What confuses me so much is why bigots like you don’t just own it and come right out and call black culture inferior to white culture. Instead, you couch it in language like “ghetto.” Just say black when you mean black. You’re fooling no one and you’re not lessening the bigotry of your claims.
Your direct claims were unsupported by any evidence aside from you expecting me to read an entire book by a far right, self-hating black man. There were Jews that supported Hitler too. That didn’t make their claims correct. Furthermore, I would never suggest someone read an entire book in order to find out whether or not my claims are accurate. That’s silly and unreasonable.
I don’t think that he is self-hating. He is a doctorate and senior fellow at Stanford, having taught Econ at my alma mater among many others. I think that he is attempting to address and recommend fixes for the problem. He is not far right and has indicated he is not affiliated with a political party. It’s a short book, I can allude to the evidence, but he does a great job of describing it succinctly.
Sowell’s main thesis in this essay is that what we know today as “black culture” is actually “white redneck culture” or “cracker culture” which “originated not in the South but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South. Then it largely died out among both white and black Southerners, while still surviving today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghettos.” (p. 1-2)
To build his case, Sowell marshals a number of observations about language, work habits, pride, violence, and economic activity. He argues that these characteristics are common to “black culture” in urban ghettoes, “cracker culture” in the South, and the culture of the “northern borderlands of England” from which “most of the common white people of the South came” (p. 3). Thus, the culture of 21st century ghettos did not originate with Blacks but with 17th-century whites in England.
For example, he cites multiple contemporary sources who noticed Southerners’ lax work ethic,
“‘No southern man,’ South Carolina’s famed Senator John C. Calhoun said, ‘not even the poorest or the lowest, will, under any circumstances… perform menial labor… He has too much pride for that.‘ General Robert E. Lee likewise declared: ‘Our people are opposed to work. Our troops officers community & press. All ridicule & resist it.’ ‘Many whites,’ according to a leading Southern historian, ‘were disposed to leave good enough alone and put off changes till the morrow’” (p. 18).
In terms of education, he notes that: “As late as the census of 1850, more than one-fifth of Southern whites were still illiterate, compared to less than one percent of New Englanders” (p. 22) and “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, and Pennsylvania” (p. 23).
What’s clever about Sowell’s argument here is that progressives tend to attribute poverty to injustice, minimizing the effects of culture and personal choice. Yet it seems difficult to characterize white antebellum Southerners as “oppressed.” Consequently, progressives have to remain open to the possibility that the disparities noted by Sowell are a product of cultural differences between the North and the South. Once this connection is made between culture and disparities, why rule out such a connection when it comes to modern racial disparities?
This question becomes particularly important when we notice similar disparities within racial groups. For instance, “[t]he 1970 census showed that black West Indian families in the New York metropolitan area had 28 percent higher incomes than the families of American blacks. The incomes of second-generation West Indian families living in the same area exceeded that of black families by 58 percent. Neither race or racism can explain such differences. Nor can slavery, since native-born blacks and West Indian blacks both had a history of slavery. Studies published in 2004 indicated that an absolute majority of the black alumni of Harvard were either West Indian or African immigrants, or the children of these immigrants. Somewhat similar findings have emerged in studies of some other elite colleges. With blacks as with whites, the redneck culture has been a less achieving culture” (p. 32-33).
Sowell has argued that systemic racism is an untested, questionable hypothesis, writing, “I don’t think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they’re saying”, and compared it to propaganda tactics used by Joseph Goebbels because if it is “repeated long enough and loud enough”, people “cave in” to it.
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In Intellectuals and Race (2013), Sowell argues that intelligence quotient (IQ) gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups. He notes that the roughly 15-point gap in contemporary black–white IQ scores is similar to that between the national average and the scores of certain ethnic white groups in years past, in periods when the nation was absorbing new immigrants
There is a difference between genetics and eugenics. Eugenics seeks to modify progeny in order to weed out defects and promote certain characteristics. He is not propping up that line-of-thought. He is speaking to the genetic predisposition of ethnic groups. We all belong to different genotypes/phenotypes. I’m ashkenazi. We pretty much run everything and solve big problems. It’s kind of what we do. There was a ton of genetic variation in Africa. I don’t think that Sowell even was attempting to imply less IQ among black people and was showing a similar gradient as compared to other genetic backgrounds. His whole argument is nurture over nature. Systemic racism is just racism. Sure, there was some past redlining, but those issues have been corrected. I had nothing to do with past redlining and my taxes shouldn’t have to make concessions.
