Shelby Steele Quotes

Blacks who lack a proper killing rage are merely victims.

White Americans believe we've made more progress since the end of slavery in 1865 than do black Americans for whom '12 Years a Slave' documents a collective memory, passed down in the genes and by the lore of generations.

Poor privileged white men. Their stranglehold on power is slowly being loosened.

America says we are a great democratic society and other people should follow our example. Well, I say we benefited from slavery, and as a nation, we never faced that because the people in power chose not to.

I spent my life navigating systems built upon me - a black child in America - not making it out.

You can be poor, middle class, or rich - it doesn't matter. The black card will still confer upon you an entire history of oppression, even if you've never been oppressed. Flash the black card, and most white people will cower.

The prison industrial system, things like that are cleverly put in place to attempt to marginalize a certain group of people - and it's not only black, it's replete across the American society.

Black America surely faces an existential crisis, but not the one imagined in the condescending news media - of somehow getting non-black America to be more just and generous. The truth is, we've already been through that, and there is nothing left to do. We're out of 'affirmative actions' of all kinds.

Most of today's black convicts have come to understand that they are the most abused victims of an unrighteous order.

Too often, systems of oppression turn those who are the targets of the oppression against one another.

If blacks are oppressed in America, why isn't there a black exodus?

Other than their own advancement, I am at a loss to understand what is it that the so-called black conservatives are so anxious to conserve.

The South politician preaches to the poor white man, "You got more than the blacks, don't complain. You're better than them, you been born with white skin," they explain. And the Negro's name Is used, it is plain, For the politician's gain, As he rises to fame And the poor white remains On the caboose of the train; But it ain't him to blame -- He's only a pawn in their game.

If you are attempting to study American history, and you don't understand the force of white supremacy, you fundamentally misunderstand America.

I'm not familiar particularly with Hillary Clinton's neighborhood, but I wish people were a little bit more curious about what we call privilege and about why it's there. Black people in this country have no choice but to be curious. We have to know. I wish folks would do a little bit more investigation.

The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as largely disposable.

Part of what our problem as blacks in America is that we don't claim that. Partly, you see, because of the linguistic environment in which we live.

I became aware of how the world is and how the white establishment plays black people against each other.

That's the nightmare for Elizabeth Warren, because I can attack her from the left. I can say, 'Wait a minute, what do you know about the journey of a person of color? You know nothing. This is all theory to you. Because you did lie. You took advantage of affirmative action.'

We live in a capitalist society and if we're talking about the people at the bottom of the food chain, it's women of colour.

I was fortunate to be raised in Seattle, which was amazing, but that doesn't take away from the fact I was still a black kid growing up in America.

The history of racial violence in our country is both omnipresent and unspoken. It is a smog that surrounds us that few will admit is there.

Black women's lives have never been shown any value in America.

If I just point out the fact that black people hurt each other, too, then we can ignore the fact that other people harm black people. I think it's an irresponsible argument.

In the public eye, being a victim of past injustices does not win the right to propagate current and future ones, and that's intolerable to those in charge of the race industry today, whose power relies on maintaining forever a latent rage that can be turned on and off at the will of the nation's elites.