Shelby Steele: The Exhaustion of American Liberalism

March 6, 2017 Hunter Wallace Anti-White, Liberalism, Politics, Progressives, Race Relations 35

Shelby Steele has a new article in The Wall Street Journal on the exhaustion of White guilt and the impending demise of Black Run America (BRA):

“The recent flurry of marches, demonstrations and even riots, along with the Democratic Party’s spiteful reaction to the Trump presidency, exposes what modern liberalism has become: a politics shrouded in pathos. Unlike the civil-rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s, when protesters wore their Sunday best and carried themselves with heroic dignity, today’s liberal marches are marked by incoherence and downright lunacy—hats designed to evoke sexual organs, poems that scream in anger yet have no point to make, and an hysterical anti-Americanism.

All this suggests lostness, the end of something rather than the beginning. What is ending?

America, since the ’60s, has lived through what might be called an age of white guilt. We may still be in this age, but the Trump election suggests an exhaustion with the idea of white guilt, and with the drama of culpability, innocence and correctness in which it mires us. …

This liberalism evolved within a society shamed by its past. But that shame has weakened now. Our new conservative president rolls his eyes when he is called a racist, and we all—liberal and conservative alike—know that he isn’t one. The jig is up. …”

What is BRA?

We’ve spent years discussing Black Run America on this website. If you are new to Occidental Dissent, Black Run America is our term for the epoch of American history we have been living through since 1965. It means an America run at every level of society for the benefit of black people and to the detriment of everyone else living here. Actual Black Run America (ABRA) are the areas of the United States like Detroit and Birmingham which have succumbed to black majority rule.

In the broad span of American history, BRA is as distinct as Jim Crow. In fact, you could think of it as an inverted Jim Crow system where White people aren’t supposed to get “uppity” because blackness is the repository of moral authority. In contrast, whiteness has no legitimacy. BRA has its own culture, legislation, narrative, heroes and icons, obsessions, racial etiquette, etc. The Obama presidency was the culmination of BRA in full flower and the way it ended was a sure sign of its decadence.

Trump’s election was the clearest sign yet that BRA is unsustainable. He shrugged off accusations of “racism” to win the presidency. He picked a fight with ‘civil rights icon’ John Lewis. As Shelby Steele notes, Elizabeth Warren’s sanctimonious speech about Coretta Scott King is a symptom that we are at the end of something. Ryan Lenz of the SPLC told The Guardian that Richard Spencer holding up that “Wanna talk to a ‘racist’?” sign at the RNC last summer was “a tipping point.”

Personally, I think we are at the beginning of the end of BRA. We have entered the transition phase in America’s racial history similar to 1876 to 1896 or the decade between 1954 and 1965. The old system is dying while the new system is struggling to be born. Remarkably, this time around we are seeing violence erupt in liberal enclaves in the Deep North like Middlebury College and on the West Coast in Berkeley. Black Run America is dying in a way that is uncannily similar to the way it was born.

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34 Comments

  3. A simple test ask anyone if they will campaign or cheerlead for MOAR white guilt

    That shit’s done bros, even an intellectual ought to figure out that one

  5. Eight years of Obama and the Ferguson Fraud woke a lot of people out of their stupor. The Black Faction is being seen by more and more as the chaotic enemy it is.

  7. The black ethno state in the American South will need plenty of strong leaders like Shelby Steele to serve as modern day Booker T Washingtons.

  9. “hysterical anti-Americanism.”

    On the contrary, they think normals are anti American®, because they believe their values are American®.

  10. The placard that traitor is holding is correct- racism is real……against white people. Oppression is real……against white people. And ‘white privilege is real’- an anti-white statement in itself. Whites should be privileged given they invented everything and do most of the work and created the civilized world.
    Japanese are privileged in Japan, so why shouldn’t whites be privileged in white nations?
    We all know Zuma wants blacks to be privileged in South Africa.
    We need to see these things in that context.

