Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
It's not that american blacks "emulate" southern whites, it's that they are largely part of the same culture. Both groups are the oldest americans, the natives, that have been here 300+ years. It shouldn't come as a surprise that we have cultural things in common.
We eat the same food, talk the same, are protestant, etc...
That is so far from the truth. My wife is Liberian and many of our friends are West African. I've observed so many similarities between us and them that it is hilarious.
If you are white and have black friends it is evidence of racism.
although i admire Thomas Sowell and have for years, and I can trace my tree to the border reviver of midland scotland, I do not agree with the redneck theory that is quoted here.
I haven't seen this column yet. We have him in our paper about once a week. Like you, I have always admired him and take what he says very seriously, but from what I am getting here, (wihout reading the article) I have to agree with you.
Do not confuse race and culture. There is nothing wrong with the black race. See Sowell's rebuttal of the conclusions of The Bell Curve for a deeper understanding of this. Sowell does not claim there are not other influences. Nor does he deny many blacks have escaped the grips of redneck culture.
The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective. by Thomas Sowell
In this book Sowell goes into many of the other aspects of black America and racial politics in general. This book is the book that should be read first.
I'm not confusing race and culture. People like Thomas Sowell are making a racist argument and wrapping it up in culture.
Here is the thing, culture is nothing more then people responding to their material surroundings. That's it.
The idea that black Americans have a bad culture which then focuses on the so called collective racial short comings of the black race as being internally driven and separate from American society instead of the short comings of their material surroundings within American society is not an idea about culture, but an idea about race.
Again any discussion of culture that is not about race will inevitably focus on the material conditions of Americans and will connect changing their material conditions to changing American society, but once again, that's not the argument that's made in these discussions, instead the material conditions are deemed irrelevant and or excuses, or worse those material conditions are used to prove the depravity and immorality of black Americans as a whole.
Heck it is deemed that American society has no place in so called black American culture and the focus is entirely on what's wrong within the black race, as if culture itself is a product of skin color.
This is inevitably where these discussions go, there is something wrong within the black race that is separate from American society that only black people can fix this internal black racial/cultural problem.
You see this argument articulated with words like black on black crime, or seeing oow births as an internal black racial failing. Again that kind of rhetoric is not about culture, but about race.
It is explicitly racist thinking that undergirds that kind of rhetoric.
I'm not confusing race and culture. People like Thomas Sowell are making a racist argument and wrapping it up in culture.
Here is the thing, culture is nothing more then people responding to their material surroundings. That's it.
The idea that black Americans have a bad culture which then focuses on the so called collective racial short comings of the black race as being internally driven and separate from American society instead of the short comings of their material surroundings within American society is not an idea about culture, but an idea about race.
Again any discussion of culture that is not about race will inevitably focus on the material conditions of Americans and will connect changing their material conditions to changing American society, but once again, that's not the argument that's made in these discussions, instead the material conditions are deemed irrelevant and or excuses, or worse those material conditions are used to prove the depravity and immorality of black Americans as a whole.
Heck it is deemed that American society has no place in so called black American culture and the focus is entirely on what's wrong within the black race, as if culture itself is a product of skin color.
This is inevitably where these discussions go, there is something wrong within the black race that is separate from American society that only black people can fix this internal black racial/cultural problem.
You see this argument articulated with words like black on black crime, or seeing oow births as an internal black racial failing. Again that kind of rhetoric is not about culture, but about race.
It is explicitly racist thinking that undergirds that kind of rhetoric.
Thank you. 100% correct.
Even worse is Sewell is ignoring that there are differences between southern black culture and blacks in other parts of the country.
Part of the problem is that it's largely subconscious thinking that drive this type of thinking.
There sure are a lot of people in this thread who probably consider Thomas Sowell to be an Uncle Tom.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
