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I admit there's a certain elegance to his junk

Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 29, 2005 - 6:40am.
on Race and Identity

It seems Thomas Sowell has a new book.

Mr. Sowell, the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is author, most recently, of "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," published this week by Encounter Books.

I'll not be buying it (though I would review a free copy...).

That quote came from the credits for an OpinionJournal thing he wrote that Baldilocks linked to.

For most of the history of this country, differences between the black and the white population--whether in income, IQ, crime rates, or whatever--have been attributed to either race or racism. For much of the first half of the 20th century, these differences were attributed to race--that is, to an assumption that blacks just did not have it in their genes to do as well as white people. The tide began to turn in the second half of the 20th century, when the assumption developed that black-white differences were due to racism on the part of whites.

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

Where Sowell says "race" you should read "genetically determined traits." I don't think that's what Sowell means...but what he writes makes sense if you make that substitution.

There's no substitution for "racism" that makes Sowell's editorial make sense, though.

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.

None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism.

And so, Sowell concludes racism can't explain the disadvantages Black folks have labored under based on a review of white folks.

...wasn't supposed to notice that...

Since differences correlated to race can't be attributed to genetically determined traits, and because white Americans too have a segment of folks that don't do well on IQ tests, Sowell concludes the transmission medium for transmission of stupidity is culture.

And our culture, as we know, wasn't shaped by racism. At all. Black people were not purposefully excluded from all the programs that lifted White America out of redneck status. That wasn't racism, I guess.

You know, I have no doubt about Black folks' capabilities. No doubt of our survival (though there's as much question about the form of that survival as about any other American's nowadays). But I really wish people would stop setting up these intellectual illusions. There's a quality about Sowellian screeds that reminds me of a ray-traced three-dimensional image. Shaded to imitate depth and perspective, you could mistake it for reality when it's far enough away from you.

Sowell's editorial has no real depth...it merely draws lines to render the illusion of perspective.

 

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Submitted by dwshelf on April 29, 2005 - 11:44am.

So maybe you can provide a more concise response, P6.  Sowell presents evidence that the American born children of recent black immigrants dramatically outperform black children with long American heritage.

As near as I can tell, your explanation of that involves contrasting life-long racism applied to both parents and children (bad) as compared to life-long racism applied to the children, but only adult racism applied to the parents (not a big problem).  Is that what you're saying?

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 29, 2005 - 2:47pm.

I haven't explained anything, I just poked all holes in Sowell's explanation.

I'll point out that immigrants tend to be at least middle class because it taks money to relocate. Compare the immigrants to upper middle class Blacks...or compare the whole community in their native contry to the whole American Black community.

Just as you find that Black and  white students whose wealth is comparable have comparable test scores, you'll find comparing apples to apples gets you a whole different result than comparing apples to oranges.

And if culture is the problem, then Carribean Black immigrants should be outpacing all America. You cannot find a single elementof Black culture that doesn't exist with its peculiar expression in White culture.

 

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Submitted by DarkStar on April 29, 2005 - 5:43pm.
then Carribean Black immigrants should be outpacing all America.

If I'm not mistaken they are, but so are all immigrants, on average.

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 30, 2005 - 10:24am.

DW:

I lost your comment in the process of cleaning up some spam. You asked if wealth shields one from racism's effects.

No. Read The Rage of a Privileged Class and you'll see there are forms of racism particular to each economic class.

 

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Submitted by dwshelf on April 30, 2005 - 12:22pm.

If black kids raised in wealthy homes do as well as white kids raised in similarly wealthy homes, how do we explain that?  Presumably racists don't know a wealthy black person from a regular one.  They don't look much different.

It sure seems to me to be cultural.  Black parents who are successful (which correlates with wealth) raise successful kids. We presume that they face the same racist world that unsuccessful families face, but they don't get stalled because of it.  Immigrants tend to be successful, and raise successful kids.   What is incorrect about that analysis?

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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 30, 2005 - 1:01pm.

Presumably racists don't know a wealthy black person from a regular one.

Actually, they do. Wealthy folks have a body language and acculturation that makes them quite distinguishable. I've seen interviews with self-professed gold diggers who say ther can spot a wealthy person from 20 paces or more...and they aren't often wrong.

