Says on a panel "white Americans have made more moral progress in the last forty years than any people in the history of the human conditions." I think this is the sort of thing that gets you invited back to tony gatherings at scenic resorts.
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Shelby Steele Hearts White People
01 Jul 2008 04:42 pm
Comments (37)
Hey, Matt, the Stuff White People Like book is out today. Are you going to demand a share of royalties?
doesn't steele remind you of a character from a ralph ellison novel? my god, what you have to say to keep your place at the wingnut trough (steele's a fellow over at the hoover institute).
it's as if nothing has changed in the 20 years since he wrote "i'm black, you're white".
oh, i suppose it has: us whiteboys have morally improved, thank you very much!
"white Americans have made more moral progress in the last forty years than any people in the history of the human conditions."
How do you even quantify that? I would say that German's move from the Holocaust to pacifism is pretty big as well. This is just a made-up rhetoric to maintain his popularity with white conservatives (many of them intellectual descendants of the white people against white Americans making such moral progress).
This is kind of an asinine statement. White people haven't made moral progress. Some white people have made moral progress; others - voters from West Virginia - have not.
Races don't make moral progress. People make moral progress.
What a sweet way of saying that white folks have no chance of winning MVP on the moral front, "but, hey, you're a shoe in for the Most Improved trophy!"
Now, is that my English half or my German half ... or my Scots-Irish 1/32? (OK, so it doesn't add up to 100% due to rounding errors)?
Well, when the base is so low it's not hard to go up a lot. We no longer regularly engage in horrible killings of black people as public spectacle designed to instill fear into them. We no longer consider it unthinkable to drink from the same water fountain. We no longer think we might have to destroy half a town or string black people from trees because they might have looked at a white woman. So yes, lots of moral progress, but when you start from unspeakable barbarism that doesn't mean all that much on some absolute level.
With one statement at the Aspen Ideas Festival, Shelby Steele has managed to displace Douglas Feith as "the dumbest motherf...er on the planet."
I don't really care what Mr. Foote thinks about anything. With his comment about Iraq reported by you earlier, he revealed himself as a moral monster whose opinions are entirely without value.
Wait, is this still going on? Somebody tell Steele that black Americans started supporting Obama after he showed that he had a chance to actually win, and that race-baiting had little to do with it.
The whole world has shown an unbelievable moral progress in the past 40 years. Obviously there are exceptions, but many things are no longer allowed to take place across the globe. This statement is stupid. It means nothing.
Isn't it awesome how white people have eliminated racism over the past 40 years? As a white man, I've gotta say that I am morally awesome!
The progress must be a side effect of all the moral clarity that's been going around.
Who knew Uncle Ruckus was a real person?
"I think this is the sort of thing that gets you invited back to tony gatherings at scenic resorts."
No, the opposite. Those whites want to hear how bad whites are, which they take to mean white people other than those of their own economic status and left-liberal political bent.
What a fucking crock, comparing Shelby Steele to Uncle Ruckus. This faux sympathy by wealthy, elitist liberals for minorities, with its gross exaggerations, is exactly what convinces its mostly a status game.
Not only that, but we are so damn dumb we are cowed into submission by the anonymous black man who sounds suspiciously like a Sailer commenter.
This faux sympathy by wealthy, elitist liberals for minorities
You forgot the "high-tech lynching" part.
Of course it's unfair to compare Steele to Uncle Ruckus. Uncle Ruckus isn't in it for the money.
Most improved is such a nasty award.
Mr. Steele, like Mr. Larry Elder and Mr. Tomas Sowell is your garden variety Uncle Tom. One of my biggest gripes is that these are the token blacks the cable news shows put on, even though 90% of black Americans vote Democratic. Mr. Steele and his compatriots are about as representative of black Americans as Norman Finkelstein is of Jewish Americans or Don Black is of Caucasian Americans.
That's it, I'm becoming a Black Conservative© right now. I'm tired of being lost in the jumble of the other 93% black Dems out there. I figure, as Black Conservative©, I have a 50/50 shot to get regular TV spots and a cushy think-tank gig. Give me the asinine 2 minutes with a confused white liberal on CNN, that I can parlay into a bi-weekly column in the NY Sun. I can run at the mouth with the best of them!
Steele: "white Americans have made more moral progress"
I did. I dropped that stupid morality shit years ago.
Dumped ethics, too.
All I have left are principles and correctness - which is enough.
