Prometheus 6

Race, culture served on a skewer
A conservative scholar seeks out the origins of ghetto violence.
By Katherine Dillin

...In his title essay on black-redneck culture, he not only faults white liberals for defending ghetto culture as native and natural for blacks, but he also launches into a diatribe on Southern whites. And not the educated, slave-owning whites, but the poor, individual farmers, the ones who "were in no economic condition to buy slaves."

The "common white people of the South" - he mentions Ulster Scots and Highland Scots - imported their "lawless" ways to America. These violent patterns, Sowell says, transferred to Southern blacks and today linger in US ghettos.

However, this leaves one wondering: If these poor whites couldn't afford slaves, then no slaves would be in their company. So how could the whites' misbehavior rub off on slaves? Sowell never explains. So while he contends that each ethnic group is responsible for its own triumphs and failures, he often traces black problems back to white origins.