“I’m really liberal except when I blame liberals for making black people culturally stupid.” I see.
That’s fairly accurate.
What confuses me so much is why bigots like you don’t just own it and come right out and call black culture inferior to white culture. Instead, you couch it in language like “ghetto.” Just say black when you mean black. You’re fooling no one and you’re not lessening the bigotry of your claims.
Did you actually have anything to refute about my direct claims or are you only resorting to ad hominem at this point?
Your direct claims were unsupported by any evidence aside from you expecting me to read an entire book by a far right, self-hating black man. There were Jews that supported Hitler too. That didn’t make their claims correct. Furthermore, I would never suggest someone read an entire book in order to find out whether or not my claims are accurate. That’s silly and unreasonable.
I don’t think that he is self-hating. He is a doctorate and senior fellow at Stanford, having taught Econ at my alma mater among many others. I think that he is attempting to address and recommend fixes for the problem. He is not far right and has indicated he is not affiliated with a political party. It’s a short book, I can allude to the evidence, but he does a great job of describing it succinctly.
Sowell’s main thesis in this essay is that what we know today as “black culture” is actually “white redneck culture” or “cracker culture” which “originated not in the South but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South. Then it largely died out among both white and black Southerners, while still surviving today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghettos.” (p. 1-2)
To build his case, Sowell marshals a number of observations about language, work habits, pride, violence, and economic activity. He argues that these characteristics are common to “black culture” in urban ghettoes, “cracker culture” in the South, and the culture of the “northern borderlands of England” from which “most of the common white people of the South came” (p. 3). Thus, the culture of 21st century ghettos did not originate with Blacks but with 17th-century whites in England.
For example, he cites multiple contemporary sources who noticed Southerners’ lax work ethic,
“‘No southern man,’ South Carolina’s famed Senator John C. Calhoun said, ‘not even the poorest or the lowest, will, under any circumstances… perform menial labor… He has too much pride for that.‘ General Robert E. Lee likewise declared: ‘Our people are opposed to work. Our troops officers community & press. All ridicule & resist it.’ ‘Many whites,’ according to a leading Southern historian, ‘were disposed to leave good enough alone and put off changes till the morrow’” (p. 18).
In terms of education, he notes that: “As late as the census of 1850, more than one-fifth of Southern whites were still illiterate, compared to less than one percent of New Englanders” (p. 22) and “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, and Pennsylvania” (p. 23).
What’s clever about Sowell’s argument here is that progressives tend to attribute poverty to injustice, minimizing the effects of culture and personal choice. Yet it seems difficult to characterize white antebellum Southerners as “oppressed.” Consequently, progressives have to remain open to the possibility that the disparities noted by Sowell are a product of cultural differences between the North and the South. Once this connection is made between culture and disparities, why rule out such a connection when it comes to modern racial disparities?
This question becomes particularly important when we notice similar disparities within racial groups. For instance, “[t]he 1970 census showed that black West Indian families in the New York metropolitan area had 28 percent higher incomes than the families of American blacks. The incomes of second-generation West Indian families living in the same area exceeded that of black families by 58 percent. Neither race or racism can explain such differences. Nor can slavery, since native-born blacks and West Indian blacks both had a history of slavery. Studies published in 2004 indicated that an absolute majority of the black alumni of Harvard were either West Indian or African immigrants, or the children of these immigrants. Somewhat similar findings have emerged in studies of some other elite colleges. With blacks as with whites, the redneck culture has been a less achieving culture” (p. 32-33).
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell#Race_and_ethnicity
You’re promoting a far-right self-hating eugenicist. You are lying when you say you’re on the left.
There is a difference between genetics and eugenics. Eugenics seeks to modify progeny in order to weed out defects and promote certain characteristics. He is not propping up that line-of-thought. He is speaking to the genetic predisposition of ethnic groups. We all belong to different genotypes/phenotypes. I’m ashkenazi. We pretty much run everything and solve big problems. It’s kind of what we do. There was a ton of genetic variation in Africa. I don’t think that Sowell even was attempting to imply less IQ among black people and was showing a similar gradient as compared to other genetic backgrounds. His whole argument is nurture over nature. Systemic racism is just racism. Sure, there was some past redlining, but those issues have been corrected. I had nothing to do with past redlining and my taxes shouldn’t have to make concessions.
What are you even talking about now?