Product Description

This book presents the kind of eye-opening insights into the history and culture of race for which Sowell has become famous. As late as the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, poor Southern rednecks were regarded by Northern employers and law enforcement officials as lazy, lawless, and sexually immoral. This pattern was repeated by blacks with whom they shared a subculture in the South. Over the last half century poor whites and most blacks have moved up in class and affluence, but the ghetto remains filled with black rednecks. Their attempt to escape, Sowell shows, is hampered by their white liberal friends who turn dysfunctional black redneck culture into a sacrosanct symbol of racial identity. In addition to Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the book takes on subjects ranging from Are Jews Generic? to The Real History of Slavery.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #118555 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-25
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 250 pages

Customer Reviews

Six powerful essays full of great information and fine analysis
Yes, this title sounds provocative and I am sure some people shy away from the book because of it. But you shouldn't hesitate to get a copy of this book and read it cover to cover. It is a collection of six fine essays on the topic of race, ethnicity, historical honesty, education, and the corrupting power of political influence on each of these topics.

While I cannot recreate all the information and structure of each essay, and summarizing them in some way does them a bit of an injustice, I do want you to know why I am so enthusiastic about this book and want you to read it. The title essay, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" demonstrates that so much of the urban "black" culture is really not African in origin, but comes from the now extinct culture of northern Britain. The folks who brought their culture with them from Scotland and environs tended to settle in the South, owned slaves, and became what we call Rednecks. The slaves took on the culture of their masters and this leads to the term Sowell uses in the title.

Protecting a dysfunctional way of living because it is in some way African is not only masochistic, it is a false concept. Instead, the rejection of education and literacy, casual sexual attitudes, and the failure to structure life to prepare for the future are actually artifacts of the slave master culture (that portion of slave holders who were Rednecks, that is). Sowell contrast this reality with what is done by White Liberals to protect Urban Blacks to the detriment of those supposedly being helped.

The second essay, "Are Jews Generic" brings up the reasons why not only Jews, but other minorities around the world (Chinese emigrants, for example) have become "middlemen" and why this has led repeatedly to resentment and persecution. Hence the idea of what we too often think of as "the Jew" can be generic and applied to different minority cultures and practices. Quite an interesting article.

"The Real History of Slavery" is my favorite essay in the book. Without mitigating the horrors, sins, guilt, or suffering caused by American enslavement of Africans, Sowell puts it in a broader context. His point is to show that the notion of slavery was actually part of human culture everywhere in the world. It wasn't considered racist. That is, it wasn't until the notion of human equality was enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the idea of human equality and freedom took hold in the West. It was then the West that used their Imperial power to destroy the slave trade to a large degree (it still exists in some Muslim countries) all over the globe. This is a very fascinating and informative essay.

"Germans and History" asks the question of whether the rise of Hitler was something built into the German culture that flowered or whether it was a freak event. Sowell demonstrates the rise of the German culture and how Germans had suffered at the hands of others over the centuries. The author concludes that Hitler was not peculiarly German, but was using global trends including the arguments put forward by the American Eugenics crowd (you know them now as Planned Parenthood) and the kind of genocide pioneered by the Ottoman Turks on the Armenians in order to gain a political plurality, seize control, and then execute his murderous plan. As Sowell notes, what is frightening is that this implies that it could arise again in another culture if the right circumstances met with another leader of Hitler's violent extremism and racial hatred.

"Black Education: Achievements, Myths, and Tragedies" is an excellent history of education priorities in various cultures, in the Slave culture, and what was done to educate the Freed Slaves (and prevent their education), and what has been done to miseducate entire generations of children in the name of desirable social ends. Sowell compares what was accomplished in Black schools like Dunbar High before Brown v. Education and what has not been accomplished since then. This is a superb essay.

The concluding essay sums up material from the previous five essays and compares what is taken from us when history is not presented honestly and is corrupted by "visions" of the past. No matter how well meaning, it damages us all because history is our cultural memory. Sowell notes: "We do not have a choice whether or not to discuss history. History has always been invoked in contemporary controversies. The only choice is between discussing what actually happened in the past and discussing notions projected into the past for present purposes." This essay is full of great material and powerful insights.

While I do recommend more books than most folks have time to read, there are a few that I urge you to read and this is one of them. Get a copy and read it closely. You will benefit from it, be challenged by aspects of it, and learn from all of it. Excellent!

An excellent read; buy it now
In six well-researched and -written essays, Dr Sowell challenges both conventional and emerging feelings on social relations in the US. He tackles both white guilt and black resentment. His central point is that blacks in the US may have had a tough time in this country, but other ethnic groups across the world have had comparable problems and that the black community's future well-being is in their own hands.

"Black Rednecks and White Liberals" sets the tone for the rest of the book. In it, he details how the failed mainstream black subculture derived from a failed frontier Scots-Irish culture that came from the English-Scottish border and Northern Ireland to the southern US in the 18th Century. Other reviewers have argued whether or not the Scots-Irish culture was really a failed one, but I could easily recognize in my own Southern background many of the traits Dr Sowell mentions. Despite that argument, the bottom line is that this culture has been around for a long time, and the dominant culture has always looked down on it, no matter the skin color of its members. This was true when Southern whites immigrated to the Midwest in the mid-20th Century and when Southern blacks made the same move a few years later. In fact, you can see that attitude today when you observe how Hollywood heaps scorn on "hillbillies;" the one ethnic group everyone's still allowed to pick on. Instead of accepting that culture as "valid" or "authentic," the black community needs to adapt their culture to the more dominant one. That means respecting education, rejecting promiscuity, and valuing industriousness.

