“The Recoloring of Campus Life”
Shelby Steele
Steele has a unique perspective in his essay, a perspective that I, as a white middle-class student, have difficulty relating to and understanding. From my comprehension of the reading, he blames campus racial tension on blacks feeling inferior and whites feeling that minorities are complaining, using their genetic traits to gain the upper hand. He makes his points in a logical fashion that reveals thoughtfulness and recognition of the complexities of the situation.
Although the author is credible, I don’t understand his naming “the black inferiority complex” as a primary reason for racial fighting. Everyone has insecurities. Personally, I feel like I am not intelligent enough and have not experienced enough to contribute anything to some class discussions. I am only a little farm girl. What makes the inferiorities felt by African-Americans that much greater to spur fighting? I feel that this failure to acknowledge the inferiority complexes in each person was the largest defect in the author’s rational.
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2 comments:
I tried to understand another essay on the issue of racism and inferiority. Yet, I had trouble again. I appreciated this essay more than others but still feel like I do not have the right to comment on this subject, as I have no experience of being the minority.
I did a little more highlighting in this essay than others. I specifically appreciated this line in paragraph 38, "If the darkest fear of blacks is inferiority, the darkest fear of whites is that their better lot in this life is at least partially the result of their capacity for evil-their capacity to dehumanize an entire people for their own benefit and then to be indifferent to the devastation their dehumanization has wrought on successive generations of their victims." This is a great thought in my opinion. Past racism hasn't only affected those being discriminated against. I, when presented with the past and these issues of racism, feel like I do not deserve my status in life because at some point in history, my people, my heritage has deprived others of their lives, livelihoods and natural rights.
It was discussed in class that at points white people have felt hated and disliked for no reason except for being white, for the past hurts that had been done to the blacks looking down on them. I thought this quote was a good representation of that feeling.
I also liked how the author was so open to seeing where the faults were in both races dealings with the subject of racism. Blacks are being given special environments where they can be "more comfortable with people of their own kind," yet recognizes that this would never be given to white students. This is almost as a chosen form of segregation. I really enjoyed the personal knowledge shared by the author also.
I think by Steele naming the "black inferiority complex" as the primary reason for racial tension and fighting is more on track than anyone would really like to admit. It is so easy to look at the past and see what has happened, think all the while that whites owe blacks advantages they would ordinarily not have gotten. But in reality, no generation of do-gooders can come close. Steele's generation of Blacks took care of most of the work and it is now time for this country to move on. I am not telling people to forget, I am telling them to move on and stop thinking in terms of Black ad White. Again, so easy to say and not easy to do.
Maybe in an idealistic society my dream of no race will come true, but for now it is my hope that both the Black and White communities will derive their meaning not from their definition, but from their being and who they are inside. I think the greatest accomplishments in racial history have come from those who look from the inside out, ot the other way around.
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