When Steele conceives the idea of “white guilt”, he mentions that this guilt is not limited to race. Rather, this is a consuming guilt of the white man for his atrocities against minorities, and these include minority race, gender and other communities. It is a guilt that forms the moral core of United States of America, replaces the vacuum of moral authority that existed from the knowledge of one’s association with racism, and induces a sense of responsibility to right the wrongs of the past. In the specific event that Steele addresses, it is to make up for racial injustice that the blacks have suffered in United States. The central argument of this book, however, is that this white guilt is not a moral choice—it does not depend on the goodwill of the people but “[...] depends on their fear of stigmatization, their fear of being called …show more content…
Then there is his conception of “globalized racism” , in which he states that not every racist event is made out to be the tip of an iceberg, wherein a deeper, systemic problem lies. He insists that, “Global racism was the answer. With it, the smallest racial incident proved the “global truth” of systemic racism.”
Steele seems to ignore the fact that the very basis of discrimination in any capacity against a black person because of his/her skin colour carries the historical burden of having perceived people with black skin colour as less than human and, therefore, beneath them. The possibility that the number of black people enjoying the “affirmative action with a new sense of entitlement” might be less than the number of people who might need that affirmative action, if at least