Dream Deferred

<p><strong>Steele has given eloquent voice to painful truths that are almost always left unspoken in the nation's circumscribed public discourse on race. --<em>New York Times</em></strong></p><p><strong>From the author of the award-winning bestseller <em>The Content of Our Character and White Guilt </em>comes an essay collection that tells the untold story behind the polarized racial politics in America today.</strong> </p><p>In <em>A Dream Deferred </em>Shelby Steele argues that a second betrayal of black freedom in the United States--the first one being segregation--emerged from the civil rights era when the country was overtaken by a powerful impulse to redeem itself from racial shame. According to Steele 1960s liberalism had as its first and all-consuming goal the expiation of American guilt rather than the careful development of true equality between the races. </p><p>In four densely argued essays Steele takes on the familiar questions of affirmative action multiculturalism diversity Afro-centrism group preferences victimization--and what he deems to be the atavistic powers of race ethnicity and gender the original causes of oppression. <em>A Dream Deferred </em>is an honest courageous look at the perplexing dilemma of race and democracy in the United States--and what we might do to resolve it.</p>