"Are Jews Generic?" explores the concept of economic middlemen minorities. These fringe entrepreneurs are ethnically distinct from the larger culture, but thrive because of their initiative, contacts, and skills. Influential middlemen minorities include Chinese in south Asia, Lebanese in west Africa, Koreans in the US, as well as Jews in Europe and North America. Their success frequently results in resentment from the larger community, especially among segments who feel exploited by the middleman minority, yet were either unwilling or unable to stake the middlemen's risks. Andrew Young's recent comments about Arab and Korean shopkeepers serve as an excellent illustration. Because of their greater assumed risk and proportionately higher overhead, small merchants will almost always charge more than a "big box" retailer. Yet they meet a need that is otherwise unmet, mostly because they recognize a need and are willing to make the extra effort.

"The Real History of Slavery" is probably the most controversial essay in the collection. Slavery is now so abhorrent to enlightened Western thought that we find it hard to realize that the philosophical objection to slavery is barely 200 years old. As a case in point, my Bible study group was studying the Book of Exodus, and many people just couldn't comprehend why the Bible discussed how to treat slaves instead of commanding manumission. As Dr Sowell points out, slavery has been a part of every society in human history, and still exists today. In those cultures, slavery is one of those natural events that can happen to people; and, because one's lot in life is fixed, one has no recourse. The Enlightenment created the conditions for a mass movement against slavery so strong that the West took military action to end it. Yet the history of slavery in the US has a racial aspect mostly unseen elsewhere. Why? According to the essay, the "natural" inferiority of blacks was offered by antebellum white Southerners to justify slavery in light of philosophical objection and economic unfeasibility (historical inevitability also comes to mind, but that phrase is far too Marxist). Our biggest problem with the history of slavery is dealing with that history. Unfortunately, we tend to assign modern sensibilities to our forefathers. For example, the Founding Fathers recognized the inherent disconnect between the Declaration and the existence of slavery, but also knew that insisting on a slave-free US in the 1780s would have resulted in no US. With politics being the art of the possible, their compromise was probably the best they could have done at the time. While it's easy to use 20/20 hindsight, our ancestors seem to have done the best they could with the hand they were dealt.

"Germans and History" discusses the spread of German culture and raises the root question of overall German complicity in the Holocaust. Dr Sowell points out their industriousness, and how in many cultures they acted as a middleman minority. He also points out how narrowly Hitler was elected in 1933, and lets one infer that the German people were not guilty of the rise of the Nazi dictatorship and its following evils. I had a lot of problem with this thesis. As examined in other books (notably Hitler's Willing Executioners), the German population was generally aware of Hitler's intent toward the Jews (and others) and, if not totally supportive of the Final Solution, at a minimum didn't object too strongly. Many Germans, notably Dietrich Bonhoeffer, took a stand against Nazism. Yet most of the people in 1930s Germany seem to have sold their birthright for economic stability and to avenge the Treaty of Versailles. It's sad how thin the veneer of "civilization" can seem sometimes.

Dr Sowell examines education in "Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies." He points out that blacks who received a secondary education 100 years ago received a much better one than they do today. While definitely not advocating segregated education, Dr Sowell emphasizes that those students attended all-black schools with black teachers. In my opinion, many of the problems Dr Sowell describes in the black education today apply to US education in general. The idea that everyone must have a minimal education places a premium on the certificate instead of the education, forcing many to look for shortcuts. It's also difficult to increase quantity and expect the quality to remain unchanged. Additionally, the entitlement mentality has infested education. Look no farther than Harvard, where students now agitate for a minimal "B" average since their acceptance into Harvard is a major accomplishment alone. Unfortunately, too many Americans have entrusted education to "experts" who emphasize form over function, as well as allowing our educational system to be dominated by a labor union more interested in padding membership rolls and political agitation than the product of their business.

"History vs. Visions" presents a superb culmination to the book. History's main value is its ability to teach us lessons for the future. Cherry-picking historical events and subsequently misinterpreting them, turns history into a fiction designed to prove an already-decided conclusion. We cannot condemn our predecessors for fictionalizing the past for their own purposes (George Washington and the cherry tree) when we are willing to do the same for our more "politically correct" goals (Christopher Columbus brutally invading Paradise). We have enough fiction in the libraries; history should focus on facts, pleasant or not.

Dr Sowell has written a complex, but very readable book. Read it and be prepared to be intellectually challenged.

You Can't Go Homey Again
To a seventy-year-old southern white Redneck born into an Appalachian foothill family that saw little need for education beyond basic reading and writing this books hits home.
With ancestry of German, Scots-Irish, Irish, Scottish and family links to Jews, I have spent most of my life working in construction in the Washington DC area with more black people than white. Dr. Sowell in Black Rednecks/White Liberals gives me the intellectual framework to place my life experiences into.
When I first came to Washington in 1952 at the age of sixteen I was working with 4 or 5 black guys who was always down on a young black man who seemed to be a very nice young guy who took the riding without complaint. I asked one of the guys why they were so hard on John and his answer to me was that John was a "Dunbar nigger" who thought he was white. The black man who said this to me had red hair and blue eyes; John had a very dark complexion. John was working to save money to attend college that fall.
Read Black Rednecks/White Liberals to gain an understanding of this most complex but very Redneck reaction to a black man who wanted an education. It was the same reaction that most of my friends and I directed toward white guys in my white North Carolina High School who hit the books.