White guilt : how blacks and whites together destroyed the promise of the civil rights era Cover Image

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White guilt : how blacks and whites together destroyed the promise of the civil rights era / Shelby Steele.

ISBN: 9780060578633 (pbk.)
ISBN: 0060578637 (pbk.)
Physical Description: viii, 181, 16 pages : illustrations, portrait ; 21 cm
Edition: First Harper Perennial edition.
Publisher: New York : Harper Perennial, 2007.
Copyright: &copy;2006

Summary:

"In 1955 the murderers of Emmett Till, a black Mississippi youth, were acquitted of their crime, undoubtedly because they were white. Forty years later, O. J. Simpson, who many thought would be charged with murder by virtue of the DNA evidence against him, went free after his attorney portrayed him as a victim of racism. Clearly, a sea change had taken place in American culture, but how had it happened? In this work, distinguished race relations scholar Shelby Steele argues that the age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt - and neither has been good for African Americans." "Through his analysis and recollections of the last half century of American race relations, Steele calls for a new culture of personal responsibility, a commitment to principles that can fill the moral void created by white guilt. White leaders must stop using minorities as a means to establish their moral authority - and black leaders must stop indulging them. As White Guilt concludes, the alternative is a dangerous ethical relativism that extends beyond race relations into all parts of American life."--BOOK JACKET.