Who is shelby steele

Steele considers his mixed heritage an amazing gift, which served to demystify race for him. Because both of Steele's parents were active in the Civil Rights Movement, he grudgingly accompanied his father to numerous marches and rallies as a child.

Steele met his wife, Rita, during his junior year at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was one of eighteen black students in his class. In , Steele graduated from Coe and went on to earn his M. Steele attended the University of Utah, where he taught African American literature and studied for his Ph. After earning a Ph. Steele accepted a position at San Jose State University as a professor of English literature, teaching there from to His research there focuses primarily on race relations, multiculturalism and affirmative action.

Skip to content Shelby Steele. Do you find this information helpful? A small donation would help us keep this accessible to all. Forego a bottle of soda and donate its cost to us for the information you just learned, and feel good about helping to make it available to everyone! Hurst, R. Shelby Steele Previous Previous post: John Stewart Affirmative action, he says, prevents that, keeping the most talented blacks from vying on an even level with their peers.

The son of a black truck driver and a white social worker who met in the Civil Rights Movement, Steele was raised in a working-class Chicago suburb, where he attended segregated public schools and developed a personal understanding of race relations. He taught African American literature in East St. A recurrent guest on Nightline and 60 Minutes , he also won an Emmy for his writing on the documentary Seven Days in Bensonhurst.

The Hoover Institution is only a few hundred yards from the Stanford University office of his brother, Claude, his identical twin and ideological opposite. As a professor in Stanford's psychology department, Claude Steele also lectures and writes on race. But while their subject matter overlaps, the brothers rarely interact, and-- to put it diplomatically--each counts the other among those who find his work "controversial.

Steele is undaunted by criticism launched at him from figures such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or officials at the NAACP, all of whom he considers "self-appointed leaders" who have been "completely, percent determined by white guilt.