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RACE BACKWARD, RACE FORWARD: THOMAS SOWELL, WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON & DERRICK BELL CONSIDERED
Migrations and Cultures: A World View
THOMAS SOWELL
New York: Basic, 1996
When Work Disappears: The World of the New Urban Poor
WILLIAM JULIUS WILSON
New York: Knopf, 1996
Gospel Choirs: Psalms of Survival in an Alien Land Called Home.
DERRICK BELL
New York: Basic, 1996
In 1995, I was living in Southern Africa and teaching at the University of Zimbabwe. Formerly known as Rhodesia and controlled for decades by the resident European minority, the nation was still undergoing the birth pangs of independence. What struck me about living there at that time was how frequently I heard the same statement from the former colonizers: "You African-Americans are so intelligent and hard-working and industrious and self-assured. Why aren't the Africans here more like you?"
Whenever I heard this, I would think of writers like Thomas Sowell, the black conservative thinker who has made a career out of asking why so many immigrant groups have come to the U.S. and "surpassed" African-Americans. He is particularly keen on pointing to the African-derived population that hails from the Caribbean -- Jamaicans like Colin Powell, Barbