‘Please Stop Helping Us’ and ‘Shame’; New York Times Book Review, 3/2/15

Orlando Patterson, New York Times Book Review; ‘Please Stop Helping Us’ and ‘Shame’ :

"Steele also shares the chronic contradiction of American conservatism regarding the past. On the one hand, the past is cherished for its heritage of all that is desirable — the Constitution, freedom, personal responsibility, the work ethic, American exceptionalism and all that. On the other hand, it is dismissed as trivial (get over it and pull up your socks!) when it comes to its bruising legacy of slavery, racism, Appalachian impoverishment, patriarchy, homophobia and periodic surges of excessive greed and inequality.

At the same time, it has to be said that too much dissociative shame and a surfeit of dependence may incapacitate. If it is true that progressive public policies are essential for the improvement of disadvantaged groups, especially the least fortunate, as the histories of Europe’s, Australia’s and East Asia’s welfare states all clearly demonstrate, as does America’s earlier affirmative action for whites, it is equally the case that those to whom such policies are directed must, at some point, both accept personal responsibility and courageously make transformative ­choices for themselves and their future — including assimilation, “even if that felt like self-betrayal.” To this second truth Steele, for all his flawed denial of the first, speaks with passion, eloquence and unremitting honesty.

PLEASE STOP HELPING US

How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

By Jason L. Riley

205 pp. Encounter Books. $23.99.

SHAME

How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country

By Shelby Steele

198 pp. Basic Books. $25.99.