This give one practical suggestion: learn that body language and project it when useful. It's like code switching.

We presume that they face the same racist world that unsuccessful families face, but they don't get stalled because of it.

Same racism, different world. As easy to dismiss as the woes of a Rockefeller, Gates or maybe a Bush. No less real.

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Submitted by ptcruiser on April 30, 2005 - 5:36pm.

Steve Sailer wrote: "And the Scotch-Irish generally stayed away from the blacks."

I don't think the historical census and geneology records as well as personal family anecdotes would support this claim.

My paternal grandmother's father, Jim Butler, spoke English with a Scottish accented burr. My late father clearly could recall, as a child, talking with his grandfather and being fascinated by his accent, which certainly sounded out-of-place in rural northwest Lousiana. One of my cousins, who has been conducting extensive family research, and I suspect that our great-grandfather actually picked up this accent from his own father who was born on the infamous Pierce Mease Butler plantation off the coast of Georgia. The records show that the owners and overseers on this plantation often "hired" out their male slaves to work on farms owned by Scottish Highlander settlers.

In addition, the census records show that my paternal grandfather's grandfather, John, was an illiterate Irish immigrant who found his way to Mississippi where he met a free mulatto woman named Mary. The two of them eventually found their way to Nachitoches Parish in northwest Louisiana where they lived and raised their four children including my great-grandfather who, oddly enough, was actually born in Mexico.

In addition, the New York Times's reporter Fox Butterfield's 1996 book "All God's Children" which was about the notorious. although highly intelligent, criminal Willie Bosket, traces the origins of the African American Bosket Family and the cycles of violence that swirled around them to their cultural and geneological roots among the violent and blood feuding Scottish Highlanders who had settled in the hill country of South Carolina.

There are far too many African Americans having Scottish and Irish surnames for anyone to claim that the Scots-Irish kept their distance from blacks. Some did; some didn't.

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Submitted by ConPermiso on April 30, 2005 - 5:44pm.

i'm not sure why DW is so certain that children from "successful" (wealthy) black families succeed at higher rates than children from lower-income families.    first, i don't get the correlation: many of those 'successful' blacks came from families that were NOT wealthy.  Correct me if i'm wrong, but the increase of the Black upperclass is a relatively recent (last 30 years) phenomenon.  so the success of those children is in large part due to working-class/"less successful" values.

You can see this in John Ogbu's study of the educational achievements of the children of Shaker Heights Black upper-middle class families.  Although his results are mistakenly generalized to ALL Black children, he noted that middle class Black children did not perform as well as their White peers from the same income level.  this tells me that "wealth", for Black families, is  much less influential on scholastic achievement than our media and conservative pundits tell us. In one of the Cosby rebuttals, one columnist noted that achievement rates for lower income children are MUCH higher than is claimed (the 70% dropout rate is a lie).

if nothing else, as a lower income child, i can tell you that my entire neighborhood encouraged me to go to school - even the drug dealers, drunks, and addicts.  i doubt that this has changed all that much.  if anything, the problem seems to be that educational insitutions have given up on our children before they even know them.   THAT is the problem Sowell should be looking into. 

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Submitted by ptcruiser on April 30, 2005 - 5:57pm.
"...if nothing else, as a lower income child, i can tell you that my entire neighborhood encouraged me to go to school - even the drug dealers, drunks, and addicts." This is a common occurence in black communities. In fact, if you showed promise, guys who were running the streets would not allow you to do certain things. And if you showed up at the wrong scene they would make you go home.
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Submitted by Prometheus 6 on April 30, 2005 - 6:39pm.

Yeah. I actually still get that sometimes.

 

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Submitted by dwshelf on May 2, 2005 - 1:13am.

if anything, the problem seems to be that educational insitutions have given up on our children before they even know them.   THAT is the problem Sowell should be looking into.

I don't much disagree with this. The current educational system is failing both the kids and the taxpayers.

We have and will discuss what kind of change it will take.  Twice as much of the same won't work.

I'm cautiously thrilled to hear that a black achiever might be protected and encouraged as a hope for everyone.   That's got to be motivating.

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