They say that the best gauge of a person’s intelligence is how much he or she agrees with you.  If that’s true, then Shelby Steele is very smart.  Mr. Steele is an African-American author and columnist.  He stands out from the crowd because he is one of the few black commentators who consistently has rejected identity politics; the notion that African-Americans should find solace in group identity, and should rely upon diversity and victim status above individual achievement.  I often have mused that much of the race politics strife might be avoided if only we would declare all minorities free and equal.   Mr. Steele has written that, “the left causes people to sell themselves out to identity and all sorts of ideas and idealisms and so forth.  The left encourages them to take these multiculturalism, diversity, inclusion, all these sorts of things, and identify with them and give themselves a self esteem based on these empty idealisms that have no connection to reality.  Leftism really retards development, as in human development.  The more you get stuck in them, the less you grow, the less you develop.”  He added selling blacks as victimized and entitled is the kiss of death that will hold them back.”  Recently, Mr. Steele authored an article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Black Protest Has Lost Its Power.  In it, Mr. Steele argues that the NFL protests were sad and fruitless, and may represent the end of an era for black Americans.  As he sees it, the NFL kneel-down protests are a watershed moment because they point out the obvious differences from previous protests, which were a high calling that called for great sacrifice on the part of the protestors.  In the civil rights protests of the 1960’s, the protestors risked their safety, and their very lives, to end real injustices.  By contrast, the NFL protestors take no risks,  make no sacrifices, and are not speaking truth to power.  In Mr. Steele’s view, while the history of past protests made the NFL players’ actions unsurprising, the surprise was that the protests didn’t work.  He then made a statement that many might consider shocking in today’s perverted PC world, “The oppression of black people is over with.  We blacks are today a free people.”  By this, Mr. Steele by no means denies that pockets of racism exist.  He instead recognizes that, unlike in past times, racism is universally recognized as an immoral scourge.  He attributes the recent protests, not to racism, but instead to the shock of freedom, which requires self-reliance and an end to the excuse of oppression.  In his view, that explains the need to conjure up new supposed injustices such as “systemic racism,” and “white privilege.”  In Mr. Steele’s judgment, the accountability that necessarily accompanies freedom itself is seen as an injustice, which has led to the notion that it is suffering, poverty and under development that makes one “truly black.”  He argues that the Black Lives Matters group actually aspires to black victimization, which he labels an”abstract, fabricated oppression.”  Mr. Steele sees the reaction to the NFL protests to be a harbinger of change.  The protests didn’t win over white America, but instead fostered resentment.  There were counter-protests, and ticket sales and TV ratings suffered.  Mr. Steele predicts that this reaction may foretell a new fearlessness in white America to tell black people what they really think, instead of acting deferential to avoid a charge of racism.  He envisions a time in which white Americans will feel free to tell black Americans what they really think, “to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal.”  I hope he’s right.  Equality necessarily entails viewing and treating all people in the same way and judging all by the same standard.  The politics of victimization prevents African-Americans from enjoying the the very equality to which they so long aspired, and directly frustrates the hope of Martin Luther King that African-Americans might be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.  Amen to that.  So, forget about Oprah’s campaign.  Shelby Steele for President.