Shelby Steele Quotes About Identity

Quotes about: Identity

• 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

  Fighting, Opportunity, Identity

• 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

  Past, Reality, Giving

• Part of our identity is the idea that racism is still there and that we are vulnerable to it. So, the question is, 'How vulnerable?' In other words, is it really a problem for us, or is it just a small thing. How do you evaluate racism in America on a scale of 1 to 10? My suspicion is that most blacks overrate it a bit. Not to say it's not there, but we overrate it because this masking is part of our relationship to the larger society. This is a way we keep whites on the hook. We keep them obligated, and we keep ourselves entitled. There's an incentive, you see, to inflate it a little bit.

  Shelby Steele

  Ideas, America, Racism

  "Shelby Steele: The Why Obama Can’t Win Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, www.kamwilliams.com. February 27, 2008.

• What the Clintons have always done is embraced challenging. They can't have enough photo opportunities with Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. They communicate to blacks that they agree with their challenging identity. So, in a sense, Hillary is blacker than Barack Obama. Their alignment with this black identity makes them 'black' in a metaphorical sense, I guess.

  Shelby Steele

  Opportunity, Challenges, Black

  "Shelby Steele: The Why Obama Can’t Win Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, www.kamwilliams.com. February 27, 2008.

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