In an appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio program on Tuesday, Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele elaborated on a Monday op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on Monday arguing that the so-called civil rights establishment is in decline, as seen when the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial failed to create a significant reaction.

“I think probably, you know, the attempts to have big supportive rallies for Trayvon Martin and for the idea of him as a victim of white racism, has come to different cities around the country to put together these marchers and so forth — they have not been very successful,” Steele, the author of “White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era,” said. …

“I didn’t like the speech at all,” he said. “I think he spent a good part of it sort of rehashing this idea of racial profiling and trying to turn the event, the tragedy of this young man’s death, into another instance of black victimization via racial profiling. And the idea that 35 years ago he would have been profiled: Well, that’s interesting and possibly true. But what does that have to do with Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman? There’s not a shred of evidence to indicate that he was racially profiled at all. So I thought the president was again being irresponsible there. Why he is involved in the issue at all, I’m not altogether sure. But certainly to come out on the side of racial profiling and black victimization once again was disappointing to me.”