Thomas Sowell recently wrote an article entitled "Crippled by Their Culture" for OpinionJournal. Since it relies on factual claims that I can't begin assess — I just don't know enough — I don't have an informed opinion about his piece. But it's worth reading, if you ask me.
Not all of Sowell's argumentative moves are made fully explicit in his essay, but here is the gist of what he says, as I reconstruct it. Sowell argues, in short, that some contemporary disparities in achievement between whites and blacks are ultimately the product of the "redneck culture" of the South that produced great disparities between Northern whites and Southern whites before the Civil War. This culture has largely died out among whites, but remains a problem for blacks in the North and the South, what with the waves of black immigration from the South to the North.
Presumably, Sowell isn't claiming that redneck culture has completely died out among whites. After all, we can still call a white person a redneck. Perhaps he means that the most pathological behaviors associated with redneck culture as he describes it — crime, illegitimacy, etc. — are on the wane. Furthermore, Sowell's argument takes for granted that Southern blacks adopted the white redneck culture that British immigrants to the South brought with them in colonial times (and thus that African cultures aren't the chief source either of disparities among blacks or of disparities between whites and blacks), and that slaves were affected to a greater extent than free blacks. And, of course, Sowell is talking about problems among blacks around the country, and thus not just in the North and the South.
If you read the whole piece, you'll see that what I've briefly sketched out in the previous paragraph helps to flesh out Sowell's argument and make it more plausible.
Now it's time for some quotations.
First, a sketch of various disparities:
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.
Second, culture as the only explanation:
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.
Third, alleged effects of redneck culture:
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.[. . .]
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.
Fourth, the relevance of Sowell's argument to contemporary political debate:
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.
Because Sowell is black, he can't be dismissed as someone who is motivated by racism. He might be mistaken, of course. Clearly, however, the conservative sting in his conclusions is entirely intentional. Sowell is a serious intellectual, which means that we should be willing to consider what he says.
His article was obviously drawn from material in his new book — Black Rednecks and White Liberals. I assume that his book fills out the gaps that I mentioned above.
Sowell isn't the first to argue in this fashion. Here's another example. Fox Butterfield wrote on similar themes in All God's Children: The Bosket Family and the American Tradition of Violence.
Butterfield argues, in short, that violence among contemporary urban blacks is ultimately rooted in the white honor culture of the antebellum rural South. Here's an interview with Butterfield from 1996 that provides a clear summary of his book.
As I said above, I don't know enough to have an informed opinion on these matters, but I thought that I should pass along some interesting reading on important issues.