Chris Niessl's Reviews > Black Rednecks and White Liberals

I initially wanted to read this book to gain a conservative economist's view on history, specifically on the 18th through 20th century, in order to broaden my beliefs not only racially, but also to try and understand a well though-out and articulated conservative perspective (Sowell himself would prefer the term 'libertarian' over 'black conservative') Sowell's analysis in each of the essays in his book is very broad, each one containing hundreds of citations. In each one I found that I could appreciate the conservative perspective on a variety of issues. At the same time, the book was highly readable, using both unambiguous terms while avoiding sociological or other research nomenclature that a layperson might not understand.

For example, in his first essay, he provides great historical background on the first cultures from the British Isles to come colonize the Americas. While the essay is not as in depth as the book "Albion's Seed" (Compare 60 some pages to 900) Sowell identifies that Southern blacks inherited the Scotts-Irish "Redneck" culture that predominates the Southeastern and mid-Atlantic states, and that the cultural attitudes of today can be traced back to similar "Honor-culture" issues that plagued whites in early American history (And even today, read "Hillbilly Elegy") and also existed back in Europe before then. Such culture was often hostile to the ideas of formal education, and over-reactive and violent to perceived slights. This ties in with his fifth essay on the history of black education and asks the question of the reader: Why did Dunbar High School have poorer academic performance amongst its black students after Brown v. Board of Education and Desegregation? Why were blacks, on average, gaining in prosperity from World War I up until the Vietnam war when state enforced segregation was becoming more draconian since reconstruction? As he claims in the preface of the book, "...There is not the slightest danger that there will be a shortage of solutions. On the contrary, an abundance of uniformed solutions has been one of our biggest social problems" His reasons for bringing this up, as he claims later in the book, is that affirmative action based policies have done little to help promote black excellence, as well as the fact that welfare policies that don't address the increase in broken black families will be ineffective at best, and further destructive at worst.

Sowell also admonishes current cultural-studies departments for their bias in covering the history of the institution of slavery. Specifically the lack of instruction in the institutions of the Ottoman Empire and Barbary coast, as well as the fact that the original efforts to destroy the institution came from abolitionists in the British Empire and United States. He also provides a counter-narrative that racism developed as a result of slavery. First, he explains that for a good portion of time free blacks lived in the South. The institutionalization of race in slavery didn't gain traction until religious revivalist movements sought to justify slavery against early abolitionist and democratic causes. Second, that many of the choices of the Founding fathers to retain their slaves stemmed not from their moral justification from it, but because they had to make careful political choices. For example, Jefferson only freed a fraction of his slaves, since the majority of them belonged to the "estate" that he inherited, and not necessarily to him. Because the estate still had outstanding mortgages, freeing the slaves would, in the most abhorring way, be devaluing the property collateral against the estate and would be means for the bank to claim default. Such facts are despicable today, but Sowell doesn't claim that such actions were moral, but necessarily pragmatic. Imagine if Jefferson had lost that estate. Would a Southern bank care for the integrity of the slave families of that estate? Jefferson vigorously advocated for preventing slavery for expanding into new states, and while unsuccessful, one can't imagine Jefferson could lobby if he was forced into a scandal amongst his fellow Virginians for freeing slaves.

While Sowell challenged and tempered my liberal political outlook, he was unable to fully convince me on several topics, not for my own biases, but because while well-sourced, the book is not comprehensive, or he hand-waves several topics away without providing a stronger argument in support of his views. For example, Sowell chides white liberals for supporting contemporary rap music: "The thuggish gutter words and brutal hoodlum lifestyle of 'gangster rap' musicians are not merely condoned but glorified by many white intellectuals- and 'understood' by others lacking the courage to take responsibility for siding with savagery." In doing so, he betrays his views and shares in the hypocrisy of other censorious busybodies of the 80s and 90s, for example conservatives in admonishing metal and rock music for "satanic anti-Christian" and "misogynistic" themes. Metal doesn't contribute to the lawlessness of its audience, so why would rap music do the same? Another example of Sowell's hand-waving is his omission of several key portions of European history between Czechs and Germans. He claims that the Czech mistreatment of Germans after WW I contributed to the rise of Nazism and had its roots in Czech "Identity-politics" from losses incurred during the Thirty Year's War. However, his glaring omission of the politics of the 1848 revolution: that Germans were actively trying to annex the *full* kingdom of Bohemia, the majority who identified ethnically and linguistically Czech, and not just its ethnic German enclaves, as well as active discrimination against Czech citizens (Václav Klemen) paints a more complex view of history than the one Sowell provides. While I understand why Sowell wanted to include an essay/chapter on the history of Germany, its especially ironic how ten years after the writing of this book, a good number of the issues Europe faces today can stem from the overreaching dominion of Germany and its politics in the EU. The inclusion of this chapter doesn't enhance his argument in his other essays, and its inclusion is dubious.

One last point, while Sowell does provide arguments and evidence against the benefits of Affirmative action, he does not any policy solutions, nor does he celebrate liberal policies that do have significant evidence of working. For example, he chides Social Security and civil rights era policies for harming blacks, but ignores the massive benefit they have had in reducing the poverty of the elderly. Thus he misses an opportunity to demonstrate how social security has some racist undertones, for example, with a fixed retirement age across race despite Blacks having a lower life expectancy on average, and thus Black men drawing less benefits. Highlighting this however, would show the benefits whites and thus a majority of citizens have received, from Social Security. Second, he doesn't provide much investigation into the Flynn Effect, where IQ and other standardized test scored have significantly increased over the last century, across all races. While he uses to Flynn effect to chide liberals for being against IQ-Race related research, he misses addressing the fundamental question: Why would IQ suddenly increase across all races. One theory that is gaining traction is the improved environmental regulations that have taken place across the country: (http://web.mit.edu/ckolstad/www/Newel...) The unleading of gasoline coincides well with the sharp jump of the Flynn effect as well as sharp decrease of violent crime from the 80s onward. This makes a compelling case that environmental regulation is desirable in order to address these kinds of issues, but such a viewpoint is absent from Sowell's analysis and libertarian perspective.

As a result of all these factors, I would rate 3/5. While well researched and written, I would have been inclined to give a 4, or possibly even a 5, if Sowell had omitted his German ethnography and other biases in the book.