i am not an expert. how ever i do try to be logical and think analytically. sowell has a definite agenda in the book. but that does not rule out all merit. he gets the point out there that slavery is not exclusively American or racial. he gets somethings right about the founding fathers as well.
when it comes to deconstructing the opposing ideology i feel he picks the low hanging fruit.  then moves on with out acknowledging let alone discussing opposing ideas of substance. it felt like his agenda all lead back to capitalism is great if things suck for you work hard and slavery is not new. but he completely ignores things like the 13th amendment/war on crime/ war on drugs. he does not talk about civil forfeiture/ police funding min sentences. so on.
he just says it was the welfare state.
for a history of slavery not a bad book. i wish i could listen to the book with him next to me so i could ask why he left things out or why he worded things a certain way or how other things that  were at play the same time and what does he think there effect was on the stats. but alas i dont think that is an option. 

it was a good book i would recommend to people but not on its own. i still think the new jim crow and  until we reckon and the fire next time have a lot to offer.

This is an amazing book! I am saddened that I had no idea that this author even existed before picking up this book. Maybe he is not widely known because his opinions are "unpopular"? This book is not concerned with "feelings" or with pleasing the ego of the reader. It is a hard read and left me thinking and re-thinking a lot of my own stands on many issues. It can be now clearly seen how 3rd wave feminism is only harming and not helping. This book relies on facts, scholarly publications, research and first-hand life experiences. It is not interested in political agendas or popular approval. It is masterfully written and I will be on a look out for other books from this author as I was very impressed with his presentation style and sources quoted.

A fantastic collection of essays from a fantastic academic. Sowell explores subjects ranging from race and culture to history abroad. Nuance is far too commonly absent when talking about, say, slavery and as a result we get an inaccurate portrait of it that presents it as largely as Eurocentric creation. These essays are easily readable and aren’t just made for those that are academics. This is truly one of Sowell’s best books.

Thomas Sowell's provocatively-titled Black Rednecks and White Liberals casts a critical eye toward conventional understandings of race, class, and history, collecting a half-dozen extensive essays in one volume. Although each essay is written as a standalone piece, some concern common subjects and refer to one another. Sowell principally writes on African-Americans and Jews here, aside from an apologia written on Germany. His central argument essentially blames the welfare state for the continuing degradation of black Americans, by way of historical arguments, one of them deliciously twisted -- the title essay.

"Black Rednecks and White Liberals" sets the stage by contending that the woeful culture of poverty keeping urban blacks in a despairing state is not one which they created themselves, but one inherited from poor whites, and specifically the poor whites who emigrated from a border region of Scotland during a specific timeframe in which Scottish 'crackers' of the area were slobbering savages, having not yet been tamed by the graces of English civilization. The poor whites of this ‘cracker culture’ exhibited the same self-defeating behaviors lamented over in the ghetto today; a disdain for education and work, a painfully abbreviated approach to the English language, wanton sexuality, and a gleeful embrace of violence, along with an ‘honor’ system that promoted the use of such violence. It is Sowell’s opinion that southern blacks were acculturated into the behaviors of the ‘white trash’ and dragged it around the country with them. Given its self-defeating nature, Sowell comments that this cracker culture largely died out among the poor whites, and even the first waves of southern blacks who carried it around the country – but after the 1960s, when the welfare state sprang into being, those behaviors were propped up – being no longer culled by the scythe of sheer necessity. After arguing for this, Sowell later builds off it in an essay on education, and again in his final essay on the historical perspective, condemning modern approaches as too forgiving, too soft: blacks and whites who lifted themselves up out of poverty and despair did so not by accepting substandard English as their cultural heritage, nor by taking self-esteem classes, but by acknowledging the relative inferioty of their station in life to others:. The Scots became intellectual titans after abandoning Gaelic for English, and consequently gaining access to the English literary world, and the Japanese adopted western means of science, government, and economics to catapult from feudal island to global power in the Meiji revolution. In putting aside defensive pride and setting a superior standards for themselves, they both catapulted themselves from backwards hinterlands to first-world countries who would be active players in shaping world history..

