Moralism and Compensation in Shelby Steele’s White Guilt Theory: African American Economic and Academic Performance under Preferential Policies

Sami Chedhli Nighaoui

doi:10.29333/ejecs/187

Authors

Sami Chedhli Nighaoui

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29333/ejecs/187

Keywords:

African Americans, preferential policies, academic gap, economic performance

Abstract

This paper revisits Steele’s claims about the politics of social equality and justice by interrogating some of his postulates about the allegedly ineluctable effects of preferential policies on African American social mobility. The discussion of the potential impacts of preferential policies on career building among African Americans shall herein draw on the wider debate on the “moral politics” involved in the practices of victimization and compensation. The paper also demonstrates that preferential treatment is currently the only effective assistance that the government could provide for students from this disadvantaged community in the absence of concrete political solutions to the problem of unequal educational preparation by which it seems to be most affected.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biography

Sami Chedhli Nighaoui

Dept. of English

Assistant Professor

University of Carthage, Tunis.

References

Akpan, L. (2018). The political undertone in the development of nomadic education in Africa: Lessons from Nigeria. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(1), 1-21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29333/ajqr/5791

Anderson, M. (1998, November 22). Still waiting, New York Times. Retrieved from http://www. movies2.nytimes.com/books/98/11/22/reviews/981122.22anderst.html

Banks, J., & Banks C. M. G. (2010). Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives (7th ed.). California: John Wiley and Sons.

Bertrand, M., & Mullainathan, S. (2004): Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination. The American Economic Review, 94(4), 991-1013. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3592802 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1257/0002828042002561

Bishaw, A., & Iceland J. (2006). Poverty: 1999, census 2000 brief . U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/c2kbr-19.pdf

Bittman, B., Davies, A., Russell, W., & Goussakova, E. (2017). Advance Placement and the Achievement Gap in the 21st Century: A Multiple Linear Regression of Marginalized Populations in AP Enrollment, Research in Social Sciences and Technology, 2(2). Retrieved from http://ressat.org/index.php/ressat/article/view/46 DOI: https://doi.org/10.46303/ressat.02.02.2

Boshara, R. (2017, April 12). Black college graduates are losing wealth. Here’s what can help. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/black-college-graduates

Carothers, D. (2018). A culture of equality?. Journal of Culture and Values in Education, 1(2), 42-57. Retrieved from http://cultureandvalues.org/index.php/JCV/article/view/13 DOI: https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.01.02.3

Coates, T. N. (2017, February 21). My president was black: A history of the first African American White House and of what came next. The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive

Desilver, D. (2013). Black unemployment rate is consistently twice that of whites. Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewresearch.org.

Fetter, D. (2017). Local government and old-age support in the New Deal. Explorations in Economic History, 66, 1-20. doi:10.1016/j.eeh.2017.02.003 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eeh.2017.02.003

Gaille, B. (2017). 19 affirmative action in college admissions statistics. Brandongaille. Retrieved from http://www.brandongaille.com/17-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions-statistics.

Glazer, N. (1992). Individualism and equality in the United States. In Luther S. Luedtke (Ed.), Making America: The Society and Culture of the United States (pp. 292-307). North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.

Griffen, A. J. (2018). Enacting African American Legislative Voice: A Program Design for the Recruitment and Development of African American Educational Lobbyists. American Journal of Qualitative Research, 2(2), 74-102.

Guthmann, E. (2016, May 20): Shelby Steele has a lot to say about black society. He calls it common sense. Some call him an Uncle Tom. Sfgate. Retrieved from htpp://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Shelby-Steele

Hanushek, E. A., Ruhose J., & Woessmann L. (2016). It pays to improve school quality. Education Next. Retrieved from https://www.educationnext.org/pays-improve-school-quality-student-achievement-economic-gain

Herrnstein , R. G., & Murray C. (1994). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: The Free Press.

Hollinger, D. A. (2000). Postethnic America. New York: Basic Books.

Jones, A. (2019). Parallel Oppressions. Journal of Culture and Values in Education, 2(1), 18-33. Retrieved from http://cultureandvalues.org/index.php/JCV/article/view/31 DOI: https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.02.01.2

Jones, W. P. (2015). The sanctity of private property: the Civil Rights Act and the limitations of American liberalism. New Labor Forum, 24(1), 62–68. doi:10.1177/1095796014561641 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1095796014561641

Kurtulus, F. A. (2016). The impact of affirmative action on the employment of minorities and women: a longitudinal analysis using three decades of EEO‐1 filings. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 35(1), 34-66. doi:10.1002/pam.21881 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.21881

Lakoff, G. (2002). Moral politics: how liberals and conservatives think. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226471006.001.0001

Leek, J. (2016). Global citizenship education in school curricula. A polish perspective. Journal of Social Studies Education Research, 7(2), 51-74.

