Thomas Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals. Encounter Books, 2005.
The approval by voters of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative
corroborates Thomas Sowell’s observation in his Preface to the book,
referring to “a growing willingness to consider views that differ from
the racial orthodoxy that has prevailed largely unchallenged from the
1960s onward in intellectual circles and in the popular media.” The
education, government, business, and media elites of Michigan all
banded together to hammer into the population the same old tiresome
racial orthodoxy, to no avail. The people had had over forty years of
it, experienced it in lived life, and would have no more of it. By an
overwhelming fifty-eight percent, they voted to change direction, try
something different from the orthodoxy of the liberal elites. Thomas
Sowell’s book Black Rednecks and White Liberals suggests further lines for reconsideration and change.
In this context, I believe the most interesting essays in the book
are “The Real History of Slavery” and “Black Education: Achievements,
Myths and Tragedies.” Rejecting the Kunte Kinte view of slavery found
in Alex Haley’s Roots, Sowell emphasizes that slavery was a
worldwide phenomenon practiced by virtually all peoples and nations,
not at all exclusively by white Western nations. Sowell perceives why
the contemporary discussion of slavery is usually so distorted:
“Why would anyone wish to arbitrarily understate an evil
that plagued mankind for thousands of years, unless it was not this
evil itself that was the real concern, but rather the present-day uses
of that historic evil? Clearly, the ability to score ideological points
against American society or Western civilization, or to induce guilt
and thereby extract benefits from the white population today, are
greatly enhanced by making enslavement appear to be a peculiarly
American, or a peculiarly white, crime” (111).
All of this feeds directly into the radical politics of affirmative
action racial preferences. It skews our understanding of the real
historical evils of slavery and substitutes emotional Hollywood
distortions for the complexity of human experience.
Narrowing the history of slavery from the long record reaching back
over three thousands years, in Europe, Africa, China, India, every
region of the world, it was nevertheless only the Western world that
developed moral compunctions against slavery and launched a “bitter
worldwide struggle, which lasted more than a century, to destroy the
elaborate systems and institutions for the ownership and sale of human
beings” (114). Of particular interest is Sowell’s discussion of slavery
under Islamic societies, in North Africa and elsewhere, which enslaved
far more people than were ever brought to the Western hemisphere.
Cervantes in Don Quixote has an incredible account of his
five-year enslavement after the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Sowell’s
discussion throws interesting light on the conditions to which European
and African slaves found themselves subjected. Many millions of
Europeans and Africans were enslaved over the centuries in Islamic
countries, facts that ought to be studied much more after 9/11.
Similarly, Sowell emphasizes it was black tribal leaders who
practiced slavery “before, during, and after the white man arrived”
(120). Connecting the real history of slavery with its distorted uses
by those who today want to fight for racial spoils, Sowell writes,
“Yet what was peculiar about the West was not that it
participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later
abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other
societies subject to Western control or influence. This was possible
only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which
Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was
essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might
seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it
does not fit the prevailing vision of our time” (134-135).
Visions hang on beyond their time, beyond their usefulness, such has
been the case with racial preferences, which are predicated on a
distorted sense of actual historical slavery. By addressing the real
history of slavery, Sowell restores the proper perspective needed to
come to terms with the complexity of American slavery and the
perspective needed to find new ways to work together today. He observes
at one point “Africans did not treat Europeans any better than
Europeans treated Africans. Neither can be exempted from moral
condemnation applied to the other” (139). If Michigan is seeking a new
understanding of equality, one place to begin might be to realize, as
Sowell says elsewhere, the prevailing vision of slavery of the “morally
self-anointed” is wrong. To find a new future, we must recognize our
understanding of the past is flawed, reconsider its complexity,
understand no one is blameless, and move forward together.
In “Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies,” Sowell
reconsiders the prevailing vision of the actual history of black
education and demonstrates that it too is much different from the
skewed account so many politically motivated radicals and liberals use
to justify failed educational programs and policies:
“The quest for esoteric methods of trying to educate
black children proceeds as if such children had never been successfully
educated before, when in fact there are concrete examples, both from
history and from our own times, of schools that have been successful in
educating black children, including those from low-income families. Yet
the prevailing educational dogma is that you simply cannot expect
children who are not middle class to do well on standardized tests, for
all sorts of sociological and psychological reasons” (203).
