Dr. Shelby Steele, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, wrote and narrated the documentary film “What Killed Michael Brown?” along with his son and producer, Eli Steele. Initially, Amazon refused to show his film but has since enabled it to be shown.
“My son, who was the producer of the film, he was the filmmaker, had spoken with [Amazon] and they have now said that they made a mistake in their judgment and that they want to put the film back up,” Steele told the Daily Caller.
“Basically it was a mistake of timing or something or other. I’m not quite sure,” he continued.
“Their rejection last week was a particularly aggressive one,” Steele said to the Caller. “It had a sort of political feel to it. They were just condemning the enterprise altogether — ideologically.”
Jason Riley and the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board published two pieces “outing Amazon,” according to Steele.
“In other words, there was a response in the media that was critical of Amazon,” Steele said.
Censorship by corporations such as Amazon, Facebook and Twitter has become an increasingly frequent conversation — especially last week after a New York Post piece about Hunter Biden was censored on social media. (RELATED: Jack Dorsey Labels Twitter’s Censorship Of New York Post Story Without Explanation ‘Unacceptable’)
“It was pretty — it was clear to us — when we got the rejection letter,” Steele said. “It said, ‘you don’t meet our criterion,’ though they never name what the criterion are. My son, who’s again the producer, looked it up. There’re four points they were looking for — we met every one of them.”
He added that they “were viciously rejected,” and were told to “do not, basically, ever contact us again.”
Steele also explained the meaning behind the phrase “America’s Original sin is not slavery — It is simply the use of race as a means to power,” which is featured in the documentary’s trailer.
“I’ve lived with race all my life. I come from a civil rights family,” he told the Caller. “How would you achieve your race? It’s not something you can achieve — it’s not an end. There’s nothing there.”
He continued, “race is visual. You can see the differences, color and so forth. But — what is it? It has no inherent meaning.”
“You go underneath the surface of race, of skin for one millimeter and everybody’s the same,” he told the Caller. “That’s precisely what makes it amenable to evil.”
He further said, “when I want to get power, I’ll say that, ‘let’s hate the x-people over here. The x-people — we know they’re vicious, they’re this, they’re that. They’re deceptive.'”
“No one ever, ever, ever picks up and uses race except as a means to power,” Steele said. “It’s much more alive and active today on the cultural left than it is on the cultural right. The right wants to focus on individuals — not on races.”
Steele also discussed his thoughts on the upcoming election and the role of the president with regard to race relations.
“I think all this is just silly garbage,” he said in response to whether he thought Biden or Trump would be better for race relations. “Who says the president has anything to do with race relations?”
He continued, “right now in this particular election, for example, the black vote is said to be key. If the Republicans can really get Trump’s numbers up in the black community then he’s going to win.”
“Biden is the biggest racist of them all,” Steele told the Caller. “Trump doesn’t say that my racial position is the core of my request to be the president. He’s saying, ‘I have other talents. I’ll make the economy work primarily. I’ll fix up healthcare.’ Biden is over here saying, ‘I’ll make black people happy.’ He’s a racist — he’s using race to gain power.”
He continued, “he’s not going to make any black people happy. The Democrats have been saying that since the 60s.”
“The presidents don’t have much to do with where the culture is in terms of race.”