Black Rednecks and White Liberals,   ISBN:9781594030864

Customer Rating: 

Reasonably thought provoking. Tendency toward straw man reasoning against mythical monolithic and West-hating forces of American modernity.


Before I explain this assessment of mediocrity allow me to give you a chance to consider the source. I am a left-of-center academic to whom I think Sowell would readily ascribe the masochism and glib anti-Westernism that he thinks pervades modern culture, media, and the academy.

Basic Content Summary:

I admit to having read only four of the essays. I would say "Black Education" is the book's most important contribution of them, although "History Versus Visions" is a nice summary of the previous essays' content and by itself seems to capture the essence of Sowell's message: We in the West have let excessive self-loathing over our checkered history of slavery, conquest, and racism (which was not unique to our culture by any stretch) to sniff at the important political, legal, technological, and moral contributions our culture has made to human progress. It causes us, for example, to wink at the dysfunctions of "black redneck" culture, which are the result not of the deprivations of slavery, poverty, and social exclusion. Rather they were acquired through association with the "Celtic fringe" of ill-bred, ill-tempered, slothful and drunken Welsh, Scotch, and Irish (ouch!) immigrants in the South, and which are the real cause of pervasive crime, illegitimacy, and low educational achievement that afflicts much of the black community today. Instead of guiltily surrendering reparations in the form of affirmative action and social welfare programs, we must reaffirm the role of character in leading to human prosperity and abandon the idea that historical injustice dictates life outcomes. In the arena of education in particular, the historical data show that blacks have historically achieved outstanding academic success where they were given a set of goals and expectations unburdened by racial determinism. On the flip side, this means that black misbehavior deserves no forgiveness based on racial history; gangsta rappers and gang bangers in particular don't need social justice; they need jail. In the end we need to reaffirm the glorious but fragile values upon which Western society was built, and recognize the threat to them posed by both external thugs (terrorists, commies, etc.) and erosion from within resulting from our own self-effacing masochism.

Critique:

Sowell provides an interesting point of departure for thoughtful discussions of racial issues, but there are a lot of problems here. From the beginning, Sowell sets up as an unquestioned premise (that is almost never documented except based on the occasional anecdotal quote) of a pervasive and monolithic mindset in the academy and the media that views America and the rest of the West as a uniquely amoral culture whose prosperity was paid for on the shoulders of its nonwhite victims. I agree you will always have aWard Churchill hither and yon but you would think a conservative working at the Hoover institute would recognize that he is himself a living refutation of his thesis and that the academy has a multitude of voices and perspectives on history. Sowell's cartoonish portrayal becomes an instant credibility drain and a study in solipsistic egotism as he proceeds to gleefully torch this straw man of his own creation.

The discussion of "black rednecks" was certainly interesting enough and superficially plausible. It is also might have been a clever way of staying true to black conservatism while still in a sense blaming whites for blacks' problems. (I cannot help but add that at an early age I personally exhibited all the genetic and many of the cultural markers of my own redneck ancestry and found the discussion of violence, sloth, moral turpitude and alcoholism terrifyingly close to home). But the key issue of *causation* (how did white rednecks transmit their dysfunctional culture to southern rural blacks, from whom they were largely segregated?) is never discussed. Sowell is no fool and acknowledges his problem, but not until the closing paragraphs of the essay, in which he leaves us with a limp caveat that even if we cannot know exactly the means by which blacks acquired redneck culture it doesn't the change the fact that they need to divest themselves of it. But this is just telling the reader what he already knew and does nothing to answer the question of what we should do about these cultural quandaries--let alone demonstrating how the redneck hypothesis is superior to the more conventional and intuitive one that human nature is frail, people are people, and when they are poor and uneducated they readily devolve into bad patterns of living.

And throughout this essay and "The Real History of Slavery" Sowell fails to acknowledge the uniquely crippling disadvantages freed black slaves faced upon emancipation. They had nothing. They weren't just poor, they lacked the social and moral capital to function in a society in which they never asked to be brought or born, and no defense against the legally sanctioned and often purely terrorist mechanisms in place to suppress them. I am not sure off hand if the word "lynching" even occurs in any of the four essays I read. In fairness, Sowell acknowledges this general issue in his last essay, but it should have been addressed when he was busy telling us that you can't blame historic circumstances for present life outcomes. I doubt that redneck culture kept blacks down nearly as much as the prospect of being the target of a sadistic and vindictive white lynch mob. If you want to horrify yourself read the account of the lynching of Claude Neal and tell me that all poor blacks needed was to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Granted, this sort of racial terrorism is far less pervasive now and is little excuse for today's blacks, but to ignore it (and the many other legal and cultural impediments to black progress and psychic development in the first half of the 20th century) and its potential legacy is naïve, even silly--perhaps even stupid.

