Sowell on Rednecks

Thomas Sowell (who has just turned 75) writes an interesting piece that appears in RealClear Politics concerning an issue some have raised (directly or not) about his recently-published book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Namely, "What, exactly, does Thomas Sowell mean by the term 'redneck'?"

Some whites in the South have reacted with resentment at the thought that they are being stereotyped as rednecks while some blacks resent anything that suggests anything negative about themselves. However, it would require reading no further than the preface to learn that neither most Southern whites today, nor most blacks, are considered to be part of the redneck culture that once dominated the South.

That would indeed be the hazard of such a provocative title, but it would also explain, perhaps, my mother's negative reaction to its title when I told her I was reading it. (This was a short-lived reaction.) Come to think of it, she reacted a lot like the way I initially (and internally) did when my mother-in-law (who hails from the Northeast) asked matter-of-factly, when I was discussing the book with her, "Aren't you a redneck?"

She didn't mean that as an insult. Being from the North, where stereotypes of white Southerners die hard, she merely assumed that since I am white and from the South that "redneck" would accurately describe me. Not so. Sowell does his best summary of what a redneck really is in the article I just mentioned. Oh yeah, and while he's at it, he ditches the multiculturalist approach of treating ghetto culture with kid gloves and the silly taboo against discussing groupwise variations in intelligence test scores.

Many of the differences between blacks and whites nationwide today are strikingly similar to the differences between Southern whites and Northern whites in the 19th and early 20th century.

What are those differences?

They include rates of violence, rates of sexual promiscuity, and -- most explosive of all -- differences in intellectual development. The biggest taboo that people are most afraid to talk about is that blacks do much worse on mental tests or in schools and colleges.

In this essay, as he does to even greater effect in his book, he discards academic fashion and orthodoxy in getting to the heart of what might be holding back poor blacks.

But in writing this essay, Sowell also shows attributes I have always admired in his work: A keen sense of his reader's context and an uncommon openness to evidence. While I thought his book's title was a good one, he has admitted that he may have erred in choosing it. Realizing that his title might have put off some white Southerners and middle-class blacks, he persuasively addresses their concerns, paving the way for them to be more open to the interesting ideas discussed in his fine book.

-- CAV