Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Black Rednecks and White Liberals is a collection of six essays by Thomas Sowell. The collection, published in 2005, explores various aspects of race and culture, both in the United States and abroad. The first essay, the book's namesake, traces the origins of the "ghetto" African-American culture to the culture of Scotch-Irish Americans in the Antebellum South. The second essay, "Are Jews Generic?", discusses middleman minorities. The third essay, "The Real History of Slavery," discusses the timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom. The last three essays discuss the history of Germany, African-American education, and a criticism of multiculturalism. Essays "Black Rednecks and White Liberals" The title essay states Sowell's thesis about the origins of the "black ghetto" culture. Sowell argues that the black ghetto culture originates in the dysfunctional white southern redneck culture which was prominent in the antebellum South. That culture came, in turn, from the "Cracker culture" of Welsh, Highland Scots, Ulster Scots, and border English or "North Britons," who emigrated from the more lawless border regions of Britain in the eighteenth century.