Bill Moyers and Shelby Steele on Race in America
Kenny B pointed me to last weekend's Bill Moyers Journal, specifically his interview with conservative Shelby Steele, who I'd never heard before. I listened to it yesterday and not sure what I think, apart from feeling like it's worth thinking about. You can read the transcript of the episode here - Steele comes in for the last half of the show. Here's a bit:

SHELBY STEELE:...
Whites know never tell blacks what you really think and what you really feel because you risk being seen as a racist. And the result of that is that to a degree, we as blacks live in a bubble. Nobody tells us the truth. Nobody tells us what they would do if they were in our situation. Nobody really helps us. They use us. They buy their own innocence with us. But they never tell us the truth. And we need to be told the truth very often.

You know, America is a great society, a great country. Has all sorts-- the values have gotten us to this place where we are the world's greatest society in many ways. Well, those values, yes, we had a history of terrible racism. But those same values will work for blacks. They will help us join the mainstream, become a part of it. But whites can't say that because then they seem to be judgmental. They're seen as racist. And so, no one says it to us.

BILL MOYERS: So you can understand though, why some whites would look to Obama as a redeemer from that--

SHELBY STEELE: They think that Obama is a way out of all of that. That he will bring an American redemption. And whites are very happy for that bargain and show gratitude and even affection for bargainers. Oprah Winfrey is the classic bargainer who has also a kind of magic about her that I think again reflects the aspirations of white America.
....
Barack Obama is the first black American to bring bargaining into the political arena. Barack Obama is saying, I'm going to give you the-- I'm going to treat you as though you're not a racist. And I'm going to simply ask you to treat me as though I'm not black. Treat me as just-as an individual. Well, it's a nice bargain. But boy, does it make blacks nervous. Our blackness is our power. We think. I don't think it is. But we have the-- that's the delusion I think.

BILL MOYERS: What do you think is your power?

SHELBY STEELE: I think our power is the same as it is for anybody, any other group - the collective energies, imagination of the individuals within the group. We're no better than what our individuals achieve. Identity should be the result of effort and achievement. It's not an agent. It's not going to bring you there.

BILL MOYERS: But you can't escape a part of your identity because it is about, as you say, blood and color. You can't escape that.

SHELBY STEELE: You can't escape it. And I certainly don't want to escape it. I, you know, I am black and happy to be so. But my identity is not my master. I'm my master. And I resent this, you know, civil rights leadership telling me what I should think and what issues I should support this way or that way. And that's where-- in-- black America, identity has become almost totalitarian.