Shelby Steele writes about American’s Shame
In Shelby Steele’s Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country
…[A]ll these victim-focused identities are premised on a belief in the characterological evil of American and the entire Western world. This broad assumption is the idea that makes them work, that makes for that sweet concoction of victimization and superiority. So the very people who were freed by America’s (and the West’s) acknowledgment of its past wrongs then made that acknowledgment into a poetic truth that they could build their identities in reaction to…despite the fact that their actual victimization had greatly reduced…
…[T]his charge of evil against the white West is one of the largest and most influential ideas of our age—and this despite the dramatic retreat of America and the West from these evils. The scope and power of this idea—its enormous influence in the world—is not a measure of its truth or accuracy; it is a measure of the great neediness in the world for such an idea, for an idea that lets the formerly opporessed defend their esteem, on the one hand, and pursue power in the name of their past victimization, on the other. It is also an idea that gave a contrite white America (and Western world) a new and essentially repentant liberalism…
…[T]he vision restored esteem to the victims…and gave them a means to power; likewise, it opened a road to redemption and power for the former white perpetrators. This notion of America’s characterological evil became the basis of a new social contract in America.
There’s an awful lot to think about packed into those paragraphs. In case you’re not familiar with Steele, I’ll mention that he’s a 70-year-old self-described “black conservative” academic (Master’s in sociology and PhD in English literature) and writer who is (like Obama) the offspring of a white mother and a black father.
Later on in the same book, Steele continues:
The new accusation of characterological evil suddenly threatened the legitimacy of both the government and the broader culture. America needed an idea of The Good that was untethered to character…We needed to make The Good into something that was easy, something that could be waved about in the air like a white flag of surrender—something that would instantly disassociate us from the nation’s evil past.
However, by relegating The Good to the government, and making it a matter of public policy, we transformed it from an earnest and personal moral struggle into glib cultural symbolism. And as a mere symbolism, The Good became a brittle and thoughtless thing: Americans could navigate around any guilt over the past simply by acquiescing to governmental interventions—the War on Poverty, school busing, lenient welfare policies, affirmative action, and so on. This is how the American Left labored to win back moral authority and legitimacy after the 1960s—by allowing support for public policy to stand in as evidence of an evolution in private conscience.
So the actual purpose of The Good became absolution for the American people and the government, and not actual reform for minorities…Virtually all these “good” reforms failed and mired us in all manner of unintended consequences. But their failures were beside the point. These policies were expressions of America’s regret over its bigotries and sins. They weren’t policies so much as apologias.
These are not unique thoughts, but I think they are expressed with exceptional clarity and succinctness. I would add that most liberals are not so very concerned with absolving America of guilt—they continue to think America is very very very guilty, something I hear them saying with great regularity. They are interested in absolving themselves of guilt—for what, I’m not sure, but perhaps for being lucky enough to live here. And so in fact, in their continuing condemnation of America, they are proving their own worthiness.
That’s why other countries’ manifold guilts and crimes are usually of lesser interest to them, or come around in their minds to somehow being America’s fault. It is an easy reductionism that serves to distance themselves from feelings of personal wrongdoing, I believe. I also think it accounts for a great deal of the popularity of liberalism and leftism. It has come to be taught in the schools and, to a certain extent, the churches and synagogues, and has become the widespread mark of a seemingly educated, moral person.
Bingo! Steele and Neo, bingo!
Please allow me, once again, to plug James Burnam’s Suicide of the West. The chapter on liberal guilt nailed it–in 1964.
And I believe Steele is absolutely right about the present situation. He’s probably saved me the trouble of writing an occasionally contemplated essay: “How Slavery Destroyed America.” If you can successfully frame any issue as being the latest phase of the civil rights movement, you win, no matter how irrational the connection may be, as in the Great Toilet Directive of 2016.
Walter Williams on the book with a little of his great humor at the end:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3258821/posts
“The idiot who praises with enthusiastic tone
Every century but this, and every country but his own
…
They’d none of ’em be missed, they’d none of ’em be missed.”
I don’t think liberals are absolving themselves of guilt- so I think Steele is wrong on that because they don’t feel the guilt at all. The policies pursued from the 30s til today had really only one goal, the buying of votes, and were literally meant to keep these people and their children poor and dependent. The only place where guilt has anything to do with it is when some faction actually tries to reform these programs in sensible ways- then the guilt card is played, but never on ones self, always on the opponent who might actually be trying to help.
Yancey Ward:
Well, we disagree again. The liberals I know are motivated by several things, but one is most definitely the desire to avoid feelings of guilt.
