one fell on deaf ears. Explain.
STEELE: Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us. Beyond that, it's always interesting to note that it expanded the idea of democracy. Democracy had all of the theory, all of the thinking - before had never dealt with the clash between race and racism and democracy. Well, it was the Civil Right Movement, it was Martin Luther King who said, "You have to take and go beyond race even, that democracy is universal."
So that is a big part of the black American identity, and it is sort of seen as the test of your authenticity as a black, yet this protest in the NFL made the point that this was kind of fruitless at this point, and I think that central issue behind what you are talking about is the fact that the oppression of black Americans is over with.
STEELE: It's over with.
STEELE: It's over with. I grew up, I mean, it was - we never thought there would be an end to oppression. I remember being a teenager, I never thought that I'd live in a society that was not segregated. It happened. Now, are there exceptions? Yes, there are a few here and there. Will racism every completely go away? No, it is a part of the - as I say in that article, it is endemic to the human condition just as stupidity is endemic to the human condition. And so we'll always have to be on guard about it.
But we are at a point where the old fashion method of protest is obsolete. We need a lot of things, but we don't need that any more. We're at a point now where we can - we are a free people and can pursue our lives as we would like to.
LEVIN: You point out in the article in your thought process is that, that's part of the issue. We are a free people. We are all a free people.
STEELE: Yes.
LEVIN: We are not an oppressed people. Blacks are not an oppressed people quite frankly, Jews are not an oppressed people and so forth. This is America now. There is a history where there is oppression, obviously, slavery and segregation and so forth, but that is gone. And you say - and so some people are having difficulty coping with liberty. What do you mean by that?
STEELE: Absolutely. Well, when you think about it black American culture evolved over three and a half centuries. Every minute under which they lived under oppression and they adapted to dealing with the fact that those freedoms were going to be cut off. They had to somehow make a life within all of those restriction, and they did. Part of the - one of the - I think black American culture is nothing less than heroic. I mean, they evolved - look at the - you know, the contribution like music and so forth. They achieved great things.
The one thing we never had to do was to deal with freedom. That was precisely the thing that we denied, so that's not in our culture, in a vivid clear sense as it would be if we had been free - truly free. Well, we now are free. Freedom is, as the existentialist I think rightly say, a burden, it's a difficulty. It puts the individual in a position of being much more responsible for themselves, their own development as individuals and that is new for us.
The idea is still that black unity, we just can't be unified. That is the way ahead. Not anymore. You take yourself ahead. That's the new and stunning really fact of American life that we're now facing and having to deal with.
LEVIN: So, these football players. They are successful. They are wealthy in comparison to other citizens, whatever their race.
STEELE: They beat me.
LEVIN: They beat you. They beat a lot of people. And they are treated with great respect. I mean in terms of - the fans love them, they want their autograph, they buy things with their numbers and their names on it, and yet they protest. What exactly are they protesting?
STEELE: They are just stuck. You know, one of the ways we adapted to not being free was to think that our group identity was again, the way we were being black, and being down with the cards. That was the way we were going to get it. Unity was everything. And if you are authentically black, you are going to do what blacks have always done to one degree or another, you are going to protest.
Well, the irony is that you are making $15 million a year, you are making vast amounts of money doing successful in every way. You are free. There is nothing for you to protest. Nothing.
LEVIN: How about social justice? And equality? And the phrases like that? I hear that is what people say they are protesting.
STEELE: You've got all the social justice you need. Again, I lived through segregation. The freedom we have today is absolutely remarkable. We, as a people have not yet absorbed that. We have not absorbed the fact that our problem is no longer racism, our problem is freedom. We have to learn to deal with freedom, and only way to do that is to - it's going to have to be grounded in individual responsibility. That is the only chance you have with freedom, it's to take charge of your life and make a life for yourself.
Ralph Ellison, one of my all-time favorite writers talks about this, "The group is the gift of its individuals, the goal is not to create the uncreated conscience of your race, but to create the uncreated conscience of your face." And boy, that's 50 to 60 years ago, that is on the money. That is in his great book, "Invisible Man."
LEVIN: Do you think part of the problem is the daily recitation of group think, group rights? You get it a lot in our universities and colleges, you see it on television a lot. Politicians balkanizing the nation in order to empower themselves and their party and so forth. Isn't that part of the problem?
STEELE: What I think are you are pointing to is definitely maybe the overriding problem, which is - and we don't talk about it very much at all, is white guilt. And that keeps feeding whatever blacks are doing is not helping them, thinking of themselves as nothing more than members of a group, of protesting and so forth. It's white guilt that keeps feeding that. What is white guilt? We always - we think - well, I make up in the morning and you feel guilty about black Americans? No. White guilt doesn't have anything to do with actual feelings of guilt.
