OP-EDS AND COMMENTARY BY HOOVER FELLOWS

Obama and Our Post-Modern Race Problem
Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2009
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

The president always knew that his greatest appeal was not as a leader but as a cultural symbol. . . .

From Emmitt Till to Skip Gates
Wall Street Journal, August 1, 2009
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

If the Henry Louis Gates imbroglio makes anything clear it is that, in 2009, the mere implication of racial profiling in the arrest of a black professor...

Affirmative Action Is Just a Distraction
Washington Post, July 26, 2009
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

America's war over affirmative action has gone on longer than any of the country's military conflicts, and over the decades each side of this debate has spawned a vast literature of argument...

Sotomayor and the Politics of Race
Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2009
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

President Obama's nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court points to a dilemma that will likely plague his presidency: How does a "post-racialist" president play identity politics?...

Why the GOP Can't Win With Minorities
Wall Street Journal, March 16, 2009
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

Today conservatism is stigmatized in our culture as an antiminority political philosophy...

Pride and Compromise
New York Times Book Review, February 12, 2009 (Registration Required)
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

To belong to an oppressed group always meant that you could not pursue your self-interest by acting directly on the world...

Obama's post-racial promise
Los Angeles Times, November 5, 2008
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

For the first time in human history, a largely white nation has elected a black man to be its paramount leader...

Why Jesse Jackson Hates Obama
Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2008
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow) Thomas Sowell (Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy) is mentioned.

A few weeks ago, the Rev. Jesse Jackson made something of a fool of himself...

The Obama Bargain
Wall Street Journal, March 18, 2008
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

Geraldine Ferraro may have had sinister motives when she said that Barack Obama would not be "in his position" as a frontrunner but for his race...

Obama Is Right on Iran
Wall Street Journal, November 26, 2007
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

After a recent Democratic presidential debate, Barack Obama proclaimed that were he to become president, he would talk directly even to America's worst enemies...

The age of white guilt
Globe and Mail (Canada), October 25, 2007 (Registration Required)
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

In America, our racial history broadly defines the terms of our politics...

The Legacy of Little Rock
Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2007
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

Fifty years ago today, riot-trained troops from the 101st Airborne Division escorted nine black students through the doors of Central High School in Little Rock...

Racism -- fact or faith?
Los Angeles Times, December 23, 2006
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

From a police shooting in Queens, N.Y., to a racially charged legal battle involving the Los Angeles Fire Department, from the self-immolation of comedian Michael Richards to the failed Senate campaign of Tennessee's Harold Ford, race is back in the news, bringing with it a batch of new and disturbing questions...

Our Unceasing Ambivalence
Wall Street Journal, December 8, 2006 (Subscription Required)
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

Possibly the most confounding feature of the Iraq war, from the very opening of hostilities to the present day, has been the American government's utter failure to define what victory would be in this war...

Life and Death
Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2006 (Subscription Required)
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

The simple back-and-forth of war can create the illusion that both sides have a legitimate point to make even when this is not so, and it is clear that Hezbollah's cause has greatly benefited from war's "equalizing" effect…

White Guilt and War
American Enterprise Institute, June 1, 2006
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

One of the most remarkable events of the late twentieth century was the collapse of white supremacy--not just in America, but around the world…

Engineering Mediocrity
October 30, 2000
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

The mechanism by which racial preferences engineer “inclusion” is a tolerance of mediocrity in minorities.

PAPERS, ESSAYS AND ARTICLES BY HOOVER FELLOWS

‘A Bound Man’
New York Times Book Review, February 10, 2008
by Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow)

The first thing I ever heard about Barack Obama was that he had a white mother and a black father...

ARTICLES AND QUOTES ABOUT THE HOOVER INSTITUTION AND ITS FELLOWS

What Politicians Say When They Talk About Race
New York Times, March 23, 2008 (Registration Required)
Shelby Steele (Robert J. and Marion E. Oster Senior Fellow) is quoted in this article.

Americans and their political leaders have been tongue-tied on the subject of race....