” The policies pursued from the 30s til today had really only one goal, the buying of votes” – Yancy
We do need to separate the leaders’ intent / purpose from the philosophical message / rationale they are providing.
We make a HUGE mistake in conflating the two as being from the same place.
@Neo – there are the leaders and then there are their audience.
What you say may be true for the audience.
It may not necessarily be true of their leaders who are more interesting in maintaining a constituency and power base than on the merits of an argument.
Neo, I think it is to be able to shame their political opponents. However, I think we may be talking about different liberals. I am talking about the ones in politics, the political media, academia, and Hollywood- the public liberal/progressives, and I would add most internet commenters, too, of a political nature. The one’s I think you are talking about just don’t think the issue deeply enough to realize their own efforts at absolution are ineffective at best.
And I see BigMaq beat me to it. Yes, that.
Steele is right as far as he goes but the West’s acceptance of its guilt for past ‘evils’ is the result of its embrace of Marxism’s view of man as souless, which is part and parcel of its rejection of a loving creator.
neo-neocon Says:
August 6th, 2016 at 3:18 pm
Yancey Ward:
Well, we disagree again. The liberals I know are motivated by several things, but one is most definitely the desire to avoid feelings of guilt.”
Over what for instance? And on what grounds would that make them feel guilty?
DNW,
I don’t think they feel personally guilty but they do feel that most of their race is. Some really want to improve things for the “victims”; others just want to set themselves apart from the bitter clinger types. They want to make others pay for their sins, while they seek to absolve themselves of any responsibility. In either case, the white guilt types really never get to know anything personal about blacks.
“They are interested in absolving themselves of guilt”
Some are, but for the most part, I don’t think this is what is driving them. They are asserting their own moral superiority, they believe the YOU should feel guilty for not being like them. C S Lewis explained the psychology of a very similar group of people in an essay he wrote in 1940, titled ‘Dangers of National Repentance’.
http://chicagoboyz.net/archives/14323.html
It’s about power, not morality or shame.
DNW,
America’s historical treatment of native Americans. Slavery. Colonization. Jim Crow laws. The internment of Japanese Americans. Robber barrons. Corporate abuse of the environment. Disco music…;-)
Note that I am not agreeing with that litany, all of which are defensible with the single exception of disco but that is a short list.
I guess it depends on the liberals you know. Most of the ones I know do have a certain amount of guilt about living in a place of abundance and relative peace while in so many parts of the world (or even in some places in this country) people are subject to a great deal more hardship and violence.
I guess I would agree with you, Neo, that there are some liberals who have authentic guilt feelings, but most of them appear to have no sense of personal shame. That is why they lie without compunction. When Obama stood smirking at that press conference in the Pentagon and glibly spun his lie about the cash payment for the hostages I shook my head with a sorrowful smile. I faintly remembered when I used to be astonished by his lies, but that was back when I thought, or perhaps hoped, that there might be some tiny atom of shame in the man.
Ralph Kinney Bennett:
Obama is no liberal. Not even close.
Plus, he is a political operative and has been his whole life. Even if he were a liberal (which he is not), liberal political operatives are not the population I’m talking about. They represent a very very small proportion of liberals, anyway.
I’m talking about the regular, garden-variety, liberal voters who don’t count themselves among the oppressed groups—your basic college-educated, decent income, nice community, well-meaning, good-hearted, not all that politically-oriented, liberal.
Different liberals: Those wanting power manipulate those prone to feeling guilt, and those for whom virtue-signaling is a daily effort.
They don’t have to be all the same.
But they do insist that those who don’t believe as they do are guilty of whatever.
I used to feel a certain degree of guilt about my good fortune. Travel in many foreign countries while in the Navy showed me how fortunate I was to have been born in the USA, a place where someone from a poor family like mine could make a better life than his parents enjoyed. Yet I saw others who did not make the most of their opportunities and felt guilty because I felt I was lucky and they weren’t. Yes, luck played a part. After I retired I set about writing my biography with an eye to find points where luck made a difference. There were a few. How I met the woman who became my wife. How I escaped anti-aircraft fire that hit other planes. How I met a doctor who guided me to the best neuro-surgeon to operate on my herniated disc. Other than those examples, most of my “luck” was created through mostly hard work and willingness to take sensible chances.
After I retired I wanted to spend time helping the unfortunate. Which I did for three years. That time opened my eyes to the fact that there are many people who, for want of a better word, are lazy or maybe unmotivated, or clever manipulators who see ways to game the system. I realized that they didn’t need my help. There were plenty of NGOs, and government agencies ready, willing, and able to continue to enable their life styles.
