ABSTRACT
The media and many whites—both conservative and liberal—have seized on Shelby Steele as if he were cracking a monolith of African-American thought. But throughout the twentieth century, the system has frequently relied on black conservative politicians and intellectuals to justify patterns of race and class inequality. Shelby Steele is the most recent neoconservative star to appear on the political horizon. In this chapter, Steele unthinkingly draws from an older ideological tradition of black conservatism, the rhetoric of Booker T. Washington. Steele, like Washington, implies that blacks are not intellectually or socially ready to assume their rightful share of power. The most telling criticism of Steele's thesis is that he fails to correctly define or describe institutional racism. For Steele, racial discrimination is an irrational relic of the past, an archaic form of behavior linked to segregation. Steele symbolized a real turning point in the facade of institutional racism in American life.
