The Written Record

Essays on White Guilt

Before the film, there were the essays, the op-eds, and, of course, the White Guilt book. Since the 1960s, Shelby Steele saw the evil that others could not, or would not name. He called it white guilt. After the Civil Rights movement, all whites were collectively condemned as guilty for the sins of slavery and segregation. Since then, many whites have sought to buy back their innocence — at the expense of blacks and America and the West. Once Steele understood white guilt, he refused to back off of it and instead held onto it, refining his understanding for decades. These essays and op-eds — not all of them included here — chronicle his journey from then to now, to his latest vision of white guilt as told in his documentary.