The fact is that we blacks are free. — Shelby Steele

A black conservative is a black who dissents from the victimization explanation of black fate. — Shelby Steele

Sometimes, Barack Obama is Martin Luther King, sometimes, he a black militant from the Sixties, then he’s a Baptist minister. He can be so different. There’s not yet an Obama voice. — Shelby Steele

Now, white America is using blacks, exploiting them, enabling their dependency so that they can say, we are innocent of racism, and therefore we are legitimate. — Shelby Steele

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. — Shelby Steele

I would love to see us, as blacks, get to the place where we say, ‘I’m not going to play race games with you. Here I am. This is who I am. Take it or leave it.’ — Shelby Steele

My honest opinion is that blacks have to fight much harder for their individuality than whites do. — Shelby Steele

Every single progressive education fad of the past thirty years has hurt poor black children. — Shelby Steele

My experience in life tells me that the values that are now being labeled ‘conservative’ are the only way that blacks can get ahead. — Shelby Steele

Normally, ‘black responsibility’ is a forbidden phrase for a black leader––not because blacks reject responsibility, but because even the idea of black responsibility weakens moral leverage over whites. — Shelby Steele

It is time for blacks to begin the shift from a wartime to a peacetime identity, from fighting for opportunity to the seizing of it. — Shelby Steele

Our families have fallen to pieces. 75 percent of all black children are born out of wedlock, without a father. — Shelby Steele

I grew up in a time when there was real segregation. And blacks during the 50s and so forth took a lot of responsibility for their lives because the government didn’t. — Shelby Steele

One drop of black blood and you’re black. That was the rule. That’s what kept the wall between whites and blacks was this one drop rule. So I was raised with absolutely no ambiguity about that. — Shelby Steele

There’s a little racism out here, always was, and always will be. — Shelby Steele

If you’re getting harassed, it’s not helpful to know that racism has generally declined in America, when you’re still experiencing it. That is a reality that we’re still vulnerable to. — Shelby Steele

In certain quarters, conservatism is simply racism by another name. And minorities who openly identify themselves as conservatives are still novelties, fish out of water. — Shelby Steele

Racism is endemic to the human condition, just as stupidity is. We will always have to be on guard against it. But now it is recognized as a scourge, as the crowning immorality of our age and our history. — Shelby Steele

I will take Al Sharpton seriously. And I know him, he’s a nice, nice person. — Shelby Steele

Racism and bigotry generally are the great driving engines of modern American liberalism. Even a remote hint of racism can trigger a kind of moral entrepreneurism. — Shelby Steele

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, good liberals both, pursued power by offering their candidacies as opportunities for Americans to document their innocence of the nation’s past. — Shelby Steele

And if you want to make many of our black leaders angry, just tell them that racism is not the number problem that black Americans face. — Shelby Steele

The great drama at the core of American race relations is always the same: Can black Americans ever be truly equal–are they capable of achieving it and are others capable of accepting it? — Shelby Steele

A bargainer is a black who enters the American, the white American mainstream by saying to whites in effect, in some code form, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt. — Shelby Steele