Shelby Steele : Pushing All the Buttons: Equating Quotas With Goals

It is a measure of Shelby Steele’s ability to engage and agitate that the mention of his name raises blood pressures and decibel levels during many a conversation in black America.

The author of the best-selling book “The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America” is hailed by admirers as a breath of fresh air in a national racial discussion grown stale. To many others--those he labels the “civil-rights orthodoxy”--he is just another in a long line of white-anointed black mouthpieces. In his pointed attacks on affirmative action, he casually interchanges that term with the loaded “quota,” without a blink. This, during a time when “quotas” are becoming a hot-button issue for the national GOP to sway white Democrats. Put all those explosive elements together--topic, timing and messenger--and it’s no wonder that the political spotlight is on the no-longer-obscure English professor from San Jose State University.

At 45, Steele, the son of a truck driver and a social worker, has come a long way from the black, working-class, Chicago-area community of Phoenix, Ill. He went on to Coe College in Iowa, to teaching high school in the slums of East St. Louis, to eventually settling at San Jose State, where he has been since 1974. The married father of two admits to a “moderate strain of yuppie hedonism.”

Steele says he does not particularly enjoy the spotlight. If not, he has at least primed himself for it. He is everywhere--quoted in news stories, cited by national columnists, guest-speaking on college campuses. He can relax and talk colorfully with a few expletives deleted, and then look away a moment later, appropriately pensive for a photographer. Steele knows his moment is now and he will not be ignored. The book is the work of a lifetime, he says defiantly, and people “are not going to get away from it.” Or him.

Question: You’ve said, “Whites must guarantee a free and fair society but blacks must be responsible for actualizing their own lives.” The controversy seems to arise over the emphasis you give to black responsibility and relatively minor attention to white responsibility.

Answer: . . . . I think black Americans have made, collectively, one of the greatest contributions to American life that could possibly be made through the civil-rights movement. . . . . On the other hand, I think we have over-relied on collective action to take us further. . . . We do have more opportunities to advance, educationally and economically, than we did before. . . . It’s now time . . . (for) stronger emphasis on individual responsibility and individual initiative . . . . That’s where our future lies.

Q: President Bush vetoed the Civil Rights Act of 1990 on the rationale that the bill encourages quotas--in spite of explicit language that said it did not. What’s your thought about this?

A: . . . . I just don’t know, having not read the bill. . . . Let me say a couple of things. The 1964 Civil Rights Bill . . . too, was passed on the guarantee that it would not involve quotas and very quickly thereafter--five or six years thereafter--quotas came into being by executive orders and so forth.

Q: Quotas?

A: Preferences, quotas, preferential treatment. . . .

Q: Aren’t quotas and goals different?

A: Well, you know, semantically.

Q: When I say quotas, I mean: We will hire 200 blacks this year. Do you know of any company in the United States that--

A: --I know of companies that say our goal is to hire this . . . number of minorities.

Q: But that’s quite a bit different from actually hiring them, isn’t it?

A: In either case, it seems to me a semantic quibble because . . . you’re saying that you’re in pursuit of a certain number of people of a certain color . . . .

Q: You came to San Jose State in 1974, when the school was under great pressure for affirmative action. How do you answer those who say you’ve catapulted to national prominence attacking the very thing that helped you?

A: . . . . I don’t know that I was helped by affirmative action. . . . You’d have to ask the university whether or not that played a role in whether I got the job. . . . If it did, I regret that.

Q: You’re already in place. Isn’t it easy to regret now?

A: No. One of the things . . . that gives me deepest satisfaction is that there’s no affirmative action in the publishing business. . . . So I know that achievement was based on my merit, my skill of my effort and hard work. If I got the job at San Jose State . . . as a result of affirmative action, it diminishes some of the esteem I would take. I would feel a little tainted as a result of that and be resentful about that because they’re robbing me of my personal power--which is the most precious thing to me.

I think those policies rob the entire race of their power. I don’t need . . . help; I need fairness. I’m good, I can perform and do this task. I don’t need paternalism. . . . My position on affirmative action comes right out of the civil-rights movement. What the civil-rights movement wanted was a fair and equal society, where everyone had an equal opportunity to advance in the society. That’s what I’m still very much for.

Affirmative action, it seems to me, does the opposite of that--grants me a special entitlement based on my pigmentation. . . . This business of cosmetically arranging the workplace . . . or universities by color and presuming then that you have equality is ridiculous. . . .

Q: But isn’t it equally ridiculous to suggest there aren’t entitlements already in place for white males--such as family and social connections?

A: We need to take those entitlements away from them . . . . If you’re the son of an alumni, that should not be, by law, something that helps you get into college. We either want a fair society, or we don’t.

Q: Are you assuming that all non-black people went to college based on merit?

A: I’m assuming what everybody else assumes--which is that when you give preferences to blacks, you make it look as though everybody else made it on merit and they made it on color . . . . That’s absolutely not true. But you make it look that way.

Q: Look that way to whom?

A: To the general public.

Q: To whites, you mean?

A: To whites; to blacks, too. To everybody. You cannot have a group of preferred and another group who are unpreferred without stigmatizing the preferred. It’s not humanly possible to do that . . . .

Q: Do you think that?

A: Everybody thinks that . . . . Everybody wonders in the corner of their minds.

Q: Some say Shelby Steele seems to presume he can go into the minds of the whole race and maybe some insecurities he says black people have are just his own.

A: Every writer is presumptuous . . . . Otherwise, why write? Certainly I presume to look in and to see . . . . That’s fine if you want to say I’m presumptuous, because I certainly am . . . . The only relevant question is: Am I wrong?

Q: What was your first thought when you saw George Will anoint you as the successor to Frederick Douglass?

