Political Crossfire Forums

[Nathyn]

I used to believe in the myth of the "racial gap." But it is a myth. The point I made a while back was the state of American Jews. Jews face more hate-crimes, both in number and proportional to their size, than blacks and yet while blacks underperform in comparison to whites, Jews OVERPERFORM even whites. If there was any kind of ever pervasive white man keeping minorities down, surely, Jews would be kept down just as much African-Americans?

It's undeniable that whites are more educated, wealthier, and generally more successful than blacks, and this is at least partially owed to historical circumstance. Certainly, I'd still support social programs because things such as poverty, domestic violence, and crime are cycles, being inherited from one generation to the next. And so, perhaps some programs to discourage this are a good idea.

However, it's not racism. The Democrats' cries of racism is their version of the Republicans' cries of anti-Christianity. Probably one of the most poignant examples of such demagogy was when Reverend Jesse Jackson said that Hurricane Katrina's aftermath looked like "a slave-ship," which is especially interesting being that he's never seen one, but also because statistics have now shown that the majority of victims were not, in fact, black.

Mostly, it's a cultural crisis among blacks themselves, which in my opinion is further perpetuated by blaming their problems on racism.

[cap'n queasy]

Many black folks are succesful, in many various ways. Even if this means just having a job and raising your family.

To assign the designation of failure collectively to them as a whole is an unfair characterization.

Some people who embraced a ludicrous sub-culture of criminality have seen that this way of life it destined to failure.

[Whitefields]

I think you're right. And Bill Cosby would agree, thats basicly the position he touts, that blacks need to take responsibility and that they need family values again to end the crime, lack of education and all the children born out of wedlock, etc. And he is so funny :-D

[curisz]

While there is definitely a lot of truth to the notion that Black attitudes are holding them back in many situations while they wait for redress in the future or just give up and claim helplessness rather than working to improve their lot in life, your example is not a very good one.

Jews came here of their own accord, most of them were already highly educated, and they had a traditional faith and culture of their own to hold their psyches together through difficult times. Their was never a law preventing jews from being educated, their were never laws as to where Jews could live, there were never restaurants that didn't serve Jews and very few Universities that didn't admit Jews, certainly none of any merit.

This is true to a greater or lesser extent of most immigrant groups. Many had at least some education, a cultural, language and family network of support through troubled times. They may have been hassled by some individuals or left off the lists of certain employers, but their was no pandemic of discrimination. Even No Irish Need Apply is mostly a myth.

Blacks on the other hand were brought here in chains, with no education except a native tongue and the survival skills appropriate to their native land. The language was quickly beat out of them, the skills were lost in the new environment. It was a crime to teach slaves to read. Their native culture was effectively stripped of them. Their families and social networks were torn apart by the ravages of the slave trade.

In effect, they emerged from slavery naked, with no education, no culture, and shattered families. Few job opportunities were open to them beyond sharecropping, aka slavery lite, and few educational opportunities were to be had either. Schools were strictly segregated, public facilities were strictly segregated, so access to the dominant european culture was effectively cut off. And then there were the lynchings, which often targetted the most successful and independent blacks.

Once that sort of discrimination was mostly gone, there were other more subtle forms, such as redlining.

Are blacks contributing mightily to their own problems right now? Yes. And much of those attitudes have been passed down generation to generation over the years. A handful of people break those habits every generation, and hopefully pass on new behaviors to their kids, but they mostly do it on their own.

In short, comparing the black experience to that of other immigrant groups just doesn't work. Other groups had generations of culture and education backing them up. Blacks had to start from cultural scratch, and deal with discrimination of a much more virulent nature at the same time.

[Gus]

I know plenty of people who are poor by choice.

[Thrilla]

oh i dont know... Blacks as a demographic are not being discriminated against as bad as they once were.... but the wounds of those times are still fresh.... black people in my age group still remember the "whites only" signs and such..... i think it will take a few more generations to heal those wounds and move towards real equality..... i think they have a real "confidence" problem...and i think the white people have a "guilt" problem... it'll take time to get over that crap...we are making strides... but the work isnt done....

oh.. and what race are jews?...every jew ive ever met was white

[lucidnightmare]

I see where the glorification of the materialistic and shallow ghetto thug culture is doing a lot of damage.