Thomas Sowell, it should be noted, is black himself, and is a product of this process of enlightenment, having been reared in the kind of schools he now advocates, having set for himself superior standards. To multicultural sensibilities, he may seem like a self-loathing black man at times, for all the abuse he heaps on poor blacks and whites and for all he waxes poetic about the glorious intellectual and moral history of the west, problematic as it was. Were he white, Sowell would almost certainly be condemned as a racist, and a cavalier of western chauvinism. His entire argument is simultaneously thought-provoking and problematic. Some is straightforward history, like his account of slavery or the reactions of northerners to white southern emigrants, which as they are quoted sound exactly like what you might expect to hear of those participating in 'white flight' decades later. It's not surprising that long-term residents of an area would react with hostility toward the sudden intrusion of poor immigrants, flooding into areas the residents rightfully considered their own. Sowell's belief that the culture of contemporary 'ghetto blacks' was one passed down directly by 'crackers' is a much harder sell. Given that slaves were owned not by 'white trash', but by the plantation elite, would they really have spent enough time around the 'crackers' to acquire the values? And why would they adopted those values, considering that impoverished white sharecroppers were just as economically miserable as themselves, and loathed the former slaves to boot? The statistics Sowell quotes to demonstrate that the black story of the 20th century is sometimes one of regress are damning: even if a reader doesn't accept his condemnation of welfare as causing the erosion of black family life, and stymieing the natural processes that would reverse self-destructive behaviors, the analysis is staggering in its implications. This isn't exactly a national secret -- Bill Cosby has written books despairing about the woeful condition of black family life and communities in the latter half of the 20th century -- but Sowell's work puts the decline into sharp focus.

Although I find Sowell's contempt for the poor, self-defeating they may be, highly uncomfortable -- especially his frequent brandishment of 'cracker', which in certain counties of the Deep South is a pejorative on the level of kike or wop -- I appreciated various elements of this collection. The almost tributary history to Germany's ancient cultural heritage, for instance, was a relief compared to the Omnipresent Nazi approach to German history, and the statistical work offers data that can be considered regardless of one's opinion on the unintended consequences of particular welfare policies. I'm increasingly sympathetic to the idea that improperly-designed welfare can exacerbate social problems, but think it more likely that certain destructive behaviors are endemic to the human experience, rather than being the legacy of Scottish emigrants to urban ghettos. Not for nothing have humans created so many religions, philosophies, and institutions to curb the worse of our instincts. Though readers will find a lot of food for thought in this collection, it has a sometimes bitter edge.

Чудно ми е защо за някой идеята в тази книга е някаква толкова шокираща, но американците май верно са тъпички.

Това е книга на Соуел, която се опитвам да изслушам два пъти и просто не успявам.

Просто темата на книгата ме отвръщава.

Идеята й е че черните хора в САЩ - черната култура е просто гето реднек селска култура, като същата е била и в Шотландия.

Това е така.

Реално точно тази култура ме отвръщава. Най-вече колко е грандиозно комплексарски този начин на живот. Явно комплексарски.

Реално, ако ще говорим за прости култури Ганя културата в България си е мног много по-яка - да си се забавляваш без да пречиш на другите много. Ракийката, салатката и кеф.

А тва да правиш золуми и да показваш колко си велик си е верно нещо животинско и ме дразни много .Това, че се дава за пример от Холивуд и музикалния бизнес на Америка ме дразни ОЩЕ повече.

Няма нищо негърско в тази култура. Нищо Африканско, има просто компексарска простотия. Това има. Толкова за тази тема.

Тъжно и жал ми е за негърчетата, които се раждат и биват отгледани в такава комплексарска култура и я попиват. И именно заради тази просташка, животниска, его базирана комплексарска, харчи всичко за да се покажеш колко си велик за глупости култура ги обрича на мизерия. Но за сметка на това с маркови обувки.

До голяма степен това даже е някаква липса на култура, а просто животински вакум, който обхваща хора живеещи в гето, особено, ако има хора в елита, които да го стимулират.

Sowell is an absolute genius and probably one of the smartest authors I have ever read in my life. After reading this, I realize just how America-centered America is (me included) and is largely ignorant of the nature of slavery and racism throughout history and in other countries. Learning about the roots of black redneck culture in America and how it has progressed into the black ghetto culture we see today, I find is a much more viable and convincing explanation, rather than just slapping “system racism” on every racial disparity we see. I was very impressed with his research and wise insights into black culture in America and I’m definitely going to pick up more of his books in the future.

I would've made this book a five star, but found that some of the opening essays regarding crackers and the history of northern England dragged a bit.
What picked up this books for me where the essays on the history of African-American education in the United States, the history of middle man racism (racism against those who play a middle-man role in society) and the history of Germany and the impacts of Nazism of people's attitudes towards the German people.
Picking one of these in particular, middle man racism, was interesting, I've often followed Mike Munger's discussion on the need for middle men and I think Sowell has provided a justification for the need for middle men, but how the resentment of middle men in society leads to problems with racism. This middle man phenomena has certainly led to the antisemitism in European society and certainly the Pogroms in Eastern Europe and the most extreme being the holocaust in Nazi Germany.
In so far as the issues of African-American education I do see some benefits to integration, and I don't think Sowell necessarily wants to go back to the fifties (btw Sowell is African-American), but he does give some interesting arguments about the benefits of leaving African-Americans in this country to their own devices and allowing individuals to make there own educational decisions without involving the government. Personally, I feel this is a legitimate concern and in a sense is more an issue of problems with public education then it does issues with race and race relationships in particular.

