Shelby Steele: Race In America | Hoover Virtual Policy Briefing

Recorded July 07, 2020, 11AM PST
Shelby Steele Talks About Race In America.
The Hoover Institution presents an online virtual briefing series on pressing policy issues, including health care, the economy, democratic governance, and national security. Briefings will include thoughtful and informed analysis from our top scholars.
ABOUT THE FELLOW
Shelby Steele is the Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He specializes in the study of race relations, multiculturalism, and affirmative action. He was appointed a Hoover fellow in 1994.
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[@stwoods25]

Mr. Steele is right on point. Not addressing the real issues only puts us on a downward spiral. I pray we all listen to his wisdom!

[@dennistrain8565]

Thank You to the Hoover Institute for all that you are doing to improve America and the conversation amongst our citizenry.

[@carolweidig4689]

I wish more people would listen to this talk with Shelby Steele around race etc. i.e. Caucasians have lost their confidence and understanding of the truth on related issues.

[@christoferprestipino7433]

Man 10:26 to 10:55 is one of the most powerful things I’ve seen on the internet.

[@mwalsh128]

Shelby Steele is a wise man. He makes a great point around the 30 min mark. If the left appeals to victimhood, then conservatives should appeal to the strength of a people that have overcome centuries of tremendous difficulty and opposition. Appeal not to neediness, but to the greatness of black America by what they’ve overcome. Call on black Americans not to seek a minimal existence in a role of subservience and dependence, but to lead all Americans in another chapter of American Exceptionalism. I see this character strength in so many conservative black voices (Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Brandon Tatum, ABL, etc...) and black politicians (Tim Scott, Allen West, Burgess Owens, etc...). It’s time to not let some of the greatest intellectuals of the last 50 years (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, etc...), who happen to be black, pass on from this life before their legacy is fulfilled by the rise of black conservatism, which leads this country into a new chapter of social, political, economical and spiritual success and freedom. It would be a shameful irony to have the freedoms of all Americans eroded away in the names of “racism” and “fairness” to black America.

[@mwalsh128]

He makes a great point around the 30 min mark. If the left appeals to victimhood, then conservatives should appeal to the strength of a people that have overcome centuries of tremendous difficulty and opposition. Appeal to the greatness of black America by what they’ve overcome. Call on black America not to ask in a role of subservience, but to lead all Americans in another chapter of American Exceptionalism. I see this character strength in so many conservative black voices (Candace Owens, Larry Elder, Brandon Tatum, ABL, etc...) and black politicians (Tim Scott, Allen West, Burgess Owens, etc...). It’s time to not let some of the greatest intellectuals of the last 50 years (Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, etc...), who happen to be black, pass on from this life before their legacy is fulfilled by the rise of black conservatism, which leads this country into a new chapter of social, political, economical and spiritual freedom. It would be a shameful irony to have the freedoms of all Americans eroded away in the names of “racism” and “fairness” to black America.

[@cdex412]

So thankful for great thinkers and truth-tellers like Shelby Steele, and platforms that are not afraid to create space for truth to stand!

[@jamesw17]

Shelby Steele is a great thinker and his perspectives are extremely relevant right now. They deserve the widest audience possible.

[@wordsworth41]

Mr. Steele is a legend!

[@Mrs.T305]

Love that profile picture 👍

[@ND-hg6ui]

Also Thomas sowell and Booker T Washington.

[@9dissection9]

Mr Steele is so right. The minute i abandoned my "underdog" mentality a whole world of oppurtunities opened. Race is a passive skill. It is nothing creative. Especially if you study social psychology and go trough the part racial bias. When i do something good it is because of my colour, when i do something bad it is societys fault. If I still viewed myself as i was taught when i grew up i wouldnt be where I am today. I grew up in the end of the 80s beginning of the 90s in a very ethnic country with few foreigners. So I knew what racism looks like. I know how it feels to be chased by skinheads. Today people whine about racism. They don't even know what it is.

[@leafhappy]

24:00 "You can't buy innocence and I can't sell innocence, we have to live in today's world."

[@alinar8936]

Thank you, Mr. Steele! I always look forward to your appearances and interviews.

[@inflatablelover1884]

Great interview. Always great content. Thanks HI.

[@taralilarose1]

Thank you for your great and important work.

[@jladdyost]

People like Shelby Steele are the only kind of people that can effect real change for the better in the Black community. If we would only ALL listen.

[@tamigarrett2554]

Exactly. Needs to go. Viral!

[@rickedeckard2006]

"the passion of the white liberal, is to achieve innocence". Quite profound.

[@Mateo-et3wl]

Still haven't found their replacement for Jesus

[@stwoods25]

@@Mateo-et3wl They will be looking for a long time

[@afterthought3341]

Hollywood? It's all German Shepherds and water hoses.