A: I thought my mother wrote it. I was very honored. I talked to him on the phone. He faxed me a copy of it. I felt honored. I felt like I was well-read.

Q: Yes, but the successor to Douglass?

A: Oh, well . . . I certainly would never, under any circumstances, make that claim for myself. Never. But it’s flattering to see someone else do it. Whether I agree with him or not is another story. I certainly wouldn’t, under any circumstances, make a claim like that. Frederick Douglass is a god to me.

Q: You’ve talked a lot about how black power today is primarily “victim’s power.” Who do you believe peddles victimization?

A: Every human being alive does it. . . . . Victimization is a currency of power on every level . . . . That’s why everybody today in America, in a sense, is trying to stake out a claim of victimization. It’s a tremendous wedge. Because then if I can convince you that I’m a victim, you’re going to feel guilty in regards to me and if you feel guilt about someone, you give power to them.

So obviously, with our history of victimization, there’s a tremendous reservoir of power there. We’ve used it brilliantly in the civil-rights era and we are continuing to try to use it today. But it’s a fading power because people just don’t believe in our victimization as much any more, don’t feel the guilt as much any more. The real tragedy for me is our over-reliance on the power that comes out of victimization is the fact that it’s prevented us from developing other, much more stable, enduring sources of power like education, like economic development. We . . . create a legend around our victimization in order to continue to exercise this power.

And now . . . blacks do it, women do it. It’s Asians, it’s Hispanics, it’s everybody. . . . So we have today a very divisive society--60% of the population comes under the affirmative-action umbrella. All these people were victimized? No. All these people want the power. They smell the power. They want it.

Q: So, what is the alternative?

A: The alternative is that we relate to each other, No. 1, as human beings; No. 2, as American citizens, and then No. 3, our difference comes in as something that we cherish, celebrate and share with people, rather than use it as a wedge. . . . All of our entitlements should come out of our citizenship--not out of race, not out of our sex, not out of our ethnicity. It seems to me that was what the civil-rights movement asked us to do and we failed that challenge. . . . One way that we do that, I think, is that we get rid of race-based policies across-the-board, race-based, sex-based, ethnic-based policies. . . .

Q: And what do you replace it with?

A: What you replace it with is that you ask the society to invest major resources in the development of deprived people. You expand Head Start programs. I’m in favor of programs that intervene at infancy--particularly in the inner city where you have these chronic problems of poverty, of teen-age mothers. . . . We need money to do that. That’s expensive, but society, I think, must do that. . . .

This is what outrages me about preferences--it’s just the way white people buy themselves out of the obligation. . . . They say, when a kid gets to be 18 and has been utterly ignored, they say, come on to college, anyway. And so, one semester later, he’s out in the street. And they feel as if they’ve met their obligation to black Americans. And it’s a cruel, cruel sham.

And we are buying. We are so in love with these dumb-ass preferences. We have so little faith that we can make it any other way that we’re playing along with it. What is (National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People Executive Director) Benjamin Hooks fighting for? This stupid civil-rights bill.

Q: Are you saying that any government policy--even a voluntary policy--to promote diversity is a bad thing?

A: No. Diversity is wonderful, I’m all for it. . . . (But) the ends do not always justify the means. And it seems to me that the means of racial preference have the effect of injuring blacks further. So I’m all for the goals. But I would like us to use much more serious means that have the effect of achieving diversity without stigmatizing us. . . .

Q: You write in your book about “ blacks’ racial self-doubt” and “whites’ racial guilt.” “White guilt” is an absolving sort of notion.

A: . . . . I think a couple of things about that. Any person who wants to absolve himself will do it, anyway. Second thing is that we as blacks worry way far too much about what white people think.

Q: But isn’t that what you’re doing when you say people think blacks get in without merit? Aren’t you being concerned about what white people think?

A: What I’m concerned about there is that, because they think that, that feeds right into racism and they’re going to act on it. . . . I want to come in the door on the same standards that everybody else came in the door (on) so . . . (that) you then have to look at my work and see whether it stacks up and then I’ll know if you have a glass ceiling there--that it’s racism. . . .

Q: And then what do you do?

A: And then I’ll sue your ass to kingdom come.

Q: But there’s not much teeth in the law anymore?

A: . . . . I will do whatever it takes . . . . Then, I know exactly what I’m up against . . . . But now it’s all foggy. It’s muddy. Nobody knows . . . .

Q: You’ve made a point of saying you don’t consider yourself a political conservative, that you voted for Jesse Jackson for President in ’88.

A: . . . . If you look at what I’ve said, I’ve supported social programs more than any liberal. . . . On the other hand . . . blacks should take more responsibility because you can have all the social programs in the world, but if they’re not being responsible, they’re not going to work.

Q: Is your effectiveness to provoke debate among blacks undermined by the fact that you are seen by many as the latest in a series of white-created “black spokesmen”?

A: . . . . You have to remember that we were an oppressed people. One of the qualities you find in any oppressed group--you see it in Asians, you see it in Jews, any group--is that they have a fear of individuality. And there’s an impulse in all of those groups to suppress the individual. We have an impulse where we excommunicate people, we purge people. . . .

Q: Do you expect more of black people than you expect of whites?

A: Everybody wants to play this equality game. “If you’re gonna hit blacks, hit whites.” That’s just silly racial politics. Who’s got the bigger problem? Black people do. They’re the ones who are suffering . . . . It’s not self-created. Obviously, whites played a part in it. Obviously whites have a responsibility to help us get out of it. But who’s got the goddamn problem when you go home at night? We do. Nobody else is gonna solve our problems . . . .

This is the thing that ticks me off so much about this whole civil-rights orthodoxy, who make this white man into a god. He’s just a man. He’s not superior. But we believe he’s superior; and we believe we’re inferior. And we have all the power in the world . . . .