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A review by ben_smitty
Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell
4.0
A (more) empirical take on the history of U.S. slavery and its connection to Irish cracker culture, global slavery, civil rights, and black education, Black Rednecks and White Liberals provides a helpful corrective against the idea that racism is to blame for many systemic injustices against blacks in the U.S. Sowell also does an excellent job at comparing and contrasting different migrant communities and how they adapt/fail to adapt to the countries they migrate to and for contextualizing the founding fathers within the imperialism of their time.
Though Sowell has his own biases, I find him most helpful when he illustrates how crucial culture is to the discussion of systemic injustice. This is personal to my own story since both sides of my grandparents immigrated to Thailand from China and faced discrimination for their eventual economic wellbeing compared to other Thais. Indeed, Sowell mentions multiple times throughout that discrimination exists virtually everywhere, and even then, certain subgroups of immigrants, particularly from China and India, thrive everywhere outside of their own respective country. And part of it seems to stem from the poor economic conditions in China and India, leading to cutthroat competition and 9-9-6 culture, which, once transplanted, will often outpace competition in more well-off countries.
Though Sowell has his own biases, I find him most helpful when he illustrates how crucial culture is to the discussion of systemic injustice. This is personal to my own story since both sides of my grandparents immigrated to Thailand from China and faced discrimination for their eventual economic wellbeing compared to other Thais. Indeed, Sowell mentions multiple times throughout that discrimination exists virtually everywhere, and even then, certain subgroups of immigrants, particularly from China and India, thrive everywhere outside of their own respective country. And part of it seems to stem from the poor economic conditions in China and India, leading to cutthroat competition and 9-9-6 culture, which, once transplanted, will often outpace competition in more well-off countries.