I remember when I was a kid,I used to visit my grandmother in a small town in upstate SC.It was the old south,the town was mostly black,the white people who lived there at that time lived in large Victorian houses,the blacks were generally poor.

I remember how the white people around me would often talk about well spoken apparently educated blacks.They would say they were"trying to be white".They stigmatized "good behavior" that of course had nothing to do with being white.

Today that town is the most gang infested crime ridden town I have ever seen,there is literally a gang on every street in the central part of the city.I still have family there and lived there for a while.

After slavery white America had a chance to embrace black people as fellow Americans and help them to lift themselves up as such.But instead they pursued a spiteful segregation policy that held their development back.

A straight line can be traced from the ghetto culture of today to the behavior of whites at that time.Blacks now,in some cases do plenty to hurt themselves.But white racism is at it's root.

[passing1]

Nathyn wrote: I used to believe in the myth of the "racial gap." But it is a myth. The point I made a while back was the state of American Jews. Jews face more hate-crimes, both in number and proportional to their size, than blacks and yet while blacks underperform in comparison to whites, Jews OVERPERFORM even whites. If there was any kind of ever pervasive white man keeping minorities down, surely, Jews would be kept down just as much African-Americans?

It's undeniable that whites are more educated, wealthier, and generally more successful than blacks, and this is at least partially owed to historical circumstance. Certainly, I'd still support social programs because things such as poverty, domestic violence, and crime are cycles, being inherited from one generation to the next. And so, perhaps some programs to discourage this are a good idea.

However, it's not racism. The Democrats' cries of racism is their version of the Republicans' cries of anti-Christianity. Probably one of the most poignant examples of such demagogy was when Reverend Jesse Jackson said that Hurricane Katrina's aftermath looked like "a slave-ship," which is especially interesting being that he's never seen one, but also because statistics have now shown that the majority of victims were not, in fact, black.

Mostly, it's a cultural crisis among blacks themselves, which in my opinion is further perpetuated by blaming their problems on racism.

Best spin yet I've seen on this subject...

The fact is, you can't compare the plight of African Americans with the plight of Jews or any other ethnic group...

The group most closely comparable to African Americans are Native Americans...

The Jews didn't suffer the ovens and then make their life in Germany: That's a big difference...

If the Africans that were brought to America were freed and then went to, say, Jamaica to make their new life, it would have had a different emotion to it: The Jamaicans would not have been the ones who stripped every aspect of dignity from them, and killed many of their family members, but rather Jamaica would represent a new start in every way...

Instead of that, African Americans got freedom, but resistance from whites to give them that freedom, and that progression of hatred went from lynchings to Jim Crow to voting rights to the 60's and MLK...

This s**t hammers the psyche in a different way than Jews in this country that didn't suffer their injustices here...

It's much more than a 'pattern' that justifies social programs, it is deeply imbedded cultural realities on the part of both Blacks and Whites, which is also imbedded into our institutions( which progressively get eradicated as years go by)...

The failure of social programs is simply this: The emotional rebuilding of the African decendents of slaves in this country was not tended to: All this government did was recognized injustices, and threw money at the problems...

If half the intensity was put toward helping Native American or African American cultures evolve as was put into the Iraq 'hearts and minds' program before the insurgency made themselves the only issue, it would have been a whole lot different for both groups...

[George W Bush]

Nathyn, I disagree. Racism is alive and well in America.

Check out this site:
http://www.tolerance.org/news/news_archive.jsp

[Robin Hood]

Thomas Sowell settled this debate long ago, I just don't understand how it's taken some people so long to realise.

Crippled by Their Culture
Race doesn't hold back America's "black rednecks." Nor does racism.

BY THOMAS SOWELL
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?

What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior.

There have always been large disparities, even within the native black population of the U.S. Those blacks whose ancestors were "free persons of color" in 1850 have fared far better in income, occupation, and family stability than those blacks whose ancestors were freed in the next decade by Abraham Lincoln.

What is not nearly as widely known is that there were also very large disparities within the white population of the pre-Civil War South and the white population of the Northern states. Although Southern whites were only about one-third of the white population of the U.S., an absolute majority of all the illiterate whites in the country were in the South.

