Black Rednecks and White Liberals

I recently read a book entitled "Black Rednecks and White Liberals," written by a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute, a conservative think-tank on the Stanford University campus. http://www.tsowell.com... Needless to say, the book is compelling and chock-full of well-sourced material lending credence to his suppositions. There are a myriad of topics contained within the book, however, as the title of the book suggests, I would like to discuss, well, black rednecks and white liberals. Sowell alleges: "White liberals in many roles -- as intellectuals, politicians, celebrities, judges, teachers -- have aided and abetted the perpetuation of a counterproductive and self-destructive lifestyle among black rednecks. The welfare state has made it economically possible to avoid many of the painful consequences of this lifestyle that forced previous generations of blacks and whites to move away from the redneck culture and its values... Blaming others for anything in which blacks lag has become standard operating procedure among white liberals. If blacks do not pass bar exams or medical board tests as often as whites or Asians, then somehow that shows that something was wrong with the test itself, as far as many white liberals are concerned. Best-selling author, Andrew Hacker, for example, says that academic problems in general are created for black students in "white colleges" (whatever that is), because such curricula focuses on "white learning and logic, in their conceptions of scholarly knowledge and demeanor." Why this does not seem to be a problem for Asian students remains to be a mystery, even though blacks have lived in this white society centuries longer than either Asian Americans or contemporary immigrants from Asia who seem to excel." -Thomas Sowell Before you label the man as a firebrand, its worth mentioning that Sowell himself is black, and obviously has no ill-will toward black America. In fact, if there were any one he does have a problem with, it would likely be white liberals. But why? Sowell and I both agree that many liberals ingratiate themselves without realizing it. There exists in them what Sowell calls "white guilt," whereupon all Caucasians are somehow indebted to all Negro's for slavery. I'm not. I wasn't there and neither were those who are claiming reparations for their ancestors. And so he states, and I agree, that racism still exists. It will always exist on some level. A novel idea would be to not base our beliefs about people over the color of their skin, but of the content of their character, such as the great American patriot Dr. Martin Luther King espoused. By coddling those who claim just such a hardship, you are hindering them, not helping them. You are giving them no incentive with hand-out's (based solely on their race, interestingly enough) than you would if you just gave everyone the same opportunity equally -- truly equally, not this superficial, politically correct, dog and pony show. Sowell believes that despite their best intentions, white liberals have "shackled the black man to a plantation mentality." Through this debasement of the self and this self-loathing, many white liberals feel that this is the only way to purge the sins of their forefathers, a burden they were never meant to carry. What's more, is no one recognizing the inherent racism in this line of thinking? By compartmentalizing people by their race, irrespective of practically denouncing ones own race in an attempt at deference, it only serves to exacerbate the evil of racism, not mitigate it. In closing, I want to set the parameters of the debate for the purposes of clarity and conciseness. I agree with the author, Sowell, that extreme pandering and mollycoddling of blacks on the basis of their blackness is offensive and counterproductive. Its tantamount to saying that unless you give a black man a leg up and give him special dispensations, that he will be unable to overcome racism. The irony is that what these white liberals are doing IS racism, and I for one, along with Sowell, am deeply offended by it.