From a New York Times critic arguing against blind auditions for orchestras to Chicago’s former mayor offering interviews exclusively to nonwhite reporters, the insanities of what Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) recently dubbed “Woke 1.0” are legion. In White Guilt, filmmaker Eli Steele traces these peculiar manifestations of modern antiracism to an affliction his father diagnosed two decades ago.
Based on Shelby Steele’s 2006 book of the same name, the documentary surveys the racial-grievance industry that has entrenched itself across American institutions, from universities and museums to corporate boardrooms. Born black, Jewish, and deaf, Eli Steele is a shoo-in for the oppression Olympics, a bona fide torchbearer. Yet, raised by the formidable Shelby Steele, he understands himself as something more than an inventory of identities: an individual.
