Southern Illinois University Edwardsville

Shelby Steele is an American author, columnist, documentary film maker, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University,... specialising in the study of race relations, multiculturalism and affirmative action. In 1990, he received the National Book Critics Circle Award in the general non-fiction category for his book The Content of Our Character. Steele was born to a black father and a white mother. His father, Shelby, Sr., a black truck driver, met his mother, Ruth, a white social worker, while working for the Congress of Racial Equality . His twin brother is Columbia University Provost Claude Steele. Shelby Steele received a B.A. in political science from Coe College, an M.A. in sociology from Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Utah. Steele met his wife, Rita, during his junior year at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was one of eighteen black students in his class. Steele was active in SCOPE, a group linked to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference , and he met Rita at an activist meeting.
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