Shelby Steele Quotes & Sayings

A black conservative is a black who dissents from the victimization explanation of black fate. — Shelby Steele

It is time for blacks to begin the shift from a wartime to a peacetime identity, from fighting for opportunity to the seizing of it. — Shelby Steele

The promised land guarantees nothing. It is only an opportunity, not a deliverance. — Shelby Steele

Since the social victim has been oppressed by society, he comes to feel that his individual life will be improved more by changes in society than by his own initiative. Without realizing it, he makes society rather than himself the agent of change. The power he finds in his victimization may lead him to collective action against society, but it also encourages passivity within the sphere of his personal life. — Shelby Steele

Most important, [research on affirmative action] has completely failed to show that affirmative action ever closes the academic gap between minorities and whites. And failing in this, affirmative action also fails to help blacks achieve true equality with whites - the ultimate measure of which is parity in skills and individual competence. Without this underlying parity there can never be true equality in employment, income levels, rates of home ownership, educational achievement and the rest. — Shelby Steele

Freedom always carries a burden of proof, always throws us back on ourselves. — Shelby Steele

Every single progressive education fad of the past thirty years has hurt poor black children. — Shelby Steele

Too often the result of affirmative action has been an artificial diversity that gives the appearance of parity between blacks and whites that has not yet been achieved in reality ... Preferences tend to attack one form of discrimination with another ... Affirmative action encourages a victim-focused identity, and sends the message that there is more power in our past suffering than in our present achievements. — Shelby Steele

Opportunity follows struggle. It follows effort. It follows hard work. It doesn't come before. — Shelby Steele