On Mar 10, 8:13Â am, tg
earthlink.net> wrote:> On Mar 9, 10:46Â pm, Immortalist
yahoo.com> wrote:
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>>> On Mar 9, 5:12Â pm, Robert Cohen
msn.com> wrote:>
>>> On Mar 9, 5:49Â pm, Robert Cohen
msn.com> wrote:>
>>>> On Mar 9, 5:40Â pm, Robert Cohen
msn.com> wrote:>
>>>>> He's lecturing  on C-SPAN as I write this
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>>>>> It's not easy to explain, while there's substantial truth in it
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>>>>> He discusses false fronts that especcially American black adapt.
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>>>>> I have always thought everybody does it, as my thousands of notes
>>>>> should  imply.
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>>>>> Alexander Pope said if man didn't show a fake face, civil society
>>>>> couldn't take it.
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>>>> descrption and precis of book
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>>> if the other link can't get one to Shelby Steele's new book, then
>>> please try the amazon reviews that briefly explain the theme
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>> By the logic or the authors mixed race incompetance argument, wouldn't
>> this lead ideally to only Europeans, of pure blood, being presidents?
>> Sounds like Hitler man, LOL. Plus anyone with resentments in their
>> past would be disqualified from being president. Hell even the Pope
>> would be out of the parade.
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>> I was reading the readers opinions about the book and found this;
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>> Professor Steele, who I admire so very much, because his writings, as
>> is still true of this little gem, are always impeccably written.
>> However, his arguments, which are always the same, continue to rest on
>> a flawed logical foundation.
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>> The flaw at the heart of his argument: that it is "challengers" and
>> "bargainers" that is the source of white guilt lies in his failure to
>> recognize that EVERYONE in America is a victim of racism. Like the sea
>> is for fish, racism is the meta-world in which we all swim. How could
>> it be otherwise? Wish fulfilling thought, and feigning racial
>> innocence, cannot cancel out our brutal past; it cannot just wisp it
>> all away, with one swoop of the hand, can it?
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>> To the extent we are all Americans necessarily means that we are all
>> also survivors of, and thus genuine victims of the American racial
>> Holocaust. It is our common shared heritage. Victimization due to the
>> American holocaust is co-terminus with American society and with all
>> of American psychology and thought. Simply because the majority
>> population does not wish to face this fact makes it no less true. The
>> victims of racism have never been just those "consciously targeted,"
>> but also the "unintended victims," - which is to say, the rest of
>> American society itself. This remains true whether Professor Steele
>> wishes to "openly" acknowledge it or not.
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>> In fact, arguably the unintended victims (mostly whites and their
>> sympathizers) are the greatest victims of all, since they must bear
>> the brunt of having to live under the perpetual cloud that their
>> identities and the whole basis of their self-worth and self-esteem is
>> built up on, sustained by, and depends on denying both past racist
>> atrocities, and the fact that they are still heavily invested in the
>> gains of an illicit American past, which continues to sustain them.
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>> By any known standards, this is a heavy cross for any one group to
>> have to bear -- surely sufficient in and of itself to produce any
>> amount of guilt, without the additional help of Al Sharpton or Jessie
>> Jackson.
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>> Thus, it is clear that those who deny that they are victims of racism
>> are also shielding themselves from an even larger truth: the denial
>> that the American holocaust ever took place, and more importantly,
>> that it is still ongoing. Anyway it is viewed, "racist denial" is just
>> the flip side of "wallowing in victim-hood." They are just different
>> sides of the same coin. And in this regard, one kind of denial is no
>> better than the other.
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>> Thus, in the end it is not blacks, whether they be "challengers" or
>> "bargainers," that make whites feel guilty: It is whites own guilty
>> self-knowledge that does this. At some level, all whites must know
>> that their own identities are a part of the same wider fraud that all
>> of the myth of white supremacy is. And thus, just like the Nazis knew,
>> white Americans know that they have inherited a legacy of brutality
>> upon which their mostly fraudulent identities are based. This is a
>> burden heavy enough to produce guilt and to produce the kind of self-
>> censoring tyranny that seeks to snuff out anyone who reminds them of
>> the truth. Perhaps unwittingly Professor Stele and his conservative
>> cohorts are a part of this frontline defense to forever conceal and
>> entomb the truth about the real source of white guilt.
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>> So, the world of American psychology is not divided into "Challengers"
>> and "Bargainers," as this book suggests, but into those "who deny
>> their victim-hood" and those "who accept it as a "given," and thus as
>> a place to begin a rebuilding process. Sadly, for our society, no one
>> has a choice in this matter - including Professor Steele who hangs out
>> in his own conflicted mulatto reality. It is all part of the spectrum
>> of the American cultural DNA.
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>> We can debate the issue of whether Senator Obama will or will not win
>> the presidential election; and whether or not if he does so, it is
>> because he is a "symbol of redemption" for white guilt: But what we
>> cannot debate is the source of white guilt. It is not blacks who are
>> the source of that guilt -- whether they be Harvard polished mulattoes
>> like Senator Obama and Professor Steele himself, or the likes of Jesse
>> Jackson and Reverend Al Sharpton, or even just the "purple-suited
>> joker" from the inner city ghetto. Together, their very existence is a
>> threat to revealing the true basis of white guilt, and thus the true
>> basis of our nation's deepest and most cherished secret.
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>> For the writing alone, Five stars.
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> Seconded.
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Please also try to get his interesting as helle lecture, which sould
be somewhere at the book do-hickey of
www.c-span.org
