In this provocative and thoughtful book, the distinguished scholar George Will hails as “America’'s clearest thinker about America’'s most difficult problem” argues that the age of white supremacy has given way to an age of white guilt— and neither has been good for African Americans.

Through his articulate analysis and engrossing recollections of the last half-century of American race relations, Shelby Steele calls for an end to diversity and affirmative action programs and the development of a new culture of personal responsibility, a commitment to principles that can fill the moral void created by white guilt.