Shelby Steele Replies

Martin Kilson is arguing with a phantom of his own making. Yet I am grateful for his letter because it so vividly illustrates the distorting powers of the enemy-memory that I discussed in my essay. One will note in his letter the virtual tribute he pays to the continuing power of white racism to constrict black life: “Life chances of most black individualistic achievers are intricately conditioned and calibrated by myriad vicious racist patterns and motifs. . . .” What Kilson misses as he places blacks in this Skinner box of racist conditioning is the vast power he is ascribing to whites and the corresponding impotence he is ascribing to blacks. (Even I, as a well-known pet of the neoconservatives, cannot bring myself to flat...