Mazumder, B. (2014). Black–white differences in intergenerational economic mobility in the United States. Economic Perspectives, xxxviii(1), 1-18.

MBACrystalBall (2018, June 23). Affirmative action in U.S. college admissions: Definition, examples, pros and cons. Retrieved from http://www.mbacrystalball.com/blog/2018/02/23/affirmative-action-college-admissions

Mills, N. (1994). Introduction: to look like America. Mills, N. (Ed.), Debating Affirmative Action: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Inclusion (pp. 1-29). New York: Delta Books.

Minowitz, P. (2016). Rescuing ‘diversity’ from affirmative action and campus activists. Perspectives on Political Science, 45(3), 147-162. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/10457097.2016.1181894

National employment monthly update. (2017). Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/research/labor-and-employment

Onuoha, A. (2017, April 30). Revisiting the effect of affirmative action on minority student outcomes. Harvard.edu. Retrieved from http://www.dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/36853299

Oppenheimer, D. B. (2016). The disappearance of voluntary affirmative action from the U.S. workplace. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 24(1), 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1332/175982716X14538098991133 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/175982716X14538098991133

Perry, B. A. (2007). The Michigan affirmative action cases. Kansas: University Press of Kansas.

Reardon, S. F. (2013). The widening income achievement gap. Educational Leadership, 70(8), 10-16.

Robinson, P. M. (2016, March 12). Under the skin: Shelby Steele on race in America. Hoover.org. Retrieved from http://www.hoover.org/research/under-skin-shelby-steele-race-america

Sander, R., & Taylor, Jr. S. (2012, October 2). The painful truth about affirmative action.” The Atlantic. Retrieved from http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/10/the-painful-truth-about-affirmative-action/263122

Schlesinger, Jr, A. M. (1992). The Disuniting of America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Sharkey, P. (2009, April 14). Neighborhoods and the black-white mobility gap. Pewtrusts. http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/reports/economic_mobility

Skiba, R. J. et al. (2011). Race is not neutral: a national investigation African American and Latino disproportionality in school discipline. School Psychology Review, 40(1), 85-107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/02796015.2011.12087730

Steele, S. (1990a, May 13). A negative vote on affirmative action. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/13/magazine/a-negative-vote-on-affirmative-action.html

Steele, S. (1990b). The content of our character: A new vision of race in America. New York: Harper Perennial.

Steele, S. (1999). A dream deferred: The second betrayal of black freedom in America. New York: HarperCollins.

Steele, S. (2006). White guilt: How blacks and whites together destroyed the promise of the civil rights era. New York: Harper Perennial.

Steele, S. (2009a, March 17). Affirmative distraction. Hoover.org. Retrieved from http://www.hoover.org/research/affirmative-distraction

Steele, S. (2009b, July 24). Affirmative action doesn’t solve the real problem. The Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/24/AR2009072402090.html?noredirect=on

Steele, S. (2015). Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country. New York: Basic Books.

The decennial census. (2012, September 5). U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/history/www/programs/demographic/decennial_census.html

The State of American Jobs. (2016, October 6). Pew Research Center. Retrieved from http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2016/10/06/the-state-of-american-jobs.

Tweedy, D. (2015, October 2). What it’s like to be a black man in medical school. Time. Retrieved from http://www.time.com/4044851/black-man-in-a-white-coat

Taliaferro , J. D., & DeCuir-Gunby J. T. (2009). African American educators’ perspectives on the advanced placement opportunity gap. Urban Review: Issues and Ideas in Public Education, 40(2), 64-185. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-007-0066-6

Welniak, E., & Posey, K. (2017, November 8). Household income: 1999, census 2000 brief 4,. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www.census.gov

West, C., & Smiley T. (2012). The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. New York: Smiley Books.

Zeller, P. (2016, February 16). Shelby Steele now (part 2): promoting racism as the greatest barrier to black advancement is liberalism’s greatest source of power. AmericanExperiment. Retrieved from http://www.americanexperiment.org