Shelby Steele Quotes

If you want to understand America, it's slavery.

For centuries in this country, black people were seen as three-fifths of a person. So when you hear the national anthem or you see an American flag as an African American person who has experienced the effects of that dehumanizing existence, it's not going to mean the same.

The challenges African-Americans are facing today are rooted in the system of slavery.

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

For a black student to work in southwest Mississippi for example - or in the Delta in 1960, 1961, 1962 - was high-risk work.

I'm the descendant of enslaved black people in this country. You could've been born in 1820 if you were black and looked back to your ancestors and saw nothing but slaves all the way back to 1619. Look forward another 50 or 60 years and saw nothing but slaves.

What we fly today is not an enduring symbol of our heritage, but the fighting flag of those who wanted to preserve a segregated South.

Nobody really loves America more than black Americans, because black Americans loved America even when America didn’t love us back

If you read the 13th Amendment, it doesn't talk about narratives of racial difference. It doesn't talk about ideologies of white supremacy. It only talks about involuntary servitude and forced labor.

The Negro was freed and turned loose as a penniless, landless, naked, ignorant laborer. Ninety-nine per cent were field hands and servants of the lowest class.

I've heard it said that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it. To that end, I think it's worth noting that the very first police force in America was created as a 'patrol' to keep slave populations under control.

I came into my teens unaware that most Americans, blacks as well as whites, were ignorant of the main facts of Negro history. And so it was the facts of other histories that I found most intriguing. I fell into a U.S. history major by chance late in my second year at Fisk University.

The sum total of what I learned about African American culture in school was Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the Underground Railroad. This was more than my mom knew; she didn't even see a black person in real life until she was 18 years old.

Pleas for white acceptance of black humanity have a long and terrible history in America, stretching back to the first slave narratives.

America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known.

America was founded on the backs of slaves.

If you read the story of slavery and see the part that the Uncle Tom played in the plantation, and then you see how the white man today has changed his tactics, but he still occupies the same position, in that same context you find Uncle Tom. He has changed his tactics but he still occupies the same position.

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

He has no idea what it was like to grow up in the South, where you had to hold your head down.

I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture. It is as American as cherry pie. Americans taught the black people to be violent. We will use that violence to rid ourselves of oppression if necessary. We will be free, by any means necessary.

For black Americans, we know that gun control... sprouts from racist soil - be it after the or during the infamous Dred Scott case where black man's humanity was not recognized.

Until Lee Elder, the only blacks at the Masters were caddies or waiters. To ask a black man what he feels about the traditions of the Masters is like asking him how he feels about his forefathers who were slaves.

While the old spiritual 'Slavery Chain Done Broke at Last' was sung by blacks in the hours following the Appomattox surrender, racism sadly continues to be a crippling national scourge.

The African-American experience is one of the most important threads in the American tapestry.

The only change is that baseball has turned Paige from a second class citizen to a second class immortal.