The history of the U.S is quite recent. The defeat of the American Indian, our use of slaves, and acquisition of territories like Hawaii and the Philippines have all been pointed out as sins, which in the eyes of the America haters, can never be atoned for. However, the haters don’t mention unfavorably or accusingly the recent histories of South America, or Russia and the eventual USSR, or the crimes against humanity of Mao in China or Pol Pot in Cambodia. Why is that?
When looking at the much older history of Europe, the Middle East, and China you find examples of the same sins of conquest, acquisition of territory, and slavery. Such activities were the norm rather than the exception for most of human history. It is only in light of the post WWII era that the America haters (And they are mostly Communists, even if they don’t call themselves that.) have swung into action to hurl accusations for which there can be, in their eyes, no repentance.
Much like Calvinists, the America haters have erected a narrative that allows them to acclaim that they are morally superior to anyone who doesn’t accept their narrative. The well-meaning liberals, who haven’t taken the time to look at history and figure out how phony the narrative is, are gullible useful idiots.
Other than Germany, whose sins are apparently our own (as judged by how often every Republican is labeled “Nazi”), what other countries currently or recently have their politics polarized by their past sins?
Sweden, who not once sided with democracies in WW1, WW2, or the Cold War? Poland? France (perhaps as the Battle of Algers spreads to Paris)? PRC (probably don’t believe in sin)?
Making the rounds recently on Facebook was a graphic about when slavery was abolished, where on countries were color-coded by blocks of years in which each country had abolished slavery.
That map was wrong as it colored Europe as having abolished slavery long ago. Western Europe abolished slavery in 1945 when the National Socialists were overthrown, and Eastern Europe in 1991, when the International Socialists were overthrown, yet I don’t see Europeans wailing about their history of slavery (with one notable exception, of course).
Brian Swisher, great catch from The Mikado. 🙂
The left claims US guilt over many issues. For example supporting third world dictators during the Cold War. Which worked out better, Cuba or Chili?
Sweden likes to virtue signal, while the Angloshere does the heavy lifting in the fight against evil
To boil it down:
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished.
Just think — if we’d never decided slavery was evil (and we were the FIRST and ONLY race to do so), then it would still be bucketing along as usual, and they’d have to find something else to bitch about.
The disagreements about what liberals feel and what motivates them can be resolved by recognizing that they are not one monolithic group. They span a whole spectrum from the naively sincere to the ruthlessly cynical.
Neo’s “garden-variety” “well-meaning” liberal friends probably feel genuine guilt simply because they are more well-off than many blacks, latinos, third-world people, etc, etc, etc. They naively seek to assuage their guilt by throwing taxpayer money into big government programs, hoping this will be effective in removing disparities without creating seriously negative unintended consequences (or simply wasting huge amounts of other people’s money).
Though sincere, this behavior is quite ugly in that it lays a guilt trip on all whites while inflicting costs (monetary and otherwise) on everyone in the hope that they, the liberals, might feel better — but they usually don’t since these programs almost always fail, thus engendering another round of the same.
At the opposite end of the spectrum are totally cynical machiavellians, those who simply exploit white guilt to advance their agenda and/or make themselves more powerful and wealthy. Sometimes they achieve all at once (viz Al Sharpton).
In the middle we find a wide variety of types motivated by guilt, self-loathing and other negative emotions, trying to mitigate their pain by advancing mass programs they hope will enhance their self-image, usually by championing the “downtrodden” against some imagined oppressor.
if we’d never decided slavery was evil (and we were the FIRST and ONLY race to do so)
The Southern Baptists broke away from the Northern abolitionists precisely because they agreed with the slave lord’s approval of slavery. And a lot of Southerners fought in CW 1, did so on the orders of the Southern Baptists and the secular slave lord’s authorities, even though many Confederates did not own slaves. Nor did they like slavery, as Lee did not like slavery.
Seven decades of living has brought me to this conclusion: I feel no guilt over anything that I did not PERSONALLY do. Slavery, colonization, Jim Crow, Indians, KKK, etc. had absolutely nothing to do with me. My own family, mountain farmers in east Tennessee, never had slaves, couldn’t afford them and wouldn’t have had them messing up their farms. My great-grandmother was half Cherokee. Simple folks, who bequeathed to me a simple, but effective, outlook on the world. If tender snowflake liberals want or need to feel guilty about something, I’m sure they’ll find a way, and thus surely they have their reward. As for me, leave me out of it, leave my wallet and bank account alone, and for God’s sake, LEAVE ME ALONE!