In general, Sowell's discussion of the culpability of America is a bizarre and incoherent attempt to mitigate historic guilt and revive our appreciation of our country's noble and heroic legacies. But the discussion turns into a smoke-and-mirror show; adroit verbal dancing enables him to avoid confronting key challenges even as he assumes the posture of addressing them. In "The Real History of Slavery" he scolds the modern, "politically correct" narrative that slavery was a uniquely white transgression, when in fact modern Western European civilizations were the first to actively and effectively fight slavery in other parts of the world. But as part of an argument claiming to give the "real history" of the issue, this is a mealy-mouthed, muddling conflation of *overall* Western virtue on the question of slavery with *America in particular*, when the fact is we were the last to get on board, precisely because of the economic appeal of slavery in the antebellum South. Hell, one of the key reasons we rebelled against the Crown (that we too often gloss over) was that a powerful Southern constituency was *threatened* by England's stance against slavery. We don't get to share in the credit for policies that we ourselves resisted.

Sowell has a more charitable account of this, casting even slave-owning Southern whites as constrained by the "circumstances" of the time from even considering the politically hazardous prospect of emancipation. Among Sowell's defenses on their behalf were the noble considerations of avoiding race war (Sowell bizarrely employs the emergence of KKK after the civil war as vindication of this fear!) and protecting African slaves from a freedom for which they were ill-equipped. But this just restates the problem without addressing it. What exactly were those "circumstances"? The circumstances of course were a powerful cabal of wealthy whites who profited from slavery. By drawing the reader's attention to relatively decent slave owning Southerners (and no doubt there were many), he seems to be hoping that we will think that all Americans were simply victims of conditions outside their control.

But slavery did not occur as a depersonalized phenomenon like weather. It existed because at least some whites (and slave-owning blacks) willfully exploited the institution not because they had no reasonable alternative but because it served naked self interest. Sowell commits a rank ecological fallacy in trying to dance around this obvious consideration, citing historic data that show that slavery is not typically associated with national levels of wealth. But this is not the issue. *Individuals* profited from slavery, and I doubt they checked their census data on average national income when weighing the costs and benefits of continuing to own slaves. Sowell falls into a classic prescription versus description confusion: "Well, they wanted to end slavery, but it was just not politically feasible." But the question is, why *wasn't* it politically feasible? Because a lot of people with a lot of power with a massive vested interest in slavery did *not* want to end it. The buck has to stop somewhere; at some point someone is to blame.

His apologies for Jefferson (that overrated hypocritical fork-tongued spin doctor--sorry; it's the way I feel) were particularly irking. The man inherited a fortune and his lavish, post-Revolution lifestyle was financed by decadent debt and, of course, slavery. Anyone can *say* he hates slavery while insisting it would be "imprudent" to free his slaves or work for emancipation. But it rings hollow when you're drinking imported French wine served by your African house maid--even if we could assume you're *not* carrying on with her in the bedroom.

There is also a bizarre double standard here in which Sowell forgives slave owners for their embedment in their own culture even as he insists that modern black dysfunction derives from defects of character unrelated to the legacy of historic disadvantage. If a poor 21st century African-American is to be held to the ethical imperative to "stay in school", "obey the law", "work hard", and so forth, then can we not make analogous expectations of 18th and 19th century Americans to have governed by the principle that "all men are created equal" with an inherent right to "liberty"? Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

Here is where Sowell would say, "Whatever," and still insist that character, not historical circumstances, determines life performance. There is great truth to this, but he seems to think himself a lonely voice in the wilderness against a homogenous body of academic denial, when the point is mundane and disputed by few. His argument that the abandonment of rigor in black education is more responsible for black academic failure than racism is compelling enough, but where we might part ways is what this means regarding public expenditure in education, job training, and what it means to provide equality of opportunity. One of Sowell's multiple straw men is the assumption that (typically white) liberals want to just give things away to dysfunctional blacks out of guilt. Maybe there are some who think thus. But I think most educated people will probably affirm that our nation's behavior toward blacks and other minority groups has ranged from heroic to fiendish, with a commensurate balance of pride in the good and reflective regret for the bad--and its lasting consequences. People like that (and that's where I would put myself) see public investment in education and job training not as penitent handouts but as way to facilitate the very individual achievement and self-determination Sowell says are key to life success.

