Michael Shermer with Shelby Steele—Shame, America’s Sins, Polarization & What Killed Michael Brown?

About this episode:

Listen to the Science Salon Podcast # 139 (audio-only):

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The United States today is hopelessly polarized; the political Right and Left have hardened into rigid and deeply antagonistic camps, preventing any sort of progress. Amid the bickering and inertia, the promise of the 1960s—when we came together as a nation to fight for equality and universal justice—remains unfulfilled.

As Shelby Steele reveals in Shame, the roots of this impasse can be traced back to that decade of protest, when in the act of uncovering and dismantling our national hypocrisies—racism, sexism, militarism—liberals internalized the idea that there was something inauthentic, if not evil, in the America character. Since then, liberalism has been wholly concerned with redeeming modern America from the sins of the past, and has derived its political legitimacy from the premise of a morally bankrupt America. The result has been a half-century of well-intentioned but ineffective social programs, such as Affirmative Action. Steele reveals that not only have these programs failed, but they have in almost every case actively harmed America’s minorities and poor. Ultimately, Steele argues, post-60s liberalism has utterly failed to achieve its stated aim: true equality. Liberals, intending to atone for our past sins, have ironically perpetuated the exploitation of this country’s least fortunate citizens. Approaching political polarization from a wholly new perspective, Steele offers a rigorous critique of the failures of liberalism and a cogent argument for the relevance and power of conservatism.

Shermer and Steele discuss:

• 30th anniversary of his book The Content of Our Character, and what has changed in race relations in America in those 30 years?

• Steele’s response to President Johnson’s famous quote:

“Freedom is not enough. You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him; bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”

• why “The promised land guarantees nothing. It is only an opportunity, not a deliverance.”,

literal truths vs. poetic truths and power:

“What actually happened was that liberalism turned to poetic truth when America’s past sins were no longer literally true enough to support liberal policies and the liberal claim on power. The poetic truth of black victimization seeks to compensate for America’s moral evolution. It tries to keep alive the justification for liberal power even as that justification has been greatly nullified by America’s moral development.”

• political correctness is the enforcement arm of poetic truth,

• black families & fatherless homes,

• white guilt,

• race fatigue,

• reparations,

• anti-racism,

• achievement gap,

• Princeton racism letter,

• race and IQ,

• SAT tests,

• BLM and the nuclear family,

• training and sensitivity programs.

Shermer and Steele also discuss his new film, produced with his son Eli Steele, titled What Killed Michael Brown?

This dialogue was recorded on October 9, 2020 as part of the Science Salon Podcast series hosted by Michael Shermer and presented by The Skeptics Society, in California.

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