BLACK REDNECKS AND WHITE LIBERALS

Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell



Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell

Introduction

The title is based on Sowell's thesis about the origins of black culture found in modern black society. He argues that what is claimed to be the authentic black culture is a relic of a highly dysfunctional white southern redneck culture and Slavic culture dependent. This in turn, came from Cracker culture of the border regions in Britain, namely, the Britons of the north and Scots-Irish who immigrated from English sharp edge. Sowell provides a number of examples to consider how the support of the lineage, for example:

“aversion to work, inclination to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurial activity, ... and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.”

Southern Americans were not given the freedom of choosing the area where they can build their houses. They got suppressed under the white Americans. After 1968, the year that many scholars assign as the end of the Civil Rights movement, Southern Americans made significant strides toward parity and integration with European Americans (Dirck, 2007).

Southern American men and women in the antebellum United States shared everyday experiences in their struggle for freedom. Despite disparate lives created by regional differences, labor patterns, religious beliefs, and legal sanctions, enslaved and democratic people alike fought an unending battle to define and possess their individual liberty. Southern Americans freedom was an experience to be tasted and tested. For Southern whites, black freedom was a challenge to be circumscribed and, where possible, checked (Berlin, 2004).

Summary

Sowell also provides figures to support his argument that there was a far bigger divide between the cracker / redneck culture of the north and between the white and black. For an example, The Northern blacks tried to stop redneck blacks coming up of the south and the same happened between northern whites and redneck whites. It also shows how northern blacks were more successful and better educated than the poor whites of the South before the post-Civil War exodus of free blacks from the south (Ayers, 2006).

Most people think that American history is the story of white people, and that is why black people, in recent years, have been demanding a history of their own. Standard histories are even more restrictive than universally allowed. The current consciousness of Negro history, though it has resulted in efforts to improve the nonwhite's image, has made no fundamental changes in the character of the history. It is now more likely that Negroes mentioned as participants in the development of the country; heroes, achievements, inventions, duly recorded. In significant ways, the history has remained untouched; the cultural conception of American history persists. In the past, Negroes, Oriental-Americans, and American Indians educated in their native land as though they were no real part of it. In many ways, this is still true.

Therefore, the importance of race in U.S. society and culture qualified and, in some ways, limited degree of ...