White guilt is the terror of being seen as a racist, as a bigot that now pervades American life. All of our social policy, our culture, everything is touched by this anxiety in most of white America. Understandably given America's history that they are vulnerable, they have this vulnerability to being disarmed of moral authority.
By being called a racist, I can use it as a weapon. I can say, "You know what? I went on the Levin Show, let me tell you how I was treated." And big - it explodes. So, it constitutes that is black power, white guilt is black power. They are virtually one and the same and one of the big problems we have is that we talk about universities and political correctness and so forth. These are all ways in which white Americans say, I'm innocent. I don't feel this way. I am not a bigot. I am not a racist. I am innocent.
And white guilt causes this drive to prove and establish innocence, and so then we have a whole generation of black leaders who do one thing, and one thing only, milk white guilt. And we're at a moment, I thought this protest was telling in that regard, kind of pointed in which culture meeting maybe turning because it was a fruitless protest. It achieved absolutely nothing.
LEVIN: Could the culture be turning? But the elites digging in?
STEELE: That is well said.
LEVIN: Because more and more, when I watch these debates on television and so forth, people very easily, almost casualty call people they disagree with racist. If they disagree with a political agenda, if they disagree with a particular issue - and most of that is come from the left, what do you make of that?
STEELE: Well, it's white guilt. This is meant to disarm you of moral authority. When they scream racism all of the time, "They're saying you're a racist." You don't have moral authority to deal with whatever issue or problem we are dealing with, because you are a racist, and, so therefore, you are morally compromised, and your moral authority - you don't have any moral authority and this is the seduction that people on left have fallen for. They then are given as award idea of their innocence.
LEVIN: I want to pursue this further when we return because I think it is very, very important. Ladies and gentlemen, you can watch me on LevinTV on our crtv.com network almost every week night. If you'd like to join us there, give us a call at 844-LEVIN-TV, 844-LEVIN-TV. We'd love to have you. We'll be right back.
Shelby Steele, I want to pick up on this issue of white guilt, and use of the word racism. I find it to be now an ideological tool of the left, more and more and more, if they disagree with a particular issue, and I'm speaking - I am generalizing. They disagree with a particular issue, then you are a racist. And somebody could be called a racist who is not a racist, has no history of being a racist, hasn't done a thing in their lives that indicate racism, do you see this, too?
STEELE: Absolutely. The other side of that is that because whites are still so vulnerable to that charge of being a racist, that is the power that the entire - all of the power of the American left is based on that guilt, that susceptibility, that terror of being seen as racist.
Not to introduce the presidential campaign, but Hillary Clinton and her deplorable statement, now famous, as a perfect example of saying, "These people are bigots and racists. I am innocent. You vote for me, you prove your innocence. I offer you an identity of innocence." Being liberal, being left is more an identity than anything else. This is the way I think of myself, as a decent civilized human being and those other people are contemptable, and so it works on a cultural level.
Now, I think the irony is that this is beginning to fade. You see signs of it cracking at this point that people don't take Maxine Waters seriously anymore. That is not Martin Luther King. When he came along, there were obvious terrible things, terrible discrimination behind every word he spoke and everybody knew it and there was really no debate about it. Racism was everywhere.
When the era of Maxine as some people now call it, there is nothing behind the protest.
LEVIN: But if you have a political mindset or a political party or a political ideology, that has to sustain this argument, even though as you say, this is a horrific past, but we're free. But the Democratic Party, not all of the people in the Democratic Party, but many of the spokesmen and leaders of the Democratic Party, they are not free this? Is it because they seek to keep people or stigmatize people? What is that all about?
STEELE: The essence of American liberalism, I think is the - again, the pursuit of innocence. Innocence of specifically the ugly American past. And that is why, because I am free of that ugliness and innocent of it, that is why you should vote for me. That is why you should let me change this aspect of the university system. That is why you should let me do any number of other things, not because I have better ideas, that I am a better problem solver, but because I offer this identity of innocence, which is now the, I think, big political problem that we have not identified up to this point.
But it is that susceptibility, that vulnerability in the political arena, people are going to play on it. They are going to exploit it. I can - and I have seen this. I have spent my adult lives in universities and you see reasonable, civilized decent people just fold up when the charge of racism is even hinted at.
They begin to sell out the quality of the university. One thing they invariably always absolutely do is lower standards. Remove western civilization from the curriculum. What are you doing? You think that's going to make you innocent? It makes you stupid. It makes you destructive. And black Americans, we need to understand the magnificent careful evolution of western civilization as much as anyone else does. So you're keeping us from it in saying, "Well, it's a bunch of white guys," I don't care. I need to know and be informed. I need to identify with the western civilization. I am a western person.
Black Americans are a western people. We evolved here in the west, thankfully.
LEVIN: In some cases, longer than most others?
STEELE: Certainly.
Continue reading: www.foxnews.com/transcript/2018/07/15/author-shelby-steele-on-race-relations-equality-in-america.html