Steele's position is informed by a complex appreciation of America's tragic racial history. After 300 years of slavery and segregation, he believes American society "must bear an undeniable shame." And he is convinced that despite great strides in this country over the last 40 years, racism remains a problem. Still, after marching alongside his father in the 1950's to win the right to eat at the lunch counter of Woolworth's, after working in four different Great Society programs during the 60's and 70's, and after observing the interventions by government, universities, and businesses in behalf of blacks over the last 30 years, Steele has concluded that the reform efforts conducted under liberalism's banner have betrayed liberalism's highest principles, and harmed the very group they were meant to uplift.
Steele's main target is the sensibility according to which racial preferences are the indispensable means to achieving equality for blacks. Calling this attitude "redemptive" liberalism, he contrasts it to the classical-liberal spirit of the early civil-rights movement. Whereas the latter sought to secure freedom for the individual by guaranteeing fair process, the former strives for the far more ambitious goal of an ideal society, concerning itself above all with the wounded souls of the victims and the inner moral intentions of their champions. If classical liberalism is defined by the universal principles of opportunity, responsibility, and merit, redemptive liberalism measures itself in terms of equality of result, ideological conformity, and deference to those who suffer.
Steele is at his best in laying bare the psychology and governing impulses of this new brand of liberalism. He offers a sharp critique of what he calls the black "grievance elite," a coterie of scholars, activists, and politicians who provide soothing rationalizations of black helplessness, thus strengthening their own grip on power, but who utterly fail to deliver what their communities most desperately need to hear from them: internal criticism and a summons to responsibility.
He is also unsparing in his analysis of white liberals. Burdened by shame over America's legacy of racial injustice, they care more about expiating that sense of shame than about dealing with the actual needs of their would-be wards. In pursuit of their own redemption, they have promoted quick fixes and symbolic gestures that have actually debilitated those whom they pride themselves on benefiting:
Welfare without a time limit or an expectation of work may have shown white America as compassionate, but it also took the problem of poverty away from those who suffer it. When universities took responsibility for the problem of black underrepresentation on campus, and lowered standards to raise the numbers, then blacks became invested in the academic weakness that won the specialness of a double standard.... The black reward follows the display of difficulty, not the display of success.