Interesting book. Essentially this traces historical roots of peoples today and gives us a time line to help grasp some of what we see in society today. May interest some more than others.

As someone who has spent the last decade or so fairly seeped in Sowell's philosophies, I expected this book to feel pretty familiar. And in a way it was. But I was still amazed by how much it shocked me with the audaciousness of some of its claims.
As always with Sowell, he provides a way to view the world and an explanation for why things are without proscribing future action. He engages with ideas and so even though this was published in 2005, it still feels incredibly relevant for today.
I am left with much to chew on.

در اينكه نويسنده استاد برجسته و بزرگى ست شكى نيست. پشتكار و اراده نويسنده در زندگى شخصى برام قابل ستايشه. اينكه ميبينم يك كودك بيخانمان سياه پوست الان در مقام استادى دانشگاه استنفورد نشسته برام كوهى از انگيزه ست. نقد من به كتاب و فلسفه استاد در برخورد با تبعيض نژاديه. نويسنده بر اين اعتقاده كه همه سياه پوستها مثل خودش ميتونن زندگيشون را عوض كنند و عوامل محيطى و سياسى نقش كمرنگى در تعيين سرنوشت آدمها داره. ميگه برده دارى و برده بودن يك انتخاب بود نه اجبار. نويسنده از آلمانيها و مخصوصأ يهودى ها مثال زده و از تلاششون براى پيشرفت تحصيلى و اقتصادى گفته. راستش من با اين فلسفه موافق نيستم. مثال قابل لمس ترش ميتونه وضعيت زنان در ايران باشه. طبق اعتقاد نويسنده ما بايد چند مثال از زنان موفق در ايران بياريم و بگيم چون اين چند نفر در شرايط بد موجود پيشرفت كردن همه زنان ايران امكان پيشرفت دارند و اينكه از نابرابرى ها ميگن و آن را ديوارى جلو پيشرفتشون ميدونن از تنبليه. اين جمله را ميتوان گفت و ازش نوشت ولى اين نتيجه گيرى صحيح و منصفانه اى نيست. اكثر قشر سرخورده جامعه تا اعتماد به نفس از قانون ، حكومت و اطرافيان نگيرند قدرت ايستادن نخواهند داشت. باور اعتقاد استاد در اين كتاب كمى بى انصافيه و عوامل فرهنگى، تاريخى، سياسى و اقتصادى درش كمرنگ شده. مثلأ من نميتونم عكس دروازبان ايران را با خودم به روستاها ببرم و بگم آهاى بچه ها اين مرد را ببينيد ، اگر اين نشديد ناتوانى خودتونه نه سيستم.البته كه اينها همه نظر شخصى منه و من در حد نقد واقعى استاد نيستم. (اين كتاب را بايد در قفسه كتابم داشته باشم كه يادم بياره در تحقيقاتم دنبال منبع براى درست نشان دادن اعتقادات شخصى ام نباشم و بى طرف تحقيق كنم)

Gobsmacked. Excellence that should grace every home, every school, every library. Empirical evidence on a wide range of history that follows a common theme: the Redneck attitudes that are keeping down urban Blacks, why they are weighing down Blacks, their origin (shockingly, the Scottish Borderlands, the Ulster area of N. Ireland, and Wales--typically, at the time, reckless, shiftless people too proud to work until they had to), and how to dispel them.

Dr. Thomas Sowell takes us on a gut-wrenching tour of slavery in human history. He exposes Roots, by author Alex Haley, as, in Haley's own words, "a myth." Sowell exposes the brutality of the white slave trade that predominated in much of the world. He mentions current slavery and sex slavery, primarily under Islam.

Black education. Why some Black schools graduated incredible numbers of highly educated Blacks who went on to careers, not simply to vocations. And what went wrong, after 85 years of admirable teaching, when the government stepped in. (You can guess; the school went down the gutter, thanks to government intervention.)

This is one book that tells true history, without bias, from one of the big brains in the US, who used to be a Marxist, but has long since been a Conservative Black economist.

Informative, yet biased. Sowell's 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' narrative for persecuted minorities greatly downplays the significance of continuous persecution that they have faced (or are facing).

I understand the need to call for introspection. It is easy for any downtrodden minority to blame their woes on the powerful majority while completely disregarding what they themselves can do better. However, the way Sowell pushes this narrative tends to greatly exculpate the historically guilty parties and transpose the blame on the victims and I'm afraid that it is narratives like these that are used by conservatives to deny rights to minorities under the guise of 'we know what's best for them'.