Black Rednecks & White Liberals: Hope, Mercy, Justice and Autonomy in the American Health Care System

Presents an examination of common beliefs about blacks, Jews, Germans, slavery, and the teaching of history, and maintains that misconceptions and errors have led to narrow and mistaken political and educational policies.

Sowell (Hoover Institution, Stanford U.) presents his recent essays on race, ethnicity, slavery, and history. Among the topics he addresses are the shared characteristics of persecution between Jews and other "middleman" minorities such as the Ibos in Nigeria, and the Armenians in Ottoman Turkey; the historical ubiquity of slavery versus what he sees as an inordinate focus on American slavery; education as the near sole driver of black economic advancement (as opposed to anti-discrimination legislation or other governmental programs); and the lamentable harnessing of history to "agendas" (citing, but not explicitly naming, Howard Zinn as a suitable example). The title essay attributes current problems in black ghettos to the "connection between the cultural characteristics of Southern rednecks or crackers in the past and those of ghetto blacks of today," along with white liberal enablers. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

This book presents the kind of eye-opening insights into the history and culture of race for which Sowell has become famous. As late as the 1940s and 1950s, he argues, poor Southern rednecks were regarded by Northern employers and law enforcement officials as lazy, lawless, and sexually immoral. This pattern was repeated by blacks with whom they shared a subculture in the South. Over the last half century poor whites and most blacks have moved up in class and affluence, but the ghetto remains filled with black rednecks. Their attempt to escape, Sowell shows, is hampered by their white liberal friends who turn dysfunctional black redneck culture into a sacrosanct symbol of racial identity. In addition to Black Rednecks and White Liberals, the book takes on subjects ranging from Are Jews Generic? to The Real History of Slavery.


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.