The North had four times as many schools as the South, attended by more than four times as many students. Children in Massachusetts spent more than twice as many years in school as children in Virginia. Such disparities obviously produce other disparities. Northern newspapers had more than four times the circulation of Southern newspapers. Only 8% of the patents issued in 1851 went to Southerners. Even though agriculture was the principal economic activity of the antebellum South at the time, the vast majority of the patents for agricultural inventions went to Northerners. Even the cotton gin was invented by a Northerner.

Disparities between Southern whites and Northern whites extended across the board from rates of violence to rates of illegitimacy. American writers from both the antebellum South and the North commented on the great differences between the white people in the two regions. So did famed French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville.

None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism. Many contemporary observers attributed these differences to the existence of slavery in the South, as many in later times would likewise attribute both the difference between Northern and Southern whites, and between blacks and whites nationwide, to slavery. But slavery doesn't stand up under scrutiny of historical facts any better than race or racism as explanations of North-South differences or black-white differences. The people who settled in the South came from different regions of Britain than the people who settled in the North--and they differed as radically on the other side of the Atlantic as they did here--that is, before they had ever seen a black slave.

Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?

Culture is left.

The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.

Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks--not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style.

While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.

Nevertheless the process took a long time. As late as the First World War, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Again, neither race nor racism can explain that--and neither can slavery.

The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it. Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today's ghettos is regarded by many as the only "authentic" black culture--and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.

The people who take this view may think of themselves as friends of blacks. But they are the kinds of friends who can do more harm than enemies.

Mr. Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author, most recently, of "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," published this week by Encounter Books.

[Lumina]

Anybody remember William Raspberry's article "Black America's House Is on Fire"?

[Fido]

Nathyn wrote: I used to believe in the myth of the "racial gap." But it is a myth. The point I made a while back was the state of American Jews. Jews face more hate-crimes, both in number and proportional to their size, than blacks and yet while blacks underperform in comparison to whites, Jews OVERPERFORM even whites. If there was any kind of ever pervasive white man keeping minorities down, surely, Jews would be kept down just as much African-Americans?

It's undeniable that whites are more educated, wealthier, and generally more successful than blacks, and this is at least partially owed to historical circumstance. Certainly, I'd still support social programs because things such as poverty, domestic violence, and crime are cycles, being inherited from one generation to the next. And so, perhaps some programs to discourage this are a good idea.

However, it's not racism. The Democrats' cries of racism is their version of the Republicans' cries of anti-Christianity. Probably one of the most poignant examples of such demagogy was when Reverend Jesse Jackson said that Hurricane Katrina's aftermath looked like "a slave-ship," which is especially interesting being that he's never seen one, but also because statistics have now shown that the majority of victims were not, in fact, black.

Mostly, it's a cultural crisis among blacks themselves, which in my opinion is further perpetuated by blaming their problems on racism.

So... if racism is not the cause of black people's inability to better themselves vis a' vis the white man then what is the necessity for it? If a man cannot get up, what is the point of a keeping a foot on his throat? And after the many generations of white genes, why are they not more white, white acting, white talking, white thinking? Certainly the peoples of Mother Africa must be crawling on their mental belly's by comparison after the addition of so much white genetic brainpower. Or could it possibly be that with the recent emancipation has not come a change of consciousness, and because the key to any advancement in this society for the down and out has always been to take advantage of every opportunity; but for the Blacks this smack justly of slavery for slave wages. It takes intelligence to drop a jump shot. It takes intelligence to strip a car completely in forty five minutes, or to keep track of a days worth of drug deal cash without a till or a ticket, but they have brains for that because it does not smell slavery. They see as well as white trash in the South that there is no honor in labor for nothing. The honor is not in earning money, but in having money. Try doubling their pay as Caesar did for his men; it takes a lot to capture the imagination of an American too.

[Robin Hood]

Quote: So... if racism is not the cause of black people's inability to better themselves vis a' vis the white man then what is the necessity for it?

Read Sowell's article and you'll realise how shrill and racist you're being.

[cap'n queasy]

Only people who racistly refuse to look at black folks as individuals who stand or fall by their own personal merits and only see a collective group that is different from them would claim that it is racism that is to blame for the failure of some individuals in today's society.

