Shelby Steele: 'This Is Not a Systemically Racist Society'
During an appearance on FNC’s “Fox News Primetime,” author and Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele dismissed claims that the United States was a “systemically racist” society.
Steele told host Brian Kilmeade the opposite was true, and Gwen Berry’s Olympic trials protest was 60 years too late.
“Here’s the thing that is so fascinating to me about today: All the things that we protested back then are over with,” he said. “We are as free as you can possibly be free. We have enjoyed freedom now for some 50 or so years. Our problem has been a lack of development. We haven’t developed commensurate with the new freedom that we want for ourselves, and so we are still behind. What frustrates me today when I see someone like Gwen Berry protesting at the Olympics is that, honey, you are 60 years too late. Protest is not going to develop black America. Black America is going to have to develop itself.”
“We want certainly with the goodwill of other people, but it’s our responsibility to develop it,” Steele continued. “So, to get on the winning stand and pretend that you are somehow a victim of racism and so forth is horrible. It’s an abomination. It really sends exactly the wrong message to society. And there is — the point is there is no racial discrimination behind it. This is not a systemically racist society. It is a systemically goodwill toward black people society. People in this country are rooting for us. They are not holding us back. They want us to do well. And that’s what George Foreman’s message is the one I think that endures because of that.”
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