"Part memoir and part meditation on the failed efforts to achieve racial equality in America, [this book] advances Shelby Steele's provocative argument that 'new liberalism' has done more harm than good. Since the 1960s, overt racism against blacks is almost universally condemned, so much so that racism is no longer, by itself, a prohibitive barrier to black advancement. But African Americans remain at a disadvantage in American society, and Steele lays the blame at the feet of white liberals"--