I had no desire to become a singer until I heard Billie Holiday. The first time I heard her on a record, it was a revelation. She sounded like a woman singing about herself.

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• Susannah McCorkle:

  Somebody called me a 'bruised romantic' once, and I like that.

• Shelby Steele:

  I think we have come to a place in black America, sadly from my point of view, where we have once a

• Shelby Steele:

  Blacks have experienced a history of victimization in America, beginning obviously in slavery and t

• Shelby Steele:

  You can do pretty much anything you want to do in America as a black, including become president. S

• Shelby Steele:

  Freedom in America was not always flat. Racism made it un-flat, so that some people had privileges

• Shelby Steele:

  I grew up in a time when there was real segregation. And blacks during the 50s and so forth took a

• Shelby Steele:

  My father bought three ramshackle houses, rebuilt them, rented them out, kept clawing his way up th

• Shelby Steele:

  Where race is concerned, America has had a horrible, a wretched history and that came to account in

• Shelby Steele:

  Now, white America is using blacks, exploiting them, enabling their dependency so that they can say

• Shelby Steele:

  I think to be very blunt about it, in a lot of that support is a desire for convergence of a black