Black Rednecks & White Liberals: Hope, Mercy, Justice and Autonomy in the Americ

Description: Black Rednecks & White Liberals by Thomas Sowell Sowell seeks to dispel the stereotypes associated with "black rednecks," claiming that their attempts to escape these typecasts are hampered by white liberals. He ventures further, questioning other ethnic stereotypes and the present practice of slavery. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This explosive new book challenges many of the long-prevailing assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on not only the trendy intellectuals of our times but also such historic interpreters of American life as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted. In a series of long essays, this book presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many mistaken and dangerous actions, policies, and trends. It presents eye-opening insights into the historical development of the ghetto culture that is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity--a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves "friends" of blacks. An essay titled "The Real History of Slavery" presents a jolting re-examination of that tragic institution and the narrow and distorted way it is too often seen today. The reasons for the venomous hatred of Jews, and of other groups like them in countries around the world, are explored in an essay that asks, "Are Jews Generic?"Misconceptions of German history in general, and of the Nazi era in particular, are also re-examined. So too are the inspiring achievements and painful tragedies of black education in the United States. "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell. Author Biography Thomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover InstitutioThomas Sowell is a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He has been a professor of economicsn, Stanford University. He has been a professor of economics at leading American colleges and universities, and has lect at leading American colleges and universities, and has lectured in Singapore, Israel, Switzerland, and Germany, as wellured in Singapore, Israel, Switzerland, and Germany, as well as across the United States. as across the United States. Long Description This explosive new book challenges many of the long-prevailing assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on not only the trendy intellectuals of our times but also such historic interpreters of American life as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted. In a series of long essays, this book presents an in-depth look at key beliefs behind many mistaken and dangerous actions, policies, and trends. It presents eye-opening insights into the historical development of the ghetto culture that is today wrongly seen as a unique black identity--a culture cheered on toward self-destruction by white liberals who consider themselves "friends" of blacks. An essay titled "The Real History of Slavery" presents a jolting re-examination of that tragic institution and the narrow and distorted way it is too often seen today. The reasons for the venomous hatred of Jews, and of other groups like them in countries around the world, are explored in an essay that asks, "Are Jews Generic?" Misconceptions of German history in general, and of the Nazi era in particular, are also re-examined. So too are the inspiring achievements and painful tragedies of black education in the United States. "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" is the capstone of decades of outstanding research and writing on racial and cultural issues by Thomas Sowell. Excerpt from Book Chapter One "These people are creating a terrible problem in our cities. They cant or wont hold a job, they flout the law constantly and neglect their children, they drink too much and their moral standards would shame an alley cat. For some reason or other, they absolutely refuse to accommodate themselves to any kind of decent, civilized life." This was said in 1956 in Indianapolis, not about blacks or other minorities, but about poor whites from the South. Nor was Indianapolis unique in this respect. A 1951 survey in Detroit found that white Southerners living there were considered "undesirable" by 21 percent of those surveyed, compared with 13 percent who ranked blacks the same way. In the late 1940s, a Chicago employer said frankly, "I told the guard at the plant gate to tell the hillbillies that there were no openings." When poor whites from the South moved into Northern cities to work in war plants during the Second World War, "occasionally a white southerner would find that a flat or furnished room had just been rented when the landlord heard his southern accent." More is involved here than a mere parallel between blacks and Southern whites. What is involved is a common subculture that goes back for centuries, which has encompassed everything from ways of talking to attitudes toward education, violence and sex--and which originated not in the South, but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South. Then it largely died out among both white and black Southerners, while still surviving today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghettoes. It is not uncommon for a culture to survive longer where it is transplanted and to retain characteristics lost in its place of origin. The French spoken in Quebec and the Spanish spoken in Mexico contain words and phrases that have long since become archaic in France and Spain. Regional German dialects persisted among Germans living in the United States after those dialects had begun to die out in Germany itself. A scholar specializing in the history of the South has likewise noted among white Southerners "archaic word forms," while another scholar has pointed out the continued use in that region of "terms that were familiar at the time of the first Queen Elizabeth." The card game whist is today played almost exclusively by blacks, especially low-income blacks, though in the eighteenth century it was played by the British upper classes, and has since then evolved into bridge. The history of the evolution of this game is indicative of a much broader pattern of cultural evolution in much more weighty things. Southern whites not only spoke the English language in very different ways from whites in other regions, but their churches, their roads, their homes, their music, their education, their food and their sex lives were all sharply different from those of other whites. The history of this "redneck" or "cracker" culture is more than a curiosity. It has contemporary significance because of its influence on the economic and social evolution of vast numbers of people--millions of blacks and whites--and its continuing influence on the lives and deaths of a residual population in Americas black ghettos that has still not completely escaped from that culture. From early in American history, foreign visitors and domestic travelers alike were struck by cultural contrasts between the white population of the South and that of the rest of the country in general--and of New England in particular. In the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville contrasted white Southerners with white Northerners in his classic Democracy in America, and Frederick Law Olmsted did the same later in his books about his travels through the antebellum South, notably Cotton Kingdom. De Tocqueville set a pattern when he concluded that "almost all the differences which may be noticed between the Americans in the Southern and in the Northern states have originated in slavery." Olmsted likewise attributed the differences between white Southerners and white Northerners to the existence of slavery in the South. So did widely read antebellum Southern writer Hinton Helper, who declared that "slavery, and nothing but slavery, has retarded the progress and prosperity of our portion of the Union." Just as they explained regional differences between whites by way of slavery, so many others in a later era would explain differences between blacks and whites nationwide by way of slavery. Plausible as these explanations might seem in both cases, they will not stand up under a closer scrutiny of history. It is perhaps understandable that the great, overwhelming moral curse of slavery has presented a tempting causal explanation of the peculiar subculture of Southern whites, as well as that of blacks. Yet this same subculture had existed among Southern whites and their ancestors in those parts of the British Isles from which they came, long before they had ever seen a black slave. The nature of this subculture, among people who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" in Britain before they ever saw America, needs to be explored before we turn to the question of its current status among ghetto blacks and how developments in the larger society have affected its evolution. Details ISBN1594031436 Author Thomas Sowell Pages 372 Publisher Encounter Books Language English ISBN-10 1594031436 ISBN-13 9781594031434 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY 305.800 Year 2006 Publication Date 2006-06-30 Imprint Encounter Books,USA Country of Publication United States Alternative 9780786179220 Place of Publication New York Short Title BLACK REDNECKS & WHITE LIBERAL Residence US Birth 1930 Subtitle Hope, Mercy, Justice and Autonomy in the American Health Care System DOI 10.1604/9781594031434 NZ Release Date 2006-06-08 US Release Date 2006-06-08 UK Release Date 2006-06-08 Audience General AU Release Date 2006-07-02 Illustrations Illustrations We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:37366268;

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