Professional Conservative Black Person Shelby Steele appears to have bequeathed his role as the Republican Party’s resident race therapist to his son, Eli Steele:
The day will arrive when this interracial generation reaches political consciousness and finds itself at odds with America’s divisive identity politics. Of all Americans, they represent the best opportunity to end these politics and point America back to its tradition of individualism.
Most minorities today fall conveniently within categories such as African American, Chinese American or Mexican American. These labels arose during an era of political correctness that literally placed race, ethnicity or religion before national identity. Since the 1960s, minorities have found in their racial identity a preferential gateway into public and private institutions.
Or in the case of Shelby and Eli Steele, a gateway into a lucrative profession of writings that persuade conservatives that all their problems with communities of color stem from brainwashed, ungrateful minorities clinging to a bitter stew of past racial grievances. Prior to the 1960s, minorities found in their racial identity a “gateway” to racial segregation, restrictive immigration laws and mass deportation–things that might of had some effect on race as a defining feature of American identity–but no, I’m sure it’s just because of affirmative action. Before that, America merely adhered its “tradition of individualism”–or as Steele puts it, people were “free” to “carve out identities and contribute to an already rich heritage for future generations.”
The irony is that if race became less relevant to politics, Republicans wouldn’t need anyone to persuade them there isn’t anything wrong with deploying white identity politics, idealizing a problematic racial past, and using racial dogwhistles like “reparations” and “anchor babies” then Shelby wouldn’t have a job. The fact is that as long as minorities continue to have collective political interests as minorities, they will continue to act collectively in those interests, and they continue to have collective political interests in large part because the forces arrayed against them continue to see and act against them that way.
