Right Books

The title of Shelby Steele’s new book, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (St. Martin’s, 192 pp., $15.95), comes from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; the content of character, not the color of skin, is the hoped-for standard of discrimination. Professor Steele, who teaches English at San José State, believes that “the long struggle of blacks in America has always been a struggle to retrieve our full humanity. But now the relative stance we adopted to defend ourselves against oppression binds us to the same racial views that oppressed us in the first place.”

Full humanity can only be experienced in the present, yet the defensive ethos of blackness is rooted in the past. According to Mr. Steele, historical racism is no longer black America’s main problem. Today the problem is the failure to embrace individuality. Mr. Steele speaks of a black “party line” that effectively demands that blacks be dealt with primarily as victims; a process that in its personal dimension he calls “race-holding.” To “hold” race is to place it at the center of identity, as both sword and shield. “I define holding,” he writes, “as any self-description that serves to justify or camouflage a person’s fears, weaknesses, and inadequacies.” He believes that black Americans are using color as a weapon and a buffer more today than in the past precisely because traditional barriers have fallen. Black pride, separatism, and Afrophilia are reactions against the risks of opportunity.

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Martin Luther King Jr

The title of Shelby Steele’s new book, The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America (St. Martin’s, 192 pp., $15.95), comes from Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; the content of character, not the color of skin, is the hoped-for standard of discrimination. Professor Steele, who teaches English at San José State, believes that “the long struggle of blacks in America has always been a struggle to retrieve our full humanity. But now the relative stance we adopted to defend ourselves against oppression binds us to the same racial views that oppressed us in the first place.”

Full humanity can only be experienced in the present, yet the defensive ethos of blackness is rooted in the past. According to Mr. Steele, historical racism is no longer black America’s main problem. Today the problem is the failure to embrace individuality. Mr. Steele speaks of a black “party line” that effectively demands that blacks be dealt with primarily as victims; a process that in its personal dimension he calls “race-holding.” To “hold” race is to place it at the center of identity, as both sword and shield. “I define holding,” he writes, “as any self-description that serves to justify or camouflage a person’s fears, weaknesses, and inadequacies.” He believes that black Americans are using color as a weapon and a buffer more today than in the past precisely because traditional barriers have fallen. Black pride, separatism, and Afrophilia are reactions against the risks of opportunity.