I decided to make the flaws in Shelby Steele's latest in OpinionJournal absolutely clear. It's in three parts, below the fold so the RSS readers can skip it if they like.

Here's part 1. And here's part 2.

At this point there's a transition in the printed material. It reopens thus:

In the '60s--the first instance of open mutual witness between blacks and whites in American history--a balance of power was struck between the races. The broad white acknowledgment of racism meant that whites would be responsible both for overcoming their racism and for ending black poverty because, after all, their racism had so obviously caused that poverty.

This is not only broadly insulting, it is patently false. Black people had to fight for every desegregation order, every comittment not to discriminate. In the 60's Black people knew better than to apply for any job that didn't say "An Equal Opportunity Enployer." School integration was fought against as hard in Boston as in Alabama.

This, says Steele, was white people being "responsible both for overcoming their racism and for ending black poverty". Add the fact that this was the generation that enlarged the Black middle class to its current proportions and this assertion must be discarded for failing the reality test.

For whites to suggest that blacks might be in some way responsible for their own poverty would be to relinquish this responsibility and, thus, to return to racism.

Read that again.

For whites to suggest that blacks might be in some way responsible for their own poverty would be to relinquish this responsibility and, thus, to return to racism.

Isn't that fascinating?

Anyway...since the "balance of power" assertion is objectively false, the conclusion...

So, from its start in the '60s, this balance of power (offering redemption to whites and justice to blacks) involved a skewed distribution of responsibility: Whites, and not blacks, would be responsible for achieving racial equality in America, for overcoming the shames of both races--black inferiority and white racism. And the very idea of black responsibility would be stigmatized as racism in whites and Uncle Tomism in blacks.

...is false, because it has no basis in reality.

Steele goes on to assert:

President Johnson's famous Howard University speech, which launched the Great Society in 1965, outlined this balance of power by explicitly spelling out white responsibility without a single reference to black responsibility. In the 40 years since that speech no American president has dared correct this oversight.

...to which I reply, "Oh, really?"

SPECIAL NATURE OF NEGRO POVERTY

For Negro poverty is not white poverty. Many of its causes and many of its cures are the same. But there are differences-deep, corrosive, obstinate differences--radiating painful roots into the community, and into the family, and the nature of the individual.

These differences are not racial differences. They are solely and simply the consequence of ancient brutality, past injustice, and present prejudice. They are anguishing to observe. For the Negro they are a constant reminder of oppression. For the white they are a constant reminder of guilt. But they must be faced and they must be dealt with and they must be overcome, if we are ever to reach the time when the only difference between Negroes and whites is the color of their skin.

Nor can we find a complete answer in the experience of other American minorities. They made a valiant and a largely successful effort to emerge from poverty and prejudice.

The Negro, like these others, will have to rely mostly upon his own efforts. But he just can not do it alone. For they did not have the heritage of centuries to overcome, and they did not have a cultural tradition which had been twisted and battered by endless years of hatred and hopelessness, nor were they excluded--these others--because of race or color--a feeling whose dark intensity is matched by no other prejudice in our society.

Nor can these differences be understood as isolated infirmities. They are a seamless web. They cause each other. They result from each other. They reinforce each other.

Much of the Negro community is buried under a blanket of history and circumstance. It is not a lasting solution to lift just one corner of that blanket. We must stand on all sides and we must raise the entire cover if we are to liberate our fellow citizens.

To quote one of the cavemen in the GEICO commercial, "Next time, do a little research."

Anyway, so far we've established that the "shame" Steele is discussing is a subjective fact. Steele himself, apparently unaware, proceeds as if his emotional affliction is felt by all Black people...however, wait for Part 3...

The problem here is obvious: The black shame of inferiority (the result of oppression, not genetics) cannot be overcome with anything less than a heroic assumption of responsibility on the part of black Americans. In fact, true equality--an actual parity of wealth and ability between the races--is now largely a black responsibility. This may not be fair, but historical fairness--of the sort that resolves history's injustices--is an idealism that now plagues black America by making black responsibility seem an injustice.

When you are raised to believe you must work twice as hard to get half as much...and you do it, when all the rules are arrayed against you, every move toward addressing willfully inflicted harm resisted, and you still progress, it is absurd to see our having not yet caught up as a sign of slacking.

On the other hand, there is contingent truth in his statement that a heroic effort is required of Black folks. Fortunately, that seems to be our standard historical mode of operation...our recent lapse is due to applying that heroic effort in the wrong way (i.e., to change instead of to grow stronger).

As if to make up for providing even a contingent truth, Steele follows up with a steaming mound of freshly extracted tripe. The only purpose of the paragraph seems to to make the final rhetorical transition from a seeming of inferiority to a statement.

And yet, despite the fact that greater responsibility is the only transforming power that can take blacks to true equality, this is an idea that deeply threatens the 40-year balance of power between the races. Bill Cosby's recent demand that poor blacks hold up "their end of the bargain" and do a better job of raising their children was explosive because it threatened this balance. Mr. Cosby not only implied that black responsibility was the great transforming power; he also implied that there was a limit to what white responsibility could do. He said, in effect, that white responsibility cannot overcome black inferiority. This is a truth so obvious as to be mundane. Yet whites won't say it in the interest of their redemption and blacks won't say it in the interest of historical justice. It is left to hurricanes to make such statements.

I break in at this point to bring particular attention to this next bit.

And black responsibility undermines another purpose of this balance of power, which is to keep the shames of both races covered. It was always the grandiosity of white promises (President Johnson's promise to "end poverty in our time," today's promises of "diversity" and "inclusion") that enabled whites and American institutions to distance themselves from the shame of white racism.

Read that again.

And black responsibility undermines another purpose of this balance of power, which is to keep the shames of both races covered. It was always the grandiosity of white promises (President Johnson's promise to "end poverty in our time," today's promises of "diversity" and "inclusion") that enabled whites and American institutions to distance themselves from the shame of white racism.

Okay, back to the nonsense.

But if black responsibility is the great transformative power, whites are no more than humble partners in racial reform, partners upon whom little depends. In this position they cannot make grandiose claims for what white responsibility can do. And without a language of grandiose promises, the shame of white racism is harder to dispel.

The central reason for Steele's screed...and total bullshit. If whites are no more than humble partners in racial reform, they have no responsibility, and their responsibility for their shame is on Black people.

OpinionJournal pieces are typically tripartate. Here's the final bit of nonsense in the second, central section

But it is the shame of blacks that becomes most transparent when black responsibility is given its rightful ascendancy. When this happens blacks themselves cannot look at New Orleans without acknowledging what Bill Cosby acknowledged in a different context, that poor blacks have not held up their end of the bargain.

Previously addressed, but poor Blacks do more to hold up their end than upscale Blacks.

Responsibility always comes with the risk of great shame, the shame of failing to meet the responsibility one has assumed. A great problem in black American life is that we have too often avoided responsibility in order to avoid shame. This is understandable given the unforgiving pas de deux of mutual witness between blacks and whites in which each race prepares a face for the other and seizes on the other's weaknesses with ravenous delight. And four centuries of persecution have indeed left us with weaknesses, and even a degree of human brokenness, that is shaming. Nevertheless, it is only an illusion to think that we can mute the sting of shame by charging whites with responsibility for us. This is a formula for running into the shame you run from.

Shame. He feels so much shame...