"Better to be a troublemaker than to pursue excellence"

One of my favorite American thinkers is Shelby Steele. He has coined some terms to help explain racial manipulations. One is the "bargainer." The bargainer is the minority person who grants the following deal to whites: "I will not "guilt" you with America's centuries of racism, if you will not hold my minority status aginst me."

Another term is the "challenger." "The challenger presumes that whites are racists until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities." Steele, writing in the June 8 WSJ, says that "Judge Sotomayor is the archetypal challenger." "Challengers see the moral authority that comes from their group's historic grievance as an entitlement to immediate parity with whites - whether or not they earned the parity through development."

I believe Steele's concept of the challenger also applies to teens who try to manipulate their parents. Historic grievance is one thing; individual merit is another. As Steele writes, "and so a perverse incentive is created: weakness and victimization are rewarded over development. Better to be a troublemaker than to pursue excellence." Don't fall for it, parents.