NEITHER RACE or RACISM - Should we listen to our elders!

My wife had just put the groceries in the car and had started the engine; without realizing it she let the car inch forward about a foot ... she braked quickly. Another shopper, a "man of color," was crossing in front of the car when she let it slip forward. He stepped sideways scowled at her and growled loudly, "Racist b___h!"

Thomas Sowell explains, in today's WSJ Opinion column, that for the entire 20th Century, the absence of success in the black community was attributed to either racial inferiority or racism, then says,

Three decades of my own research lead me to believe that neither of those explanations will stand up under scrutiny of the facts. As one small example, a study published last year indicated that most of the black alumni of Harvard were from either the West Indies or Africa, or were the children of West Indian or African immigrants. These people are the same race as American blacks, who greatly outnumber either or both.

If this disparity is not due to race, it is equally hard to explain by racism. To a racist, one black is pretty much the same as another. But, even if a racist somehow let his racism stop at the water's edge, how could he tell which student was the son or daughter of someone born in the West Indies or in Africa, especially since their American-born offspring probably do not even have a foreign accent?

The truth is, it can't! Nor can it explain why some Latin-American and most Asian-American immigrants succeed, when and if they want to.

In his always insightful and readable style, Sowell introduces another factor into the equation, the disparity between Northern and Southern whites in pre- and post-Civil War America ... similarities between the groups are striking. Again, Sowell says, "None of these disparities can be attributed to either race or racism."

Sowell's studies in this area have eliminated race and racism as the cause of social failure; he concludes culture alone can explain generations of black failures (90%) and white failures (30%) in the midst of opportunity. I can't do justice to his conclusions here, you'll have to go over there to read how he ties in an imported "redneck" culture to account for the modern failure of most black and some white communities ... and he points to the glorious south as its seedbed. Interesting!

My mother must have been conning me when she told me to "listen to your elders." Evidently some of our people have done just that and look where it has gotten them?

HT: Double E Award winner Decision '08