On Tuesday, Sept. 26, Dr. Shelby Steele was the speaker for the annual Snyder Presidential Lecture. Dr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, focused on issues pertaining to race relations.
Generalizations filled his speech, which I found to be both hurtful and unjust as an analysis of African-American people. Though himself a black scholar, he listed black people as an underdeveloped group without any great achievements except in the areas of sports, music and entertainment. Very often, the media does highlight black achievement in these areas, but this does not mean that black people are incompetent in other areas, as Dr. Steele implied.
His comments assumed that blacks exist as a monolith, being relatively homogeneous and equivalent to nothing more than our negative stereotypes. He did not clearly define the ways in which he considered black Americans "underdeveloped," but his argument de-legitimizes all the efforts of black professionals.
I have a few concerns about Dr. Steele's presentation, including the setting of his speech, his biases and the power of his influence. The speech took place at Balch Arena, where Dr. Steele spoke for an hour, and was followed by a question and answer session.
Other controversial speakers have come to Tufts, such as Ann Coulter, and have spoken in a debate setting where the audience could hear two competing points of view. In an environment like Tufts where some students have known very few black people in their lives, Dr. Steele's argument caused some students to walk away from the lecture taking his arguments as "Gospel truth."
Dr. Steele's speech sought largely to promote his new book. It was strange to hear this older black man speak at a predominantly white university about "white guilt," incongruently joking that white Americans should not feel guilty about what has happened to blacks because blacks do not feel guilty about what has happened to Native Americans.
He argued that black "underdevelopment" is the sole cause for inequalities between black and white Americans. Because he believes that inequalities in America since the 1960s have no longer been based on racial injustice, he argued that "white guilt" mistakenly creates programs like Affirmative Action to dissociate white America from the stigma of being called racist.
What was hurtful as a black audience member was Dr. Steele's treatment of the present-day situation of black people. While he believes that programs like welfare are temporary solutions that do not affect the roots of such social issues, he appeared to argue that present-day racism and inequality exists nowhere else except in the African-American mind.
Dr. Steele failed to speak about the disparities in public school education or the serious flaws in the American criminal justice system that trap many black males. His failure to acknowledge more of the issues black Americans face and his complete lack of faith in our academic, economic and self-governing potential makes him a questionable authority to speak for and about black people.
For some audience members, the fact that he is African-American has a powerful influence and adds merit to his arguments. It is easy to believe that because Dr. Steele is black, he speaks as a representative for many black people. But he does not speak for me, nor for several other black students and professors I have spoken to.
How can his message be a constructive critique if he acknowledges so little about the complexities of the African-American experience? I implore those of you who heard and remember his speech to also remember my words: This argument has a million sides, many of which offer fewer misrepresented outlooks on both the black community and race relations.