[@trevorjames6767]

I could listen to Dr. Shelby Steele for hours! He speaks with authority and the black American community must listen to men like him and others like Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder and their younger successors.

[@michaelknopf1817]

I agree, I been listening to some highly intelligent black leaders, and am inspired.

[@andreacook6827]

I could listen to him for hours.

[@buzzarddog1]

In MLK's autobio he said that his professor in college was speaking about Gandhi and MLK was so moved he got up, walked out of the lecture and found as many books about Gandhi as he could.

[@gammasmash1924]

Great video. Shelby Steele is a smart guy. Glad I got to hear his take on our current climate.

[@kkampy4052]

Shelby needs to be a speech writer for Trump

[@jimbuford4147]

What group in human history survived what they went through? The Jews who lived as slaves in Egypt for 400 years until the Exodus is one example. The Egyptians were not caucasians.

[@Lizo128]

I agree with him about good police training- and weeding out the bad, everyone agrees with that, but in reality 95% of the police force is excellent. With the liberal cities keep the hands tied of their police, they are going to see some hit burnout, apathy and become angry and act out. It happens in many professions. The human condition. The police are dealing with repeat offenders who are violent and risking their lives for no purpose, they are out the next day. It's like shoveling while it's snowing. No reward for the risks they take protecting the community. They want to make a difference, they can't. The honorable profession becomes just a job of wrestling matches. They are the most abused profession in the country. With more support and more effective judicial systems morale is higher, apathy is lower, behavior is more professional. Crime is lower with stricter consequences. Drops the mic.

[@davidflint12]

Reparations: you can’t buy innocence. Great line Mr Steele

[@SjohnX]

And I have no guilt

[@GregAlterton]

You can’t buy reconciliation either.

[@aaronjo23]

Yes!

[@rogerdodger5854]

Silencing my voice changes nothing. Just more agony when your day of reckoning comes.

[@hylabrookbooks]

"Yet they all want to play Hamlet because it is sad like all actors are sad and to stand by an open grave with a joker’s skull in the hand and then to say over slow and say over slow wise, keen, beautiful words masking a heart that’s breaking, breaking, This is something that calls and calls to their blood. They are acting when they talk about it and they know it is acting to be particular about it and yet: They all want to play Hamlet. " - Carl Sandburg, 25:45

[@Wielaica]

Even victimhood comes with responsibilities: the responsibility to stop associating other things with the trauma. Then the negotiations of decency can finally start.

[@Tj930]

That's outrageous! 😳 (That story about his father.) Hard to forgive

[@goldfishi5776]

What is ‘white liberalism’, and how may that differ from liberalism of another color?

[@jimferris9447]

White liberals have self-hate. Others do not.

[@stinkeye6189]

It's not just race. What they want is health insurance, decent job, access to to good education, protection of our environment, food for their kids, recognition of American history. Let's just call it a place at the economic table. Answer the question concerning the relationship with the Conservatives and the African American, "Black", community. Somebody please tell these men that it's 2020 and not 1960 these guys don't understand the world we're living in. It's the status quo that these men support an try so hard to justify.. Economics, economics, economics.

[@maccam5821]

Conservative response: School Choice = Better education; Opportunity Zones = economic opportunity including low-skilled jobs and training young people need; Good, well-trained "community-based" policing = safe neighborhoods where a family and community can become strong and supportive; Competitive Healthcare industry = healthcare costs brought down and greater access....Economic, economics, economics...and wisdom. Let the individual and head of families make the choices that are best for their own prosperity.

[@Macheako]

If you have minor dyslexia, it actually looks like *Racin America* 🇺🇸🚘

[@brianlaughlin8974]

Love this guy.

[@zizizziuzigkjhk]

Commenting as a white person: No doubt the point about the "collapse of the black family" and the scarcity of good father figures (12:15) is persuasive. However, this same thing could have been said twenty years ago, and it would have been just as true. Which shows that this is a chicken-and-egg problem. Where will these fathers come from, if the families to rise them oftentimes do not, and cannot, exist? And why is the black community afflicted by this problem, which would normally be a universal, race-blind one, far more than any other community in this country? We all know there are historical answers to that question. But what is the solution to the problem?

[@joset4187]

Perhaps it's because they have turned away from the God of the Bible and His Law and have put their religious faith in the government..

[@sheilabright2091]

One solution would end it: stop paying women to have no man in the house. The family fell apart in one generation when the Great Society began. Women got paid per child as long as no man is in the house.

[@alexanderkelly7819]

Great organization horrible president (hoover). Keep up the good work

[@listener523]

Steele's audio is too low needs to be balanced.

[@randymartin9876]

Why are Tom's hands so prominent (almost as big as the face), so mobile, and active in grooming/adjusting?

