Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Sowell, Thomas

ISBN 10: 0786179228 ISBN 13: 9780786179220

Publisher: Blackstone Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

Black Rednecks and White Liberals is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell. This explosive new book challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, Jews, Germans and Nazis, slavery, and education. Through a series of essays, Sowell presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many mistaken and dangerous actions, policies, and trends. He presents eye-opening insights into the development of the ghetto culture--a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves "friends" of blacks--which is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity, and he reexamines the tragic institution of slavery. The reasons for the venomous hatred of Jews, and other groups like them in countries around the world, are also explored, as are misconceptions of Nazi Germany. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as such historic interpreters of American life as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted.

About this title

About the Author

Thomas Sowell has taught economics at Cornell, UCLA, Amherst, and other academic institutions, and his Basic Economics has been translated into six languages. He is currently a scholar-in-residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been published in both academic journals and such popular media as the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Fortune and writes a syndicated column that appears in newspapers across the country.

From Publishers Weekly

One of America's foremost black conservative intellectuals returns with this provocative collection of contrarian essays. Hoover Institution Fellow Sowell, author of Ethnic America, argues that "internal" cultural habits of industriousness, thriftiness, family solidarity and reverence for education often play a greater role in the success of ethnic minorities than do civil-rights laws or majority prejudices. The title essay posits a "black redneck" culture inherited from the white redneck culture of the South and characterized by violent machismo, shiftlessness and disdain for schooling. White liberals, gangsta-rap aficionados and others who lionize its ghetto remnants as an authentic black identity, Sowell contends, have their history wrong and help perpetuate cultural pathologies that hold blacks back. Sowell also examines the cultural achievements of such "middleman minorities" as Jews and expatriate Chinese whose frequent persecution, he feels, represents an animus against capitalism. And he defends Western culture itself against charges that it was uniquely culpable for slavery; in fact, he contends, it was uniquely responsible for eradicating slavery. Many of Sowell's arguments-that the 20th-century resegregation of Northern cities was a response to the uncouthness of black rednecks migrating from the South, or that segregated black schools often succeeded by suppressing redneckism with civilized New England puritanism-will arouse controversy, but these vigorously argued essays present a stimulating challenge to the conventional wisdom.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0786179228
• ISBN 13: 9780786179220
• Binding: MP3 CD
• Language: English