In general when the Hoover Institute’s Shelby Steele writes something about race in America it’s worth reading and his Wall Street Journal piece on the verdict exonerating George Zimmerman of Trayvon Martin’s murder is no exception. He writes:
The verdict … was a traumatic event forAmerica’s civil-rights establishment … But they weren’t so much outraged at a horrible injustice as they were affronted by the disregard of their own authority. The jury effectively said to them “You won’t call the tune here. We will work within the law.”
Today’s black leadership pretty much lives off the fumes of moral authority that linger from its glory days in the 1950s and 60s. The Zimmerman verdict lets us see this and feel a little embarrassed for them.
Consider the pathos of a leadership that once transformed the nation now lusting for the conviction of the contrite and mortified George Zimmerman … despite the fact that nearly one black teenager a day is shot dead on the South Side of Chicago — to name only one city — by another black teenager. This would not be the first time that a movement begun in profound moral clarity and that achieved greatness waned away into a parody of itself — not because it was wrong but because it was successful …
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