George Washington Carver lived in a time where racism was undeniable and far more pervasive than it is now, yet he became one of the world's leading scientists. Frederick Douglass lived in a time that was far more racist even than that, yet he is one of Americas most well known and admired statesmen.


Some people refuse to let anything hold them back, this is what makes for success in any endeavor.

[bob.appleyard]

While it could be argued that racism NOW isn't responsible for the underwhelming performance of black people as a whole in the US, a history of institutionalised racism has certainly played a part.

Many people were alive when official segregation ended in the US. I think it will take a while before that kind of persecution can be neutralised.

[islandhopper]

curisz wrote: While there is definitely a lot of truth to the notion that Black attitudes are holding them back in many situations while they wait for redress in the future or just give up and claim helplessness rather than working to improve their lot in life, your example is not a very good one.

Jews came here of their own accord, most of them were already highly educated, and they had a traditional faith and culture of their own to hold their psyches together through difficult times. Their was never a law preventing jews from being educated, their were never laws as to where Jews could live, there were never restaurants that didn't serve Jews and very few Universities that didn't admit Jews, certainly none of any merit.

This is true to a greater or lesser extent of most immigrant groups. Many had at least some education, a cultural, language and family network of support through troubled times. They may have been hassled by some individuals or left off the lists of certain employers, but their was no pandemic of discrimination. Even No Irish Need Apply is mostly a myth.

Blacks on the other hand were brought here in chains, with no education except a native tongue and the survival skills appropriate to their native land. The language was quickly beat out of them, the skills were lost in the new environment. It was a crime to teach slaves to read. Their native culture was effectively stripped of them. Their families and social networks were torn apart by the ravages of the slave trade.

In effect, they emerged from slavery naked, with no education, no culture, and shattered families. Few job opportunities were open to them beyond sharecropping, aka slavery lite, and few educational opportunities were to be had either. Schools were strictly segregated, public facilities were strictly segregated, so access to the dominant european culture was effectively cut off. And then there were the lynchings, which often targetted the most successful and independent blacks.

Once that sort of discrimination was mostly gone, there were other more subtle forms, such as redlining.

Are blacks contributing mightily to their own problems right now? Yes. And much of those attitudes have been passed down generation to generation over the years. A handful of people break those habits every generation, and hopefully pass on new behaviors to their kids, but they mostly do it on their own.

In short, comparing the black experience to that of other immigrant groups just doesn't work. Other groups had generations of culture and education backing them up. Blacks had to start from cultural scratch, and deal with discrimination of a much more virulent nature at the same time.

:clap: Very nice explanation; clearly spoken. I hope people read it.

[GrowHydro]

Nathyn wrote: I used to believe in the myth of the "racial gap." But it is a myth. The point I made a while back was the state of American Jews. Jews face more hate-crimes, both in number and proportional to their size, than blacks and yet while blacks underperform in comparison to whites, Jews OVERPERFORM even whites. If there was any kind of ever pervasive white man keeping minorities down, surely, Jews would be kept down just as much African-Americans? The Jewish populations of the U.S. have had quite different circumstances than that of their African brothers. The Jews and Whites immigrated for several reasons, for example: running from persecution, warfare, poverty, etc; but the Blacks on the other hand, came here almost comprehensively in bondage, to be used for slave labor. Visualize this for as long as you can stand to my friends, :gdgf: : just for this debate, what if the Nazis had capitulated with the Allies and survived WWII with the German state intact (keep in mind this is just an example) and had continued using the Jewish race, for slave labor for an however limited duration. Now overtime, the position had progressed to some form of indentured servitude resembling that of the share cropper in the U.S. If by today, thanks to an inspiring and progressive movement, the Jews were given rights and seen as equals, it is not possible for them to be anywhere near on par in finances, education, and general success.
And so, the overall difference being that the majority black population were deprived of the same conditions that were given to Jews and Whites since their first immigrant fathers' arrivals, and up until, lets just say the late 1970s; it is easy to see how a situation such as we as a nation find ourselves in today, with such seeming variation among the various races' general social ascendancy's could have evolved.

Nathyn wrote: It's undeniable that whites are more educate, wealthier, and generally more successful than blacks, and this is at least partially owed to historical circumstance. Partially? Do you think that if there had been an opposite version of the same methodical and industrious racially sanctioned slavery back in the worst of the dark ages by the united Arabs followed by a slow naturalization process, there wouldn't have been an adverse effect on the subsequent generations?

