Rednecks apparently do not want Black folks associated with the term. It is a wonderful example of the collective nature of mainstream Americans.

SOUTHERN CULTURE AND BLACK UNDER-ACHIEVEMENT

The person whose writings I quote most often on this blog is Thomas Sowell. I think he is spot-on most of the time. His theory of black under-achievement is however one with which I must respectfully disagree. He says that blacks do poorly because they have absorbed "cracker" culture and that holds them back. Why? Because "cracker" culture is bombastic and anti-intellectual. His thesis would seem to require that White Southerners in general do as poorly as black Southerners on IQ tests and other achievement criteria but he offers no evidence for that dubious proposition. There are certainly SOME poor whites who do as poorly as blacks on educational and other criteria but that proves nothing. It is averages across whole groups that we have to look at if we are to explain group phenomena. See also here.

"BLACK CULTURE" REVISITED

On Wednesday I posted a brief critique of Thomas Sowell's theory about black culture being responsible for black under-achievement. Yesterday I put up two further comments on the subject by Steve Sailer and Star Parker. A reader has however reminded me of what is probably the most important factor:

"Sailer's comment that today's behavior is "an African thing" is just as much of a "stretch" as Sowell's saying it was a "Redneck thing". Neither has had serious influence for over 200 years. Blacks were long past the "Redneck thing" and the "African Thing" at the time our "welfare state" began. Their behavior is an "American thing", brought on by welfare state".

In fact, that comment reminded me of an earlier post harking back to something that most Americans have probably now forgotten: That characteristic black behaviour in America was up until around 50 years ago roughly the opposite of what it is now. See here. So where was the "African" and "cracker" culture then? Did it have opposite results then to what it has now? My correspondent is clearly right: Objective circumstances (to use a Marxist term!) matter most and current self-destructive African behaviour is not the result of ANY long-standing culture but rather the result of the perverse incentives that American Leftists have created with indiscriminate welfare policies, affirmative action, anti-American education, racial quotas on policing and the promotion of a "victim" mentality among minorities generally. And I think it is clear that even the influence of genetics pales into insignificance compared with the effect of the positive and negative incentive systems that society sets up for people.

Steve Sailer

...Yet, when we talk of "redneck culture" today, such as country music and Nashville, we are largely talking of Scotch-Irish culture. And the Scotch-Irish generally stayed away from the blacks. They went to the Appalachian and Ozark highlands where disease was less of a problem for Europeans than in the lowland South. Moreover, the Scotch-Irish disliked having to compete with slave labor and tobacco and cotton slave plantations were uneconomical in the highlands.

...Of course, the least-discussed cultural influence on African-Americans is also the most obvious: Africa. I call this tendency to ignore the African in African-American, to assume that they brought no culture with them from Africa, the Black Slate Theory. For example, when very young, Sowell's parents gave him to his great-aunt to raise (he didn't know he had several siblings until he was about 18). This kind of fostering out of the young is much more common among African-Americans than among whites. It's also much more common in Africa than in Europe, according to James Q. Wilson's book The Marriage Problem.

Perhaps the biggest social problem of African-Americans, as reflected in the very high illegitimacy rate, is that the culture they brought with them from Africa is one of low paternal investment. America's dominant culture had largely succeeded in inculcating monogamy and bring-home-the-bacon norms in blacks by about 1960, when it suddenly lost its self-confidence and began funding, via AFDC, the traditional African tendency toward mothers supporting their children without much support from their fathers.

villageidiots:

After some thought, I think I know why this piece is oversimplified; it leaves out one MASSIVE difference between the culture of Southern white "rednecks" and (Sowell's words) black ghetto "rednecks" - the prevalence of a victim culture.  Southern whites tend to exhibit a fierce independence and "up by the bootstraps" ethos of the Scotch/Irish tradition, whereas black culture has drifted into a victim mentality that tends to blame others for community problems and (in general) promotes government assistance as the only way out of troubles.  Without rendering a judgement on whether this victim culture is justified or not, I think Sowell misses this important distinction