Thomas Sowell: Black rednecks and white liberals

Black identity has become a hot item in the movies, on television, and in the schools and colleges. But few people are aware of how much of what passes as black identity today, including "black English," has its roots in the history of those whites who were called "rednecks" and "crackers" centuries ago in Britain, before they ever crossed the Atlantic and settled in the South.

Saying "acrost" for "across" or "ax" for "ask" are today considered to be part of black English. But this way of talking was common centuries ago in those regions of Britain from which white Southerners came. They brought with them more than their own dialect. They brought a whole way of life that made antebellum white Southerners very different from white Northerners.

Violence was far more common in the South -- and in those parts of Britain from which Southerners came. So was illegitimacy, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery. All of this would become part of the cultural legacy of blacks, who lived for centuries in the midst of the redneck culture of the South.

That culture was as notable for what it did not have as for what it had. It did not emphasize education, for example, or intellectual interests in general.

Illiteracy was far more common among whites in the antebellum South than among whites in the North, and of course the blacks held in bondage in the South were virtually all illiterate. On into the early 20th century, Southern whites scored lower on mental tests than whites in other parts of the country, as blacks continued to do.

Many aspects of Southern life that some observers have attributed to race or racism, or to slavery, were common to Southern blacks and whites alike -- and were common in those parts of Britain from which Southern whites came, where there were no slaves and where most people had never seen anyone black.

Most Southern blacks and whites moved away from that redneck culture over the generations, as its consequences proved to be counterproductive or even disastrous. But it survives today among the poorest and least educated ghetto blacks.

This is a much bigger story than can fit into a newspaper column, which is why I wrote my latest book, "Black Rednecks and White Liberals."

White liberals come into this story because, since the 1960s, they have been aiding and abetting a counterproductive ghetto lifestyle that is essentially a remnant of the redneck culture which handicapped Southern whites and blacks alike for generations.

Many among the intelligentsia portray the black redneck culture today as the only "authentic" black culture and even glamorize it. They denounce any criticism of the ghetto lifestyle or any attempt to change it.

Teachers are not supposed to correct black youngsters who speak "black English" and no one is supposed to be judgmental about the whole lifestyle of black rednecks. In that culture, belligerence is considered being manly and crudity is considered cool, while being civilized is regarded as "acting white."

These are devastating, self-imposed handicaps that prevent many young ghetto blacks from getting a decent education or an opportunity to rise to higher levels.

Multiculturalism today celebrates all cultures but it is the poor who ultimately pay the price of that celebration in stunted development, missed opportunities and blighted lives.

No one today would dare to do what Northern missionaries did after the Civil War, set up schools for newly freed black children in the South with the explicit purpose of removing them from the redneck culture that was holding back both races there.

A wholly disproportionate number of future black leaders and pioneers in many fields came out of the relatively few and small enclaves of Northern culture deliberately planted in the post-Civil War South. What they did worked and what the multiculturalists are doing today repeatedly fails.

But results are no longer the test. The test is whether what you say makes you feel good as someone who is a "friend" of blacks. But friends like that can do more damage than enemies.

"Translation: "It's okay for Southern whites [which I am, btw] to behave like ghetto Blacks because that is their quaint culture; but Blacks who behave like rednecks are leftist enemies of all that is good and pure in the world."

Somebody sounds like a liberal here, but it ain't Mr. Sowell."

I don't say it's ok for Southern whites to behave like ghetto blacks. I've noticed very few that do where I live.
what I object to is the premise that the Scotch-Irish immigrants had little interest in education. What about all the early colleges in the South? Many there were very well educated and probably more (percentage-wise) than in the North. Many in the North were recent immigrants and Irish. His whole arguement is so bogus that it reminds one of a liberal. I know of absolutely no blacks that behave like rednecks. Obviously his idea of rednecks is very different than mine.

It would have been nice to know what part of Britain Mr. Sowell believes these cultural characteristics emerged. I can only imagine it must be Scotland as that was where my family and a significant number of those who settled North and South Carolina came from.