Sowell further states that this dogma is false for both black and
other minority children and discusses a number of outstanding schools
reaching from after the Civil War to the present, such as the M Street
School, later to become known as Dunbar High School in Washington, DC.
After a long survey of these and other schools, Sowell writes,
“What the record of successful minority schools shows,
both in history and among contemporary schools, is that educational
achievement is not foredoomed by economic or social circumstances
beyond the school grounds, as the education establishment constantly
strives to prove. Poverty, broken homes, and unruly environments are
not to be ignored, downplayed or apologized for. But neither are the
failings of others proof that the education establishment is doing its
job right. Perfect students with perfect parents in a perfect society
cannot learn things that they are not being taught–and that includes an
increasing number of basic things in our public schools” (217).
While the howls of protest to this passage might be the usual ones
from the education establishment, I would argue his stress on working
with students where they are and expecting “work and discipline” (221)
from them is a no-nonsense approach that ought to be tried more often
than not, instead of the latest pitying, enabling, undermining
educational theory that asks little or nothing of kids and gets little
or nothing in return. Higher expectations of their families, whether
single parent or not, ought to play a part, though Sowell dismisses the
idea that without parental involvement there is no hope for the child,
insisting that the individual student can take charge of his or her
life and achieve despite the family situation.
Excoriating the victimhood approach to education, Sowell laments
that “the history of successful black schools has attracted virtually
no interest from either historians or educators. That history does not
advance any contemporary political agenda, though it might help advance
the education of a whole generation of black students” (225). Far from
blaming all educational problems of black students on racism, the usual
liberal scapegoat, Sowell has no patience with such facile excuses and
lays the blame squarely on the students themselves: “By and large,
black students do not work as hard as white students, much less Asian
students” (228). He goes on to blame a culture of non-achievement,
comparing it to red-neck and lower-class whites and Asians who suffer
from “the same counterproductive attitudes toward education” which are
“just as self-defeating.” Failure is not restricted to any particular
pigmentation or race, nor are the real reasons for such failure always
unique to any particular race.
In a fine section of this chapter on education, Sowell highlights
the views of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, documenting
that their attitudes on educational expectations and other matters were
much closer than the common politicized opinion today would have it.
The necessary resources and exemplary individuals run rife throughout
black history and experience. I would argue what is needed is for more
people to hear and respect such scholars as Thomas Sowell, learn from
them, and work together to chart a new path together into the future.
In his conclusion Sowell essentially challenges educational leaders
and students “to work harder and abandon the counterproductive notion
that seeking educational excellence is ‘acting white’” (244). He ends
his essay on black education in a way that calls to mind Bill Cosby’s
recent addresses wherein Cosby has said more studies are not needed.
The problems are known. The black community is in crisis and needs to
take action:
“Despite the heartening achievements of some black
schools, which have repeatedly demonstrated what is possible even with
children from low-income backgrounds, the general picture of the
education of black students is bleak. Much of what is said–and not
said–about the education of black students reflects the political
context, rather than the educational facts. Whites walk on eggshells
for fear of being called racists, while many blacks are preoccupied
with protecting the image of black students, rather than protecting
their future by telling the blunt truth. It is understandable that some
people are concerned about image, about what in private life might be
expressed as: “What will the neighbors think?” But, when your children
are dying, you don’t worry about what the neighbors think” (245).
Though bleak, attitudes are changing, will continue to change, will,
as Ward Connerly has remarked, take time to change, creating a new
climate of expectations and performance, on all sides. The passage of
the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI) registers such change.
Neighbors of goodwill do exist, are distressed, worried, and concerned,
willing to help, where they can, if allowed. It needs to be said much
more often that 14% of black voters approved the proposal. They are
people who want much of what Sowell discusses in terms of education for
their children and community. These two essays ought to be read by
anyone serious about assessing where we are after the passage of the
Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, and where, together, we are all going
from here.
Frederick Glaysher