To this day it is all but impossible for me to actually stop and think of my parents as white and black or to think of myself, therefore, as half and half.
Shelby SteeleRead
In certain quarters, conservatism is simply racism by another name. And minorities who openly identify themselves as conservatives are still novelties, fish out of water.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote suggests that conservatism is often linked to racism, especially when minority conservatives are seen as outliers in their communities.
Shelby Steele's quote highlights the complex relationship between conservatism and race, implying that in some circles, conservative ideologies are perceived as veiled expressions of racism. He points out that minorities who identify as conservatives may face unique challenges, feeling like 'fish out of water' within both their cultural communities and the broader political landscape, suggesting that their experience is often marginalized or misunderstood.
Themes
ConservatismRacismMinorityIdentityPolitics
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the diversity of political opinions within minority communities.
More from Shelby Steele
All quotes βThrough protest - especially in the 1950s and '60s - we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.
Shelby SteeleRead
Well, protest is central to the evolution of black American culture. It was protest that really finally won our freedom for us. Beyond that, it's always interesting to note that it expanded the idea of democracy.
Shelby SteeleRead
The 'safe spaces' for minority students on university campuses are actually redemptive spaces for white students and administrators looking for innocence and empowerment.
Shelby SteeleRead
The evil of slavery and colonialism was that these oppressions kept their victims out of history, disconnected them from the evolutionary struggle.
Shelby SteeleRead
Emmitt Till had walked into a cultural narrative in which his role was already tragically written. It was a narrative designed to preserve white supremacy. So it gave power - the right to kill - to any white claiming to defend the honor of white women.
Shelby SteeleRead
Similar quotes
If you suffocate my blackness, you've got to realize that's supremacy.
LecraeRead
The moon and sun are travelers through eternity. Even the years wander on. Whether drifting through life on a boat or climbing toward old age leading a horse, each day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.
Matsuo BashoRead
Nothing discernible to the eye of the spirit is more brilliant or obscure than man; nothing is more formidable, complex, mysterious, and infinite. There is a prospect greater than the sea, and it is the sky; there is a prospect greater than the sky, and it is the human soul.
Victor HugoRead
Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream
Nathaniel HawthorneRead
Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings.
Simone WeilRead
We may win when we lose, if we have done what we can; for by so doing we have made real at least some part of that finished product in whose fabrication we are most concerned: ourselves.
Learned HandRead