It's said the Irish settled much of the South, especially the Protestant Scots-Irish from Ulster. They had a reputation as pioneers and as brawlers. The other group was the Borderers who lived in Northern Britain and Southern Scotland. Like Northern Ireland it was a comparatively wild and remote part of Britain in the 18th century. The two groups blended together on the American frontier.

Probably it wasn't so much that such people were different from the English. You could see a lot of the same characteristics in Dickens' London or in early Australia. But the Ulstermen and the Borderers were further away from cities and the very settled and controlled life of East Anglia, where many New England Puritans came from.

David Hackett Fischer wrote a lot about this topic in his book Albion's Seed. It's worth a look. One thing he says is that the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders who settled in the Cape Fear area didn't mingle well with the Lowland Scots or the Scots-Irish. They had been on opposite sides of some conflicts in the old country, and didn't trust each other. The Highlanders had had their rebellions and been crushed mercilessly. Thus they tended to be more obedient and law abiding in the New World.

Thank you for your very restrained response to my perhaps overly provocative post. My point was simply that it is a general tendency of human nature to condemn in others what one excuses or even celebrates in oneself and one's own. And I hope I made crystal clear my disdain for the hypocrisy of the liberals in this matter.

I will not argue with you about schools in the North vs. schools in the South, since each region had its educated and illiterate citizens. Neither will I be so forward as to contradict you when you say you know of no Southern whites who behave like ghetto Blacks, since you know your own experience.

However, I do wish to insist that many of the alleged "characteristics" of each of those two cultures is shared by the other, howevermuch the members don't want to admit it, and each is hypocritical when it excuses or praises in itself what it condemns in the other. Among these characteristics is the violence associated with a sort of "code of honor." This is illustrated by the code duello of the Southern aristocracy, the blood feuds of the poor whites of the mountains, and the violence of the ghetto between gangs or gangster rap clans. Another commonality is the language. "Black English" most certainly does not come from Africa (most certainly not the Anglo-Saxon obscenities which liberals like to think of as so "quaint" and "revolutionary" and "African"). "Ax" is Chaucerian Middle English, and the use of the infinitive of the verb to be was characteristics of certain British Isles dialects as well as of "hillbillies" and "pirates" (to this day the verb "ate" is often pronounced "et" in the British Isles). Even the omitted "r" in such words as "bu(r)st" has its origin in the aristocratic British pronunciation. I believe Mr. Sowell has actually written an article on the origins of "Black English" in the dialects of old Virginia.

Another cultural commonality of Blacks and poor whites is the very dualistic religious outlook, ie, a fervent emotional religious belief that often clashes with a very profane, alchoholic, or promiscuous lifestyle. Liberals often accuse white Fundamentalist preachers of sexual peccadilloes (the "Elmer Gantry syndrome"), yet white Southerners make the exact same accusation of Black preachers in order to discredit the "civil rights" movement. And is a suggestive blues record backed with a gospel song in praise of J*sus really that different from the same phenomenon when the A-side is a country song about drinkin' and cheatin'?

I also would like to point out that poor Southern whites and Blacks (or at least he latter's liberal white supporters) often exchange the very same accusations: laziness, stupidity, sexual immorality, etc. Were the "degrading" pictures of Blacks in the popular culture of another day (Willie Best, Stepin Fetchit, etc.) really that different from the "inbred backwoods morons" that are in our day (in the memorable words of Jim Goad, author of The Redneck Manifesto) "the only cardboard cutup left standing in our national ethnic shooting gallery"? And of course poor whites and Blacks have always belonged to essentially the same social/economic class and have had many of the same basic experiences (and note that after the last election blue state liberals were only too happy to accuse the red states of living off "welfare" created by their productive labor!).

What I am saying is that there is a sort of common low-class experience and culture common to the two oldest and most similar American ethno-cultural groups, as may be evidenced by watching most any episode of "The Jerry Springer Show" or "Divorce Court" and all other similar garbage (and no, I don't watch them). Call them Black/White trash, Black/White trailer park culture, or what you will. But the point is, partisans of each group enjoy hypocritically sailing into the other for all these characteristics that are basically held in common. That's all I'm saying.

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