Wonderful Interview with Shelby Steele at "The American Enterprise"
TAE: What is the glue that holds the black vote to the Democratic Party?
STEELE: Politically, black America is almost socialistic. There's a feeling that the government is the vehicle that's going to lift us to equality, and without the government, we'll never make it. Black America has suffered from this delusion since the 1960s. It's gotten to the point where we've now made affiliation with the Democratic Party an aspect of the black American identity. No matter who the Democratic nominee is, they get 90 percent of the black vote in every single election. If you are black and not a Democrat, it's said you're not authentically black—the civil rights leadership vigorously enforces that. So you have this disjuncture in black life: we're culturally conservative, but politically, we are far, far left.
TAE: You say that as long as we have affirmative action, blacks will never be able to take full credit for their own advancement.
STEELE: Absolutely. It smears every single black person.
Look at me, for example. My enemies say my career would have gone nowhere without affirmative action. I don't think that's true, but because there is affirmative action, they can say that. There are no blacks who are free from that stigma, and that's a terrible thing to do to people who are trying to succeed on their own. I think affirmative action is the worst cruelty blacks have endured since slavery.
At that point, blacks made the worst mistake in our history: putting our faith in the hands of outside saviors. The idea that somebody else can lift you up, can teach you skills, and make you competitive is just ridiculous. That sort of abject dependence has never worked, and it never will.
Blacks do well in sports, music, entertainment, and literature—because there's absolutely no white intervention, paternalism, affirmative action, or anything else. We're asked to compete without any assistance, and sure enough, we compete. We succeed. In these areas, whites never intervene, so we ask the best and we get the best. But in colleges and other places, there are a billion excuses. Whites intervene and convince themselves not to ask much of us. It's the same old vicious cycle. Rest here.
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