Black rednecks and affluent black assumptions (op-ed)
Recently, economist, professor, author, and syndicated columnist Thomas Sowell retired. He wrote his last column. Whether he was a black conservative or a libertarian will continue to be debated, but Sowell never labeled his thoughts.
For those unfamiliar with Sowell’s canon of controversial writings I want to introduce you to one theory he expounded in a book called: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, but first some preliminaries.
During a debate about problems plaguing black sections of American cities a moderator asked the panelists how anyone could argue that racism was not the driving factor.
Immediately a white panelist, a conservative, responded, “Because it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture.” Of course, the liberal black panelist threw a fit. They said the comment reeked of racism. They assured the audience that the problem had nothing to do with black culture and everything to do with the legacy of slavery.
Now, if you didn’t jump to any conclusion, you would have noticed that the white conservative didn’t say black culture, he just said culture, and it was his counterparts that associated the negativity with “black”.
In another debate about the same problems a black conservative said racism was still a problem, but using racism as an all purpose explanation for black pathologies was inadequate.
Here the black conservative didn’t just say pathologies he described the pathologies as “black”. This time the white liberals threw a fit. They said these pathologies do not represent the totality of black culture and chastised the black conservative for failing to acknowledge black cultural diversity. But it’s clear these white liberals associated these pathologies with “black” and what they actually objected to was the generalization not the accusation.
And it’s also clear that the black liberals and the black conservative from these different debates had the same perspective concerning “black culture”. It’s possible their common perspective was produced by a common background. Both the black liberals and the black conservative admitted they had affluent backgrounds and weren’t raised under the circumstances they discussed making their assumptions of “blackness” just as prejudicial as any other affluent outsider examining a lower class.
Now, Sowell suggested these pathologies aren’t “black” and aren’t produced by the legacy of slavery. They originated in those parts of the British Isles from which Southern whites came, and the nature of this “redneck” or “cracker” subculture existed among their ancestors before they came to America.
Sowell wrote: Much of the cultural pattern of Southern rednecks became the cultural heritage of southern blacks, more so than survivals of African cultures, with which they had not been in contact for centuries. Such cultural traits followed blacks out of the Southern country sides and into the urban ghettos where many settled.
Sowell continued: Contemporary black ghetto culture in the United States is not a simple linear extrapolation from the culture of Southern whites. First of all, most black Americans today are no longer part of the ghetto culture. Moreover, aside from influences peculiar to the circumstances of blacks, profound changes in larger American society around them have also had an influence both positive and negative. The burgeoning of the American welfare state in the second half of the twentieth century and the declining effectiveness of the American criminal justice system at the same time allowed borrowed and counterproductive cultural traits to continue and flourish among those blacks who had not yet moved beyond that culture, thereby prolonging the life of a chaotic, counterproductive, dangerous, and self-destructive sub-culture in many urban ghettos.
The key word here is sub-culture.
Now, if Sowell’s theory has any merit, the white conservative panelist was close when he simply said culture, but the affluent assumptions of the other debaters concerning “blackness” revealed an unconscious prejudice which is problematic, and will alter the effectiveness of any remedy they suggest to solve the problem.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 1/18/17
For those unfamiliar with Sowell’s canon of controversial writings I want to introduce you to one theory he expounded in a book called: Black Rednecks and White Liberals, but first some preliminaries.
During a debate about problems plaguing black sections of American cities a moderator asked the panelists how anyone could argue that racism was not the driving factor.
Immediately a white panelist, a conservative, responded, “Because it has nothing to do with race and everything to do with culture.” Of course, the liberal black panelist threw a fit. They said the comment reeked of racism. They assured the audience that the problem had nothing to do with black culture and everything to do with the legacy of slavery.
Now, if you didn’t jump to any conclusion, you would have noticed that the white conservative didn’t say black culture, he just said culture, and it was his counterparts that associated the negativity with “black”.
In another debate about the same problems a black conservative said racism was still a problem, but using racism as an all purpose explanation for black pathologies was inadequate.
Here the black conservative didn’t just say pathologies he described the pathologies as “black”. This time the white liberals threw a fit. They said these pathologies do not represent the totality of black culture and chastised the black conservative for failing to acknowledge black cultural diversity. But it’s clear these white liberals associated these pathologies with “black” and what they actually objected to was the generalization not the accusation.
And it’s also clear that the black liberals and the black conservative from these different debates had the same perspective concerning “black culture”. It’s possible their common perspective was produced by a common background. Both the black liberals and the black conservative admitted they had affluent backgrounds and weren’t raised under the circumstances they discussed making their assumptions of “blackness” just as prejudicial as any other affluent outsider examining a lower class.
Now, Sowell suggested these pathologies aren’t “black” and aren’t produced by the legacy of slavery. They originated in those parts of the British Isles from which Southern whites came, and the nature of this “redneck” or “cracker” subculture existed among their ancestors before they came to America.
Sowell wrote: Much of the cultural pattern of Southern rednecks became the cultural heritage of southern blacks, more so than survivals of African cultures, with which they had not been in contact for centuries. Such cultural traits followed blacks out of the Southern country sides and into the urban ghettos where many settled.
Sowell continued: Contemporary black ghetto culture in the United States is not a simple linear extrapolation from the culture of Southern whites. First of all, most black Americans today are no longer part of the ghetto culture. Moreover, aside from influences peculiar to the circumstances of blacks, profound changes in larger American society around them have also had an influence both positive and negative. The burgeoning of the American welfare state in the second half of the twentieth century and the declining effectiveness of the American criminal justice system at the same time allowed borrowed and counterproductive cultural traits to continue and flourish among those blacks who had not yet moved beyond that culture, thereby prolonging the life of a chaotic, counterproductive, dangerous, and self-destructive sub-culture in many urban ghettos.
The key word here is sub-culture.
Now, if Sowell’s theory has any merit, the white conservative panelist was close when he simply said culture, but the affluent assumptions of the other debaters concerning “blackness” revealed an unconscious prejudice which is problematic, and will alter the effectiveness of any remedy they suggest to solve the problem.
First published in the New Pittsburgh Courier 1/18/17
Interesting. So do you have any sense of what paradigm Trump (or should I say Bannon and Kushner) are using when they look at the urban issues? without knowing tons, it seems on the surface that its about control, subordination, and cleansing rather than lifting up and equalizing.
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