Kerby Anderson

Shelby Steele is a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and an African-American author and commentator. Recently he was reflecting on the stark difference between the civil rights movement and the current liberal marches and protests. “Unlike the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, when protesters wore their Sunday best and carried themselves with heroic dignity, today’s liberal marches are marked by incoherence and downright lunacy—hats designed to evoke sexual organs, poems that scream in anger yet have no point to make, and an hysterical anti-Americanism.” Not only is there a stark contrast between the two, but there is what he calls a “lostness” to the liberal marches. In the past, shame had a purpose. It was to expose racism, Jim Crow, and segregation. It was to remind Americans that they had a moral duty to right past wrongs and to fulfill the unfulfilled aspirations of the founders. He argues that today shame has weakened. Liberal activists call the president and anyone who voted for him racists. The reaction from the president and many others is to roll their eyes because they know that the term has been devalued. As I often say on my radio program, when everyone is called a racist, no one is a racist. The term loses any meaning. Shelby Steele puts it this way: “Bigotry exists, but it is far down on the list of problems that minorities now face. I grew up black in segregated America, where it was hard to find an open door. It’s harder now for young blacks to find a closed one.” All of this is worth remembering when liberal activists take to the streets and pretend they are following in the tradition of the civil rights marches.