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Racial Redemption |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Carmine Sarracino |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 2/1/1999 |
| Size: 2,133 Words, 13,461 Characters |
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A DREAM DEFERRED
The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America
Shelby Steele
New York: HarperCollins, 1998
185 pp., $24.00
In New Orleans in December 1997, Shelby Steele delivered the keynote address at the annual conference of the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a generally conservative group of university professors formed about eight years ago to countervail the dominance of political correctness on American campuses. When Steele finished, there was a moment of rapt silence followed by a standing ovation. The first audience member at the microphone said that Steele's address was the most illuminating discourse on America's race problems that he had ever heard. Once again, rousing applause filled the hall.
That keynote address essentially became chapter 2 in Steele's new book, A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America. Steele's book consists of four essays, each a chapter: "The Loneliness of the 'Black Conservative,' " the longest essay at 115 pages; "Wrestling With Stigma," an elaborated version of the NAS keynote; and two short essays, each less than 20 pages, "Liberal Bias and the Zone of Decency" and "The New Sovereignty." The book contains a preface but no notes, index, or bibliography.
It is, in my experience, rare to finish a book and want to say, simply...
Read Full Article
...ial, Steele observes in his first essay, and its real purposes are masked by false ideals and duplicity, it becomes "a minority monopoly without accountability: It becomes a business." Indeed, as he explores in the final two essays, the lucrative business of race and victimhood in America is complex and expanding, and all its overlapping and crisscrossing strands make a tangled web, indeed. vbcrlf
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
comprehensive academic resource that encompasses a broad range of
articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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