White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era

Blurb

White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era is a book by American author Shelby Steele in 2006.
In the book, Steele argues that white guilt is much more than just a race problem.
Steele describes his experience growing up as a young black man in an era of racism and white dominance. From a young age he dreamed of becoming a "batboy" for an all-white baseball team. With segregation at large, Steele feared his dream would never become a reality, however, Steele spent many weeks watching and admiring the baseball players. After catching the coach’s attention as someone with immense passion for baseball, he was granted the position of batboy, his dream now becoming a reality. The high of achieving his goal soon became shattered when the baseball team was to play at a whites-only stadium. When reflecting back on this event, Steele states, "I am certain that racist rejections like this do not cause low self-esteem in their victims. They cause disenchantment with the world. My self-esteem was not diminished in the least by what happened to me on that Saturday morning."