The Content of Our Character - by Shelby Steele (Paperback)

About the Book

In this controversial collection of essays, award-winning writer Shelby Steele tackles the tough question "Why, after 25 years of legal change and ebbing prejudice, are blacks worse off today?" A critically acclaimed national bestseller and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Book Synopsis

In this controversial essay collection, award-winning writer Shelby Stelle illuminates the origins of the current conflict in race relations--the increase in anger, mistrust, and even violence between black and whites. With candor and persuasive argument, he shows us how both black and white Americans have become trapped into seeing color before character, and how social policies designed to lessen racial inequities have instead increased them. "The Content of Our Character" is neither "liberal" nor "conservative, " but an honest, courageous look at America's most enduring and wrenching social dilemma.

Review Quotes

"Steele has given eloquent voice to painful truths that are almost always left unspoken in the nation's circumscribed public discourse on race." - New York Times

"One of the best books on race in America to appear in the past twenty-five years . . . No one who reads it honestly and with an open mind will ever think about race in quite the same way again." - Wall Street Journal

"Steele writes with a rare elegance and honesty . . . This is one of those rare books that force reexamination of basic assumptions." - Boston Globe

"Brutally honest, remarkably brave, and timely . . . We cannot afford to ignore his conclusions." - Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A brilliant book. Shelby Steele's brave, penetrating intelligence goes to the heart of the dilemma of race in America." - Time

"Steele combines the literary sensibility of novelist Ralph Ellison with the analytic acuteness of American's most profound black man, Frederick Douglass . . . Steele's writings will last, to be read by generations as distant in time from him as he is from Douglass, whose worthy successor Steele is." - George F. Will, Newsweek

"Elegant, personal pieces. Brilliant." - New York magazine

"Well-written . . . Moving and persuasive." - BusinessWeek