An important new look at race
By Mona Charen – 06/14/05

Helena Independent Record, MT
June 14 2005

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that there are some
intelligent people out there who have never read anything by Thomas
Sowell.

(I know, I know, the chances are remote, but work with me here.)
They’ve never enjoyed his fascinating excursion into group traits in
“Ethnic America,” nor his penetrating analysis of what has gone wrong
with the schools in “Inside American Education,” nor his brilliant
dissection of the inevitable pitfalls of regulation in “Knowledge and
Decisions.” There is hope. His new volume, “Black Rednecks and White
Liberals,” offers a taste of some of his earlier work as well as a
cornucopia of new insights. Indeed, the new book is so clarifying
and so wise that even experienced Sowell readers will find much that
is new.

The title refers to the first essay, which argues that many of the
traits commonly considered “authentically black” are actually the
inheritance of the white redneck culture amid which many blacks lived
for centuries. These include hair-trigger touchiness on the part
of men, anti-intellectualism, pride, sexual license, backwardness
and laziness.

Speech patterns that persist among ghetto blacks today ~W “ax” for ask,
“bile” for boil, “do'” for door, and “dis” for this ~W are traceable to
the regions of Great Britain from which white Southerners came. Black
and white children from the South lagged academically behind their
peers in the rest of the nation throughout the 20th century. This
is well-known. What is less well-known is that “black soldiers from
some Northern states scored higher on mental tests than whites from
some Southern states during the First World War.”

Further, schools established for blacks by 19th-century New
Englanders in the South imported a very different set of values
and expectations, and black youngsters, like W.E.B. Du Bois, rose
to the challenge. “In 1871, the Georgia legislature created a board
of visitors to attend public examinations at Atlanta University. The
chairman . . . reportedly said that he expected the examinations to
confirm the Negro’s inferiority. But the recitations of former slaves
in Latin, Greek, and geometry forced from him the confession that
~Qwe were impressed with the fallacy of the popular idea . . . that
the members of the African race are not capable of a high grade of
intellectual culture.’ ”

In a chapter entitled “Are Jews Generic?” Sowell explores the
contribution and fate of “middleman minorities” around the globe.
>>From the Ibos in Nigeria, to the Armenians in Turkey, to the ethnic
Chinese in Southeast Asia, to the Lebanese in Africa, to the (Indian)
Gujaratis in the South Pacific, to the Jews in Europe, middleman
minorities have served to lubricate the economies of the nations
they have lived among. Additionally, these groups have resembled one
another in many respects: a willingness to work long hours, maintenance
of strong families and an emphasis on education. They have suffered
similar fates as well, as they have repeatedly been the victims of
furious violence from their neighbors. The irony, Sowell writes, is
that the middlemen are most deeply resented and hated where they are
the most indispensable. Such was the hatred for Indians and Pakistanis
who served as middlemen in Uganda that the government forcibly exiled
them all (50,000) in the 1970s. Economic devastation followed. The
story was similar with Jews in Eastern Poland in the 17th century.

Sowell’s majestic intelligence and humane sympathy shine through on
every page. The chapter on “Black Education: Achievements, Myths
and Tragedies” is especially powerful. Here is an elegy to Dunbar
High School, a public school in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1870,
Dunbar produced academic excellence among its black students at a
rate that today seems out of reach.

“During the period from 1918 to 1923, graduates of this school went
on to earn 25 degrees from Ivy League colleges, Amherst, Williams,
and Wellesley.

. . At one time, the reputation of Dunbar graduates was such that.
they did not have to take entrance examinations to be admitted to
Dartmouth, Harvard, and some other selective colleges.” Dunbar was
undermined by politics and now resembles other failing inner city
schools.

“Black Rednecks and White Liberals” ranges widely ~W from a learned
essay on slavery worldwide to an examination of the German national
character. This book affirms Thomas Sowell’s status as one of America’s
most eminent intellectuals.

Mona Charen is a nationally distributed columnist.