Black Rednecks and White Liberals
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating4.5
In a series of long essays, Black Rednecks and White Liberals presents an in-depth look at many of the long-prevailing assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on not only the trendy intellectuals of our times but also such historic interpreters of American life as Alexis de Tocqueville and Frederick Law Olmsted. Black Rednecks and White Liberals deftly challenges dogma and dispels cliches that have long clung to topics involving race, ethnicity and culture.
Reviews with the most likes.
Very brave to write a book like this which takes on the dominant historical narrative and shoots arrows at it made of logic and historical fact. As usual, I think this book was too long. And the tone was too scholarly. But the main point came through very powerfully: the way the white liberal portrays the black redneck is historically inaccurate. Eg the false assumption that African Americans' advancement has been primarily hamstrung by the outfall of the uniquely cruel history of cotton enslavement. This portrayal also does not serve the best interests for advancement, especially this narrative that the whole system of racial privilege needs to be gone before black individuals can succeed, undersells the ability to advance in the face of the headwinds, which has been demonstrated many times already.
