Don Fox's Reviews > Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Wow, what an achievement. Though a more accurate title might have been "Essays in Ethnology", "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" consists of six amazing essays, which collectively constitute the best book I've ever read. Every page presents startling, important, and little known facts that are apparently little known because they contradict the prevailing narrative about race and ethnicity. Did you know, for example, that:

* "...labor force participation rates were higher among non-whites than among whites in 1920 and 1930"?

* Hatred of the Jews is but one example of almost universal hatred of "middleman minorities", other examples of which include the Ibos in Nigeria, the Chinese throughout Southeast Asia, the Armenians in Turkey, the Lebanese in Africa, the Japanese in Peru, and the Indians in Burma?

* "At least a million Europeans were enslaved by North African pirates alone from 1500 to 1800, and some European slaves were still being sold on the auction block in Egypt, years after the Emancipation Proclamation freed blacks in the United States"?

* Slavery has been universal in human history, such that we are all almost inescapably the descendants of slaves and slave-owners alike?

* "While slavery was common to all civilizations, as well as to peoples considered uncivilized, only one civilization developed a moral revulsion against it, very late in its history — Western civilization"?

* "Europeans became the destroyers of slavery around the world, over the bitter opposition of Africans, Arabs, Asians, and others"?

* Slavery was destroyed as an institution only because "Western civilization had the power to prevail against all other civilizations" at that point in time?

I could give literally hundreds more examples. And Dr. Sowell marshals all his facts (supported by more than 60 pages of notes) into thoroughly compelling arguments rendered in exceptionally clean prose. This book should be required reading in every high school in America. Superb.