[lbo-talk] Sowell on "black rednecks"

snitsnat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Tue Apr 26 11:16:08 PDT 2005


At 11:36 AM 4/26/2005, Thomas Seay wrote:
>Sowell gives an answer to his own question right here
>in the above passage. Of course blacks who were not
>subjected to slavery fared better. Why does he not
>draw that conclusion? The bit that blacks absorbed
>"red neck" culture seems like a far reach. His only
>piece of "evidence" to substantiate this is that black
>soldiers from the north scored better on mental tests
>than white soldiers from the South (who did this test
>anyway and why does he not give a reference to it?)
>
>Thomas

http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/overview.html (The IQ testing we now understand as the u.s's own proto-fascist form of race purity which included not just purifying the u.s. of blacks, but the physical and mentally disabled, poor whites, etc. It was widespread in the u.s. and Europe.)

And since when do you get to make wild assertions without a lick of evidence. Redneck culture comes from Ireland and Scotland and Wales. Look up the history of the word redneck for christ sake. Could he possibly _name_ what he's talking about? It's one unsubstantiated assertion after another!

The tests he's probably talking about are the racializing IQ testing that went on in the first part of the 20thc. Only a jackass who thinks that race is about black skin and black skin only, people for whom class and class analysis is a dirty word, could be so fucking ignorant. Only a lazy assmunch could be such a poor scholar. (And thanks JW for forwarding that stuff about HBCs. For christ sake. It's the first thought that came to my mind. Why, golly, maybe the want to go to Spelman instead of Harvard!

He's totally unaware that there's racism in this country against 'native' blacks while people treat people from Africa and the rest of the diaspora as special. What an insufferable ignoramus. Geez, even Colin Powell's biography is full of stuff about the slovenlieness of Caribbean black men -- of course, without a lick of analysis of the slave trade, rebellion, etc. bound up in this "culture".

There's plenty of research on this topic. He might have looked it up enough to learn that white trash and rednecks were racialized in this country, as part of the eugenics movement. They were said to have certain skull shapes, skin, teeth, hair, body types, buck teeth, bow legs, and all manner of physical traits that could be associated with their inherent mental inferiority. Scientists spent all kinds of time trying to pin this down. In some places, poor whites were the targets of sterilization campaigns, while others were thrown in mental hospitals, prisons, asymlums.

http://www.uvm.edu/~eugenics/overview.html

But no. Sowell pretends that it's all reducible to culture, going after poor whites in the south is simply a way for him to legiiimate his shit about blacks. In either case, he's a racist, through and through. His is a cultural racism.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list