Hey, SLC, Norman Finkelstein is more representative of American Jews than you are or your hero, Netanyahu. That was proven when the Israelis prevented him from visiting Israel for the next ten years recently. Any Jew the Israelis hate must be all right.
"Mr. Steele, like Mr. Larry Elder and Mr. Tomas Sowell is your garden variety Uncle Tom."
And there are also many an Uncle Tim. But of all the Uncle Tims out there, one man is clearly the Uncle Timmiest:
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2008/06/uncle-tim.html
Re Richard Steven Hack
Actually, oddly enough I don't think banning Finkelstein was the correct move. After all, the Government of Israel allowed Walt and Mearsheimer to lecture at Hebrew Un., and they're just as bad as Finkelstein.
Shelby Steele is sickening. He's what people used to call an "Uncle Tom."
Shelby Steele is full of self-loathing -- and he hates despises both races he belongs to. Race is all the guy can think about, and it's what he's built his whole career on (by being the naysayer), and now Obama is proving that race doesn't matter nearly as much any more to most people as it does to him.
Why do he and others of his ilk even get a forum anymore? He's gonna be eating crow bigtime when Obama wins. His obsolescence will be complete.
"and now Obama is proving that race doesn't matter nearly as much any more to most people as it does to him."
Of course, Obama proves that race doesn't matter anymore. That's why Obama wrote a 442 page autobiography that he subtitled "Not a Story of Race and Inheritance."
"He's what people used to call an Uncle Tom."
Just because his chosen profession is bashing African Americans on behalf of white conservatives...
White society has made a great deal of moral progress in the last forty years. I doubt that white people have. I suspect most of the progress in white society comes not from genuine changes of heart but rather from cohort replacement.
On another note, "Uncle Tom" is an offensive racial slur, and anyone in this thread using it ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Got to agree with you on that, SLC. It was stupid PR on Israel's part.
But then, imperialist, racist, fascist Nazis tend to go overboard on the hating and it makes them clumsy. You know, shooting little girls, running over people with bulldozers, etc.
Tacky.
More than South African whites? Hmm...
Was this comment thread intended us a parody of self-righteous liberals, or did it just turn out that way unexpectedly?
Honestly, calling a black guy an uncle Tom because he doesn't hate white people enough? This is what you've become?
Re Greg
I am a great believer in the notion that if the shoe fits, one should wear it and the Uncle Tom shoe fits Steele and his ilk quite well.
Re Richard Steven Hack
I'm sure that Mr. Hack had an orgasm this morning over the following news story.
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1214726186987&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Just as he would have had an orgasm if he had wasted the bank teller he robbed at gunpoint in order to get money to feed his smack habit.
I don't know the context of the statement, so it's hard to comment on it. I will say this.
I think one of the ways to measure moral progress is to gauge how much a society has sacrificed to reach certain goals. What have white Americans "sacrificed" in their road to a higher morality? So they no longer call black men "boy" and force them to sit in the back of the bus... is that a sacrifice?
This is harsh, yes. But the idea of giving people "credit" for behavior they should have been exhibiting all along is troubling to me.
Perhaps it is fair to say progress has been made. But is the glass half full or half empty? How far or close are we to being a society where race and class are not obstacles to pursuing life, liberty, and the pursuit of property? Once we've fully removed those stumbling blocks, then maybe I can make a toast with Mr Steele.
PS: Mr Steele is biracial. So, I guess you could say he hearts himself.
SLC: Since I don't read the Jerusalem Post every morning, it was hard for my orgasm to be stimulated by anything more than the usual Angelina Jolie images on my desktop wallpaper.
However, clearly this bulldozer move was in solidarity with the Corrie case, not to mention the bulldozing of Palestinian buildings, farms, and people. It would have been smarter if the guy had used it to bulldoze the Knesset, but as usual terrorists aren't very competent.
And once again, SLC, I have never used drugs of any kind except multivitamins. The Federal Probation office didn't even bother assigning me to drug counseling during my supervised release period.
The only smack habit I have is a desire to smack your fat face. Bwahahahahahahah!!!
Re Richard Steven Hack
"The Federal Probation office didn't even bother assigning me to drug counseling during my supervised release period."
Nice to know that 9 years going cold turkey was effective in Mr. Hacks' case.
Comments closed July 15, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
YEAAAAAAAHHHHHH MMMEEEEEEE!!! Let me pat myself on the back a few times. Wow, that feels good! Are there any other minorities there who are willing to absolve me of prejudice toward their group?
Posted by citizen (world) | July 1, 2008 4:47 PM