Fraud of White Guilt, Fright of Black Victimhood

Letter to Ephesians: Protest signs say “Equity is Everyone’s Fight” but what if truth was more like “Everyone’s Might Makes Right”? And if the “terror of being seen as racist has nothing to do with [whites] helping blacks,” hasn’t blacks seeing thru the politics of BS been the key to helping themselves?

The WSJ’s Bill McGurn set the debate over race relations 2026 this way: “When you hear people say we need a conversation about race … they want an accusation that a corrupt America remains unwilling to confront racial injustice & inequality.” As McGurn suggests, however, black author, Shelby Steele, makes a compelling counter argument; that “an honest conversation would acknowledge the real progress America has made since the days when schools & water fountains were segregated … that while some people may hold bigoted beliefs … affirmative action & dependency has created a culture that assumes African-Americans can’t compete & hobbles them by disregarding [their] merit.” The stats seem to back him up. Latest Census shows 20-25 million black Americans have fought their way out the inner cities & are now living in the suburbs in pursuit of the American Dream. If so, “most” blacks are suburbanites. Hence, Prof. Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, posits in a new documentary, “White Guilt,” that the phenomenon isn’t really about the evil of slavery or somehow making up for it, but the “terror of being seen as a racist.” Better understood then, Steele says, white guilt is more “about using claims of victimhood for power.”

Steele’s family is bi-racial & he uses his Chicago experiences to bolster his bogus white guilt premise. It all rings true to me, a fellow ex-South Sider, with a suggested corollary. ETHNIC as well as RACIAL bigotry always seemed universal, even as a kid. Of course, history & current events say it’s so. Steele notes, e.g., how “White guilt has even been grafted onto the conflict in Gaza, where Palestinians have become the slaves & Israelis the evil American slave owners.” As a descendant of a blue-collar Polish family, I too recall the “light bulb” jokes & limited job opportunities my parents faced. But instead of believing the ethnic slurs & lies, they recalled the stories about Copernicus & Marie Curie to fight their way out of Chicago’s darkness & into suburbia’s light. Just like so many blacks have used their kinsmen’s’ stories of Frederick Douglass & Martin Luther King as well as their God-given talents & chutzpah since the 1970s.

Davd Soul