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Title: Black Rednecks and White Liberals
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Manufacturer: Encounter Books
List Price: $17.95
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| Customer Reviews: |
| Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books Excellent history of slavery | | A must read for everyone wishing to speak on the topic of race relations. As a history (80 pages of notes and references) Sowell successfully debunks many "politically correct" ideas on the origin of Black culture, animus against Jews, contribution of the German culture and more. I found the book engrossing and have returned to it many times for data. I almost totally agree with the other fine reviews of this book. | | Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books The politically incorrect history they keep quiet | A lot of info goes on in these pages, from all around the world and from all times. How can Mr. Sowell handle this maremagnum of data, give it purpose and meaning is something beyond me. However, it does resent a bit the task. It's a huge task. The variety of locations and the time spam make it a little dry to follow, though. But the pearls of data one picks along the way makes it worthwhile.
"with Western civilization, the principal impetus for the abolition of slavery came first from very conservative religious activists -people who would today be called "the religious right". Clearly, this is not politically correct in today's terms. Hence it is ignored, as if it never happened."
"What lessons we draw from the past depend on whether it is viewed narrowly or against the broader background of world history ... it was not because people thought that slavery was right that it persisted for thousands of years. It persisted largely because people did not think about the righteousness or wrongness of it at all. ... That such an institution could last so long unchallenged, on every inhabited continent, is a chilling example of what can happen when people simply do not think."
Clarity of thought, and a lot of common sense, free us from the burden of political correctness.
Mr. Sowell is a great writer and historian, but I would have preferred a more focused essay, just the conclusions and representative data. The book is centered on the state of the education in America's schools but brings information from many areas of world history in a degree that becomes overwhelming. A shorter book would have been better appreciated.
| | Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books Provocative and Challenging | Before I read the title essay of "Black Rednecks," my impression of Sowell was basically negative, based on the quality of his op-ed columns, which lapsed too much for my taste into name calling and Couter-like venom towards "liberals"
Yet in "Black Rednecks," Sowell has produced a fine and nuanced piece of scholarship that deserves serious engagement. Unfortunately, as many of the reviews unwittingly attest, people on the left instead have slung mud rather than refute his arguments. It is no wonder that the left has been in retreat for so long - and I say this as someone on the left myself - when intellectual pygmies and carny hucksters like Michael Dyson are allowed to dominate debates on race, class and culture. | | Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books A Conservative Superstar. | Thomas Sowell is one the numerous conservative commentators whose columns I have read for many years. I really never considered him to be a standout within our ranks until I picked up "Visions of the Anointed" earlier this year. Reading those pages was an entirely different experience from perusing his weekly syndicated product. Sowell is the type of author who works best within a venue rich in space and time. He needs to develop his thoughts and get rolling from there. He does not come off as well when limited to 900 words. Here, in this book, he provides readers with six masterful essays which examine history, minority relations within human populations, education, and the politically correct myths which debase our society.
The strongest section here is the essay for which the book is titled because its analysis is unique and original. Sowell traces the social pathologies of the modern ghetto back to southern culture and shows that its ultimate behavioral source comes from the people who once inhabited the northern districts of England along with some parts of Scotland. A stunning point concerns IQ scores. Northern blacks in the First World War had higher scores than southern whites as they were not debilitated by the effects of a philistine and redneck culture. His argument (justly) suggests that the tests which we all too often dismiss as "biased" are highly dependent upon the environment in which individual persons are raised. This certainly makes sense given the single parent homes from which many lower performing children come.
"The Real History of Slavery" is an essay which describes a past of which most Americans are ignorant. I have discovered that many people simple accept the "Roots" version of events without realizing that whites never traipsed around in the African vegetation as a means to rope up the indigenous population. Before there was a cure for malaria there was no colonization or even much in the way of visitation. Sowell documents the role of Africans in the slave trade (which was monumental) and the fact that the British practically went broke in the attempt to purge the earth of this heinous and disgraceful institution.
"Black Education" was the essay that seemed most personal. Sowell examines the way in which Dunbar High School, an elite all-black school in Washington DC, thrived and produced in its hallways a long forgotten American elite. Dunbar's excellence ended with segregation but it set a sterling example of the way in which blacks--like every other group of people--respond favorably to high expectations and an environment devoted to intellectual rigor. The Herculean accomplishments of Dunbar are but a footnote today, but the progressive wasteland of education is as expansive as the tax code. At least Sowell remembers what once was. I can not stress enough to conservatives how much this man is a superstar among his peers. | | Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books Fascinating Thesis | | Fascinating thesis, I think he proves it well. Whether you agree with him or not... the author has top-notch commentary and analysis, you will learn many things beyond the pale of the mainstream. Highly reccomended. | | Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Encounter Books Product Description | | This book presents the kind of eye-opening insights into the history and culture of race for which Sowell has become famous. As late as the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, poor Southern rednecks were regarded by Northern employers and law enforcement officials as lazy, lawless, and sexually immoral. This pattern was repeated by blacks with whom they shared a subculture in the South. Over the last half century poor whites and most blacks have moved up in class and affluence, but the ghetto remains filled with black rednecks. Their attempt to escape, Sowell shows, is hampered by their white liberal friends who turn dysfunctional black redneck culture into a sacrosanct symbol of racial identity. In addition to Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the book takes on subjects ranging from Are Jews Generic? to The Real History of Slavery. |
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