[@ewallacestudent1]

You could write Red Bull or MAGA 2020 next to every BLM sign painted on the street and have 27 cops guard it in NYC. Or anywhere a city may deem it's OK to use city streets as an open speech forum. The city has deemed its streets an open forum and must allow any speech. Even White Lives Matter would be a fair statement. If they do not allow your speech sue.

[@suzy1750]

Shelby Steele is always a thoughtful, intelligent speaker but the interviewer is awful. He fidgeted like a two year throughout - it was unprofessional and distracting. Shelby Steele deserved better.

[@larrystaas1940]

Politics is not the answer, God and family is the answer and those are individual choices. In my lifetime the black family has fallen by the wayside and has to be established again for progress to made.

[@beatrizrosado898]

A true intellectual !

[@FightForTruthMedia]

HOOVER IS THE ABSOLUTE BEST! They inspired me to create my own Christian KZbin Channel to refute the lies of cultural Christianity! Check it out!

[@thatwhat17]

Race > Racing>Winning >Losing Maybe just saying "complexion" will make a difference to the hypersensitive, what shade? maybe not😈

[@montechambers5051]

If more Americans thought like Shelby Steele more than being in debt, this country would be profound.

[@joshtaylor26]

A living legend.

[@teffreminilik]

💚💛❤️🙏

[@artissonbeats3057]

What the HELL is really going on through?

[@JoelMMcKinney]

There are no intelligent people where I live.

[@JoelMMcKinney]

Help me please.

[@leonpope861]

Shelby Steele a person of Wisdom, Insight, Love, Discernment which I grasp the interviewer does not grasp. Interviewer does not know the story of 1619 or that there was a slave revolt in the southern part of the United States in 1526!The interviewer need to study and stop worrying about thinking he is asking inform questions! Progress will happen when INTERVIEWER START ASKING GOD TO SUPPLY THEM WITH WISDOM, INSIGHT, LOVE AND DISCERNMENT NOT PEDANTICNESS. THANK YOU SHELBY STEELE FOR YOUR WORDS AND STEPPING OUT OF THE STEREOTYPE, AND TYPECAST!🤔😏🤓🙃🤗🌪🎯🛎

[@ericanderson3534]

"1619" Is the time some amount of Slaves showed up in boats on the east coast of North America. Great. And what of the tribes in Africa who trafficked these same slaves to boats on their African western coast?

Tuis guy talks a lot of sense but he is painfully uneloquent and difficult to listen to.

[@Mateo-et3wl]

???

[@maungkyaw3519]

WHEN WE GOOD INTELEGENT EDUCATED TO CHANGE FROM SELFISH VERY RICH PEOPLE CREATED MODERN PRETERM DEMOCRACY????? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH AMEN.

[@keithr4224]

Bla, bla, bla... you gotta do better than this!

[@fawaz4276]

Mr. Shelby, I disagree with you respectfully. It seems to me that you are apologizing for the oppression that people of color face and go through in America. Asking minorities to turn the other cheek and slapped or punched is disturbing, it’s quite frankly victim blaming. The civil rights movement in the 60’s and today are quite different. I agree with you that we as black people might not be going through the same type of treatment that our parents did, that said, we can not deny the new civil rights challenge which is the lack of respect, sympathy or empathy for black bodies. Dismissing “BLM” and holding it to standards of your issues in your generation is somewhat deceitful. You cannot value one issue over the other, if we do that then it’s a game of “who has it worse”. The generation of today feel very strongly about police brutality enough to protest. Just incase you might have missed it, the protest around the world is not just for black people, it represents police brutality, brutal leaders across the globe. The middle East, Europe Africa are protesting, not because they love black people but because they understand oppression. “BLM” is bigger than just black people. You mentioned lack of fathers in the households are reasons for the problems in our community, I could agree however, not having a father in the house should not having any bearance on how black people are treated in public by public officials. Again sir, with all due respect I think you mistaken “defunding the police” for something else. Defunding place does not mean replacing the police, I sure want and need the police, without them criminals would be emboldened. “Defunding the police” simply means relieving police of the heavy burden they have in policing. Police officers should not be mental health workers, case managers, community support workers etc. while also expected to chase down a criminal. It makes no sense. Defunding the police would mean allocating resources in the communities that deals with specific issues, and not always crime related issues. I am sure Mr. Shelby that you have heard of the “First they came” poet by Martin Niemöller who famously warned us about not caring about other people issues. When is enough enough. I have attached a link just incase you have not heard of it. www.hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/ Lastly, I have enjoyed listening to you and I have no doubt in my mind that you want the best interest of black people at heart www.npr.org/2020/06/10/874270664/the-global-legacy-of-george-floyd www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/06/871010812/from-murals-to-tweets-the-global-south-shows-solidarity-with-george-floyd-protes www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-anti-racism-solidarity-protests-held-world-200601082708809.html