A00169 - Book of the Month for the Months of June and July 2023: Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell: The New England Connection

 "It should be noted again that not all blacks today are part of the redneck culture -- far from it -- nor has that culture been the only culture in which blacks lived in the past.  There were small but significant enclaves of New England culture introduced into Southern black communities by teachers from New England who poured into the South immediately after the end of the Civil War, to establish schools and to teach and acculturate the children of freed slaves.  Often these were the only schools available for black children, because the South was slow to begin establishing public schools, especially for blacks.  W. E. B. DuBois called the work of these dedicated missionaries "the finest thing in American history."  (Page 35)

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"There was yet another route by which New England culture reached some blacks in the nineteenth century. Oberlin College was founded by New Englanders in 1833 and it functioned as a New England college transplanted to Ohio -- "an outpost of New England culture beyond the Appalachians," as one scholar put it.  It was also one of the few colleges to which blacks were admitted before the Civil War, as well as being a station on the Underground Railroad through which Southern blacks escaped from slavery.  Although blacks were no more than 5 percent of the students at Oberlin College, Oberlin was a much more significant factor in the higher education of blacks.  Of the 309 blacks who were known to have received a degree from a white college in America up through 1899, nearly half (149) received their degrees from Oberlin." (Page 39)

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"A wholly disproportionate share of future black leaders came out of the schools and colleges established by New Englanders in the South, not even counting Oberlin College or Dunbar High School. These alumni of institutions founded as New England enclaves in the South included W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, Walter White, Mary McLeod Bethune, A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr.  In addition to these individuals from these Southern institutions, the first black man to graduate from Annapolis, the first black womn to earn a Ph.D., the first black general, the first black Cabinet member, and the first black federal judge all came from the same public high school -- Dunbar High School in Washington, with its culturally New England-educated principals in its formative years.

"Such concentrations of black pioneers and leaders in a few high atypical cultural enclaves suggests that their achievements were not solely a matter of individual ability -- "cream rising to the top" -- but were also a result of a culture very unlike that in which most blacks were raised and educated.  However much the achievements of these individuals have been celebrated, the culture behind those achievements has not been.  Today, the culture that is celebrated in much of the media and in the schools is not the culture that succeeded, but the culture that has failed -- the black redneck culture. When white couples who adopt black children are warned to be sure to put those children in touch with their "cultural heritage," all too often that means the black redneck culture."  (Page 40)

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I admire Sowell's efforts to present the historical contribution made by New Englanders.  However, I am not comfortable with the bifurcation of black folks into those who adopted a New England culture as opposed to the black redneck culture.  I am interested to read about the impact the West Indian "culture" plays along with the role that Evangelical Christianity and Islam play.  I am also mindful of the thesis presented in Eugene Robinson's book Disintegration: The Splintering of Black America which states that instead of one Black America, or even two, there are instead four Black Americas and that the four black Americas are increasingly distinct, separated by demography, geography, and psychology.  They have different profiles, different mindsets, different hopes, fears, and dreams.  

If there has been such a fragmentation of black America, how can Sowell's thesis on the black redneck culture stand?

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins  

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Subject: Book of the Month for the Months of June and July 2023: Black Rednecks and White Liberals by Thomas Sowell: First Notes

"A 1951 survey in Detroit found that white Southerners living there were considered "undesirable" by 21 percent of those surveyed compared to 13 percent who ranked blacks the same way." (Page 1) 

"More is involved here than a mere parallel which between blacks and Southern whites.  What is involved is a common subculture that goes back for centuries, which has encompassed everything from ways of talking to attitudes toward education, violence, sex -- and which originated not in the South, but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South.  Then it largely died out among both white and black Southerners, while still surviving today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghettos." (Page1)

"During the era when dueling became a pattern among upper class Americans -- between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War -- it was particularly prevalent in the South.  As a social history of the United States noted: "Of Southern statesmen who rose to prominence atter 1790, hardly one can be mentioned who was not involved in a duet."  Editors of Southern newspapers became involved in a duel."  Editors of Southern newspapers became involved in duels so often that cartoonists depicted them with a pen in one hand and a dueling pistol in the other.  Most duels arose not over substantive issues but over words considered insulting.  At lower social levels, Southern feuds such as that between the Hatfields and the McCoys -- which began in a dispute over a pig and ultimately claimed more than 20 lives -- became legendary." (Page 10)

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I have only begun reading "Black Rednecks and White Liberals", but so far one gnawing thought is that Professor Sowell mistakenly believed that the "cracker" culture of white Southerners had died out.  However, after watching what happened on January 6, 2021 and after binge watching the No. 1 television show in the country (Yellowstone), I am convinced that the "cracker" culture of White Southerners is alive and well and is not simply the province of the "poorest and worst of the urban black ghettos."

Peace,

Everett "Skip" Jenkins

Fairfield, California

July 14, 2023