  12. I definitely don’t sense ‘liberalism’ seems to be reclining into a period of ‘lostness’. If anything, it is too pandemick – tens of millions of White scalawags, in all 50 states, poisoned beyond rehabilitation on it – not to mention all of the poisoned minorities accompanying them.

    As to what Liberalism is, it seems to have changed into a totalitarian snit-fit that, if armed with greater licence from the state, would alacritously become a reproduction of Stalinist Russia.

  14. The (((elites))) are switching over to using fags, Mestizos and Mohammedans as their preferred weapons of choice against White America. Everyone is getting tired of Blackie and his “Where muh slavery reparayshums at?” routine.

  15. The great Charles McCarry wrote about the three dominant ‘isms’ of the 20th century–fascism, communism, and anti-Americanism. The latter two fester on within the arts/media/academia sodality. Time for a righteous scouring of these leeching institutions.

    Good luck to O.D. and all the other alt-right sites new and to come for exposing the weaselly snowflakes and down low-loving wankers. (Sunlight works, but ammonia and bleach work better.)

  16. Whites should never feel as if they eternally owe the blacks something. Even in slavery, they had better lives than their ancestors in Africa at the time, more so when freed. That they chose to remain in America post-slavery also says something.
    Just look at all these blacks in the West who grizzle and complain as if they’d be any better of under black rule. In Africa its impossible to even have clean drinking water.
    When they’re in poverty, its whiteys fault. When they’re unemployed, its whiteys fault. When they’re killing each other, its whiteys fault. When they’re abducted by aliens from outer space…..yes the white mans fault.
    How about some responsibility on their part for a change?
    Sudanese here in Australia- they think we owe them a living too when in fact, we owe them bugger all….they chose to be here.

    • You are an historian, are you John? Where did you get your doctorate? University of I make it up as I go along? Ever cracked open an actual history book? Do much reading, do you? It’s OK to be an idiot. Just keep it to yourself.

  17. It means an America run at every level of society for the benefit of black people and to the detriment of everyone else living here.

    With one (((notable exception))).

    Black Run America is dying in a way that is uncannily similar to the way it was born.

    First as tragedy, then as farce.

  18. Steele on the Liberal disconnect: Chicago had 4000 shootings last year, and it calls itself a sanctuary city.

    The incongruities cannot be held together much longer.

    • Ok, make the Sign of the Cross at the +

      Ego te absolvo. +

      There. White guilt is no more.
      Deo Gratias!

  20. SO tired of hearing folks, especially upper middle class white boys whine about “white privilege.” For real, go suck an egg and grow a pair, you pc pansy snowflakes. I’m white. My Great Grandparent’s came here from Europe and worked hard to make a life for their family. My Grandfather served in WWII. No one in my family was ever handed ANYTHING nor do I have any descendants who partook in the slave trade. We don’t have much but what we do have was gained with our hands, hearts, a little creativity. Good old fashioned dedication and hard work. Zero guilt here! Stop vilifying all white folks. And, go f yourselves while you’re at it!

    If further dividing an already confused and fragmented country is the goal of promoting anti-white sentiments and self guilt then great work yupsters. The GOP is already doing a grand ol’ job of using racism as a key tool to distract and divide while they dissect and formulate their New Order in the shadows.

  22. That photo is revolting. I read as much of the article as I could, but I’m not subscribing to WSJ..no fricken way., Mr Steele deserves a fair hearing though. I saw him on Tucker Carlson (which I hadn’t turned on in months) and listened for a few minutes. What struck me was his assertion that America has been living with white guilt since the 1960’s. I suppose thats been policy, and the attitude of those in the major urban centers and universities, but the majority of the country…no. No matter what the chattering classes think (and mr Steele is in that group) Universities and Urban centers are NOT all of America.

  23. The guy holding the sign is a narrow minded liberal intellectual bigot. People like him live in the past and cannot adjust. History will laugh at them.

  25. Do youbthink it’s finally possible that we will have tha America MLK dreamt of where we will judge each other by the content of ou character, rather than the color of our skin?

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