THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF LEADERSHIP:

The Loneliness of the "Black Conservative" (Shelby Steele, 1999, Hoover Digest)

The problem for the black conservative is more his separation from the authority of his racial group than from the actual group. He stands outside a group authority so sharply defined and monolithic that it routinely delivers more than 90 percent of the black vote to whatever Democrat runs for president. The black conservative may console himself with the idea that he is on the side of truth, but even truth is cold comfort against group authority (which very often has no special regard for truth). White supremacy focused white America's group authority for three centuries before truth could even begin to catch up. Group authority is just as likely to be an expression of collective ignorance as of truth; but it is always, in a given era, more powerful than truth. [...]

And what is this explanation of black group authority? In a word it is victimization. Not only is victimization made to explain the hard fate of blacks in American history, but it is also asked to explain the current inequalities between blacks and whites and the difficulties blacks have in overcoming them. Certainly no explanation of black difficulties would be remotely accurate were it to ignore racial victimization. On the other hand, victimization does not in fact explain the entire fate of blacks in America, nor does it entirely explain their difficulties today. It was also imagination, courage, the exercise of free will, and a very definite genius that enabled blacks not only to survive victimization but also to create a great literature, utterly transform Western music, help shape the American language, expand and deepen the world's concept of democracy, influence popular culture around the globe, and so on. No people with this kind of talent, ingenuity, and self-inventiveness would allow victimization so singularly to explain their fate unless it had become a primary source of power. And this is precisely what happened after the sixties. Victimization became so rich a vein of black power-even if it was only the power to "extract" reforms (with their illusion of deliverance) from the larger society-that it was allowed not only to explain black fate but to explain it totally. [...]

The great problem for the black conservative is that the necessity of his or her truth is hidden so that it seems irrelevant, academic.

Perhaps the best reason for the GOP to have required Trent Lott to surrender his leadership position is the profound offense that his comments caused to black conservatives. We need not be overly concerned about the reaction of a Jesse Jackson or an Al Sharpton, who've never seen an issue they wouldn't exploit for personal political gain. But simple decency must make it unacceptable for a Party leader to so fundamentally misunderstand the pain his words can cause a constituency. One strongly suspects that had Mr. Lott spoken just as glowingly of Roe v. Wade that cultural conservatives would have demanded, and received, his resignation. Can a Party that wants to attract blacks do less for its members (and allies) who are black?
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 21, 2002 9:42 AM