Introduction Summary and Analysis

Shelby Steele argues in the introduction that discussions about race relations have become scripted. Each side knows what they are supposed to say and how they are supposed to act in public. However, these scripts hide the truth of race relations and so the public and private selves of both blacks and whites are hidden. To write the book, Steele has to both forget his blackness to touch on human universal truths but to remember it to add his own experience into the perspective of the book. Only by focusing on both elements, can he give reality the priority it must always have.