Race and Culture: A World View

This book is another example of Thomas Sowell's amazing ability to condense complex issues into plainly logical thoughts. His explanations of issues (though sometimes presented in some awfully long sentences) are so crystal clear it will help even the least experienced economic novice feel like a pro. There is no subjectivity or bias in his writing, just statement followed by a mountain of supporting factual evidence, and a simple conclusion. Dr. Sowell is truly an American Treasure.

Thomas Sowell more than succeeds in making the case for culture. Some examples of culture overcoming the limits of geography and even external oppression include the following: (1) The widespread loss of technology in Europe in goods such as cloth, iron and construction techniques that occurred after the fall of the Roman Empire. It took about 1000 years for Europe to catch back up. (2) The success of middleman minorities, which includes the Jews almost everywhere, Koreans in the United States, Gujaratis and Chettyars in India, Lebanese, and Armenians. Their successes collectively show that there are entrepreneurial opportunities that are neglected by the majority ethnic groups which they serve (Sowell does not argue that this is genetic, rather that different ethnicities have different cultures) (3) Encapsulated minorities such as the Amish in America or the Black Sea Germans in Russia, cultures that form their own isolated enclave and then have different degrees of success or failure than the surrounding groups, despite sharing geography. Surely geography is not destiny for the Amish! (4) Different cultures have different degree of receptivity to innovations. For example, Christian missionaries also spread education, and they had more luck with animist cultures than they did with Islamic and Buddhist cultures. Since the missionaries also spread education, being receptive to missionaries ushered in improved success in the economic realm. A different example occurs in Great Britain. The Scots embraced England's superior education whereas Wales and Ireland largely rejected English ways, including education. This led to Scottish advances upon English traditions (see also: David Hume and James Watts), while Wales and Ireland languished. The weakness of this book is that is fairly long and fairly dry. I would recommend the much shorter book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality for most readers. It makes many of the same points about the importance of culture.

Mr. Sowell is an erudite scholar. He presents his no excuse thesis with logic, research, and a keen instinct for interpreting human behavior. Historical facts illuminate every point." The distorting censorship of political correctness thankfully was not found here." Every factor is brought in, climate, geography, cultural norms, etc. That all these things play a role in the successes and failures of both the individual and the group,is proven beyond doubt in this seminal book. This should be required reading in all of our schools.

The book explains that culture has a lot to do with racial and ethnic differences and groups often retain their characteristics wherever they go in the world. For example, the Irish are often heavily involved in politics as leaders especially, the Italians have been known to be great architects, the Germans are known to be hard-working farmers, and the Jews are known to high risk loan lenders and also garmet/fashion employees. The book also covers middleman minorities such as oversees Chinese in Malaysia, Indians in Eastern Africa, and Jews worldwide. It explains why such minorities are resented for their financial success in whatever country they set up shop in and how they get kicked out of the country sometimes even though they greatly helped build the economy. They get accused of exploiting the natives and political pressure is put on them to hire the natives in their industry. Sowell gives the example of Jews who charge high interest for their loans because no one else will take chances on people with poor credit history and who stand a great chance of defaulting on a loan. The Jews must be financially responsible to keep their loan business going so they don't mix too much socially with their customers so as not to take on their bad financial habits.Cultures and ethnic groups that were once backwards become advanced over time especially if they are conquered by a people with a superior culture. Sowell gives the example of the ancient Britons who were conquered by the Romans and became more advanced culturally than the Irish or Scots who were not conquered. Sowell also explains that a region must have navigable rivers or or be located on the coastline to be advanced culturally. It is easier to tranport people and goods and therefore ideas in such societies and they become more advanced than rural regions, islands, and mountainous regions that are less populated. He says that one of the reasons that Africa is backward culturally is that there are not many navigable rivers as opposed to Europe.

I'm fairly interested in ethinic diasporia and how cultures/traditions stick with ethnic groups through time. I though I would read race and culture after I read Thomas Sowell's Ethinic America which is another great book. Race and culture is good because it really deals a lot with how things like geographic conditions influence culture and econmic development. There are also things such a good history of slavery, broader then the history taught in our schools. The book goes into great depth about how immigrants have changed and been changed by moving to different parts of the world. The book also deals with how certain professions and cultural qualities stick with a group through time and how different ethnic/religous minorities have been treated through time. It really helps with understanding race on more of a global scale.

Thomas Sowell, a black senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University has aroused much controversy with his 329 page-long book on race and culture. His thesis runs contrary to most current trends in social sciences. And it seems incompatible with most assumptions underlying government policies and established academic notions with regard to racial and ethnic minorities. Sowell's thesis maintains that differences in productive skills and cultural values are the key to understanding the advancement or regression of ethnic groups. In his opinion, skills and values make up the cultural capital of an ethnic group or of a people, whereas politics, environmental factors and genetics do not play the important roles widely attributed to the success of a group or nation. Since Sowell's central topic is the universe of values, the reader will easily accept the general layout of his book: a world view. In order to make his universal perspective convincing, Sowell pays his respect to a one page long list of scholars world wide from whose wisdom he has been able to draw. What is the result of Sowell's approach to "Race and Culture"? We learn that certain peoples have been more or similarly successful than others because of their human capital, their particular pattern of cultural values which enabled them to perform better than others. The Jews are said to have prospered wherever they went in the world because they were experts in the textile business. Italian immigrants we! re often similarly successful in the field of wine production. The Germans are said to have always been successful farmers and craftsmen, and the Chinese succeed everywhere as retailers and restaurant owners. In one chapter he goes into the question whether intelligence tests allow any conclusion as to the genetic supremacy of one race over the other. The answer is negative. Chinese and some other immigrant groups have been economically and socially successful in America regardless of how they score on intelligence tests. This proves, in his opinion, that inherited traditional values and skills as well as the culturally based capacity to adapt to new conditions are the essential factors, and not genetics. He says the assumption that always environmental conditions are the determining factors of a group's success or failure is wrong. Consequently, he does not think that a disad- vantaged group of American society like the uneducated and poor blacks could be put on their feet by just improving the environmental factors of their lives. Throughout his argumentation he reproaches the intellectuals of often taking the lead in spreading misconceptions of history and doing harm to society: "The role of soft-subject intellectuals - notably professors and schoolteachers - in fermenting internal strife and separatism, from the Basques in Spain to the French in Canada, adds another set of dangers of political instability from schooling without skills." (p. 24) He believes