Quote: Mostly, it's a cultural crisis among blacks themselves, which in my opinion is further perpetuated by blaming their problems on racism. Racism is not an excuse for laziness. I believe your only fault is that you understandably overestimate an overly-perpetuated stereotype, who's numbers in reality, represent a minority. The blacks who do not truly search for an intellectual understanding of the reasons for their predicament, but care only to echo pieces lifted from those before them who have, are bona fide blood kin in that of a family spanning all colors and creeds: the hopeless.

[Revenant]

Oh s**t Nathyn, you stirred the hornet's nest....

[curisz]

Robin Hood wrote: Thomas Sowell settled this debate long ago, I just don't understand how it's taken some people so long to realise.

Crippled by Their Culture
Race doesn't hold back America's "black rednecks." Nor does racism.

BY THOMAS SOWELL
Tuesday, April 26, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?

What then could explain such large disparities in demographic "representation" among these three groups of blacks? Perhaps they have different patterns of behavior and different cultures and values behind their behavior.

There have always been large disparities, even within the native black population of the U.S. Those blacks whose ancestors were "free persons of color" in 1850 have fared far better in income, occupation, and family stability than those blacks whose ancestors were freed in the next decade by Abraham Lincoln.

What is not nearly as widely known is that there were also very large disparities within the white population of the pre-Civil War South and the white population of the Northern states. Although Southern whites were only about one-third of the white population of the U.S., an absolute majority of all the illiterate whites in the country were in the South.

The North had four times as many schools as the South, attended by more than four times as many students. Children in Massachusetts spent more than twice as many years in school as children in Virginia. Such disparities obviously produce other disparities. Northern newspapers had more than four times the circulation of Southern newspapers. Only 8% of the patents issued in 1851 went to Southerners. Even though agriculture was the principal economic activity of the antebellum South at the time, the vast majority of the patents for agricultural inventions went to Northerners. Even the cotton gin was invented by a Northerner.

Disparities between Southern whites and Northern whites extended across the board from rates of violence to rates of illegitimacy. American writers from both the antebellum South and the North commented on the great differences between the white people in the two regions. So did famed French visitor Alexis de Tocqueville.

None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism. Many contemporary observers attributed these differences to the existence of slavery in the South, as many in later times would likewise attribute both the difference between Northern and Southern whites, and between blacks and whites nationwide, to slavery. But slavery doesn't stand up under scrutiny of historical facts any better than race or racism as explanations of North-South differences or black-white differences. The people who settled in the South came from different regions of Britain than the people who settled in the North--and they differed as radically on the other side of the Atlantic as they did here--that is, before they had ever seen a black slave.

Slavery also cannot explain the difference between American blacks and West Indian blacks living in the United States because the ancestors of both were enslaved. When race, racism, and slavery all fail the empirical test, what is left?

Culture is left.

The culture of the people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.

Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks--not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style.

While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.

Nevertheless the process took a long time. As late as the First World War, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Again, neither race nor racism can explain that--and neither can slavery.

The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it. Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today's ghettos is regarded by many as the only "authentic" black culture--and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.

The people who take this view may think of themselves as friends of blacks. But they are the kinds of friends who can do more harm than enemies.

Mr. Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author, most recently, of "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," published this week by Encounter Books.

Wow, now that is an interesting take. Oddly, it still kind of blames whites for blacks problems, just in a completely different way. Rather than my theory about blacks stripped of culture, (and mind you I still think that is a valid way of looking at it), in the authors opinion it is the culture that was available to them to be absorbed that was to blame: white trash culture! No wonder the Klan was so dominant in redneck areas, as one always hates most in others the things one despises in oneself.

Of course the truth, as always, is probably more complicated than either theory alone, but I think both have a lot more to say than the simplistic and lazyminded "because they're lazy" that some seem to want to suggest.

[Robin Hood]

Quote: Of course the truth, as always, is probably more complicated than either theory alone, but I think both have a lot more to say than the simplistic and lazyminded "because they're lazy" that some seem to want to suggest.

Sowell actually has much more in depth theories that continue by blaming welfare, affirmative action and the like. I can't remember of the book I have on it.