Black Rednecks & White Liberals

I'm a black man that grew up in the hood on the East Coast. Even despite growing up in and surviving that environment, I've always had an itch that something was really off about Black American culture but couldn't exactly pinpoint what exactly. It wasn't until I read this book years ago that I realized what was really going on. It was an eye opener because not only did I realize that the hood culture had little or nothing to do with Africa, but also what the source of this culture is (especially the part about speech. I regularly visit Southwest England and some of the accents I heard in places like Somerset or Devon bear a close match to what I would hear in Virginia and the Carolinas {makes sense cause migratory patterns}. After seeing that and reading this book I put 2 and 2 together and realize that there's really no way that the hood accents are actually derived from African speech patterns). It also opened my eyes to a big irony: we like to talk about cultural appropriation when the culture we chose to define us is a cultural appropriation of the worst of old Britain. I also love how the book dismantles the victim hood mentality that has held us back for decades.

As someone born, raised and still living in the South, I have always recognized certain aspects of black ghetto culture as sharing similarities with white redneck culture. Sowell does an excellent job of further explaining this often overlooked relationship. He traces the roots of Southern redneck culture back to the immigration of whites from the "Celtic Fringe" regions of the Scottish highlands, English uplands and Ulster province of Ireland. This culture was often violent, consumed large quantities of alcohol and generally considered formal education to be unnecessary and even unmanly. It was these sort of cultural characteristics that were transmitted to blacks during the slave days and continue to negatively affect African American ghetto culture today. A further problem is that American society tends to identify low class, ghetto African Americans as being "authentically black" while educated, middle class blacks are accused of trying to "act white". In contrast, middle class suburban whites are thought to be "authentically white" while low class, redneck whites are typically ridiculed and considered inferior.It doesn't take a sociologist to see that there is something wrong with this current state of affairs. Of course, there are many other factors to consider when looking at the contemporary state of black American culture, including the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow as well as the influence of traditional African cultural practices. But I do believe Sowell has hit upon an important factor here, one that is too often overlooked and needs to be further studied.

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 Hi

I am buying two more books to pass along. It demolished my slight prejudice against Germans. It told me more than I wanted to know about some people who might be counted among my ancestors. My recent direct lineage, fortunately, is nothing like that. The history of slavery blew me away. I have always appreciated how Dr. Sowell lines up fact after fact after fact in hopes that not all of us will have to repeat history. Several years ago, after reading about race and politics etc by Sowell, I met a former Malaysian Chinese who had relocated to Australia and worked in the aerospace industry there. He left Malaysia exactly for the reasons mentioned by Sowell and was enriching Australia by his presence. We met in Oregon where we were giving our autistic children auditory therapy. He told me about another Chinese friend in Australia with an autistic son who only had an IQ of 250. Ah, okay. It was incredible to me what Malaysia lost because of its racism, and what Australia gained. Also incredible how accurate Sowell is, because he does his research. I wish everybody would listen to this man.

My advice to naysayers - even if your perspective is crippled by being an high income person and/or a "yankee" - is to read the book. In 1989 Grady McWhiney published "Cracker Culture: Celtic Ways in the Old South" and described the vast cultural divide between North and South that existed prior to the War. As any careful reader would've noticed, *all* of the stereotypes that would later be applied to African-Americans were first applied to White Southerners by Northerners. This is a reality. And the Civil War taught us, if nothing else, that the South was - in the emerging industrial world - an anachronism. Thomas Sowell takes these observations as his point of departure. I can imagine that the people who'll most take offense at the book are caucasian, elitist, self-styled "liberals" who want to maintain *their* static, monolithic idea of "Black Culture" as some kind of museum piece. This is an articulate, searching text that goes well beyond the traditional Liberal/Conservative ping-pong.