Honesty requires me to say that my first exposure to Sowell left me unimpressed, although no doubt the book will be a hit with the neo-cons who will glibly celebrate an African American taking "their" side, however vacuous and dodgy the arguments. All this being said, I have nonetheless included some of this material as part of my class on race, crime, and American culture/history, but I still think Shelby Steele's "The Loneliness of the Black Conservative" makes a more articulate and provocative case against regarding injustices in the past as the basis for racial preference for blacks or anyone else in the present. Still, it was about time I read some Sowell and putting him in the curriculum and making him part of the discussion will help reduce the bias in academic discussions of race issues that he is convinced is so pervasive.

Timothy Griffin
Reno, NV

Customer Rating: 

This book tells the real story of American racism and particularly of the economic and social retrograde of black American culture since the emergence of the welfare state. It also tells of the roots of white American redneck or cracker culture, and the painful legacy of this culture for both southern whites and blacks. Liberals will not like this book because it destroys many of their foundation myths. Where they cannot answer Sowell's arguments, they will sniff that he shouldn't descend from scholarship into political commentary, as if the two, in this area, could be separated.

Customer Rating: 

One of the reasons I like to read Thomas Sowell is that he is way above my head. What I mean is that I always learn something new from reading him. This book is certainly no exception.

He starts off by explaining the common European heritage of African Americans and White Southerners. (The current culture of African Americans that they claim came from Africa actually came out of England, Ireland, and Scotland.)

Dr. Sowell also discusses slavery, as well as the the persecution of various groups throughout history. Both of these situations are worldwide although the history we are often taught is confined to what happened in the West, especially the United States.

What I found most interesting about the whole book is the elimination of slavery, which is never discussed in school. Perhaps the reason for this one is that it started with Christians.

According to Dr. Sowell, it took over 100 years to eliminate slavery as an acceptable institution, an institution that had been around for thousands of years. There were also plenty of whites who were put into slavery during the time of slavery in America, another topic that isn't discussed because it would destroy the demand for slave reparations.

Predominantly slave traders were African. That's how the trade in Africa started, and it didn't start with the Europeans until they developed the capacity to trade with Africa. Black slave traders had been trading with the Arabs long before.

Finally, he discusses the education of blacks in America and how much it has changed for the worse simply because many wrong attitudes have developed within the black community making you a sell out if you get an education.

I would personally recommend this book to anyone who is tired of hearing about the problem of racism in America. To hear some tell it, this is the biggest problem we have. After reading this book, it ended the guilt I felt for being born white and for what my ancestors did.

I also realized, thanks to Dr. Sowell, that many in society today use racism as an excuse to avoid doing the right thing or taking responsibility for their actions. Although racism is real, it's only a problem for those committed to living in the past, not the present.

Dr. Sowell's book is well documented, well written, and easy to read. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth about slavery, the truth about racism, and the truth about the history of discrimination worldwide.

Customer Rating: 

Some reviewers have taken issue with the thesis of Sowell's title essay, questioning how much Southern blacks would have been exposed to the influence of poor whites. This is a legitimate objection, and Sowell's thesis may suffer from being too narrow in its characterization of Southern white culture. Which is to say, the characteristics he identifies with poor whites of mostly Scotch-Irish background were characteristics also of the white upper classes in the Old South, where the masculine ideal was the gallant Cavalier with his Hotspur masculinity and touchy sense of honor, and where labor was seen as lowly drudgery rather than virtuous self-reliance. This was the value system of the white society in which the slaves were forced to exist, exacerbated by status relations among the slaves themselves, where the less onerous tasks of house slaves were privileged over the hard labor of field hands, and these attitudes survived among both races into the post-war and Jim Crow eras. The gangbanger elevation of a minor (or imagined) slight into a killing offense is identical with the sense of honor demonstrated by the Mafioso and the Southern hillbilly, but it is also the sense of honor that led Southern gentlemen into the Civil War. (It also, of course, is what inspired the attitudes in so many Southern whites that made the Civil Rights movement such a dangerous struggle.)

That flaw of over-particularity notwithstanding, this is a fine book, arguing persuasively the ways in which historical development shapes ethnic groups and the responses to them by outsiders.

Customer Rating: 

The title is deceiving. It's not a Right-Wing Anti-Liberal book, or a book complaining about Activists, or even a book pushing a political agenda.
This book should be Mandatory reading for all High-schools. If the title was a little different, I'm sure this would be possible.

It's an actual look at the history of people, and how, and where, they got their idiosyncrasies. This book is amazing in it's thoroughness. It teaches to look at the history of people at the time they were in that history, not as backward looking modern people coloring history with our own personal ideals. It shows the modern point of view on a subject, then goes back and shows how many things were overlooked. How modern taught history is leaving out most of the details in favor of politicizing history to further modern agendas.

I got dirty looks from people, and even had people walk up to me, while reading this. I had to put a different cover on it.
For the Schools it would be better called "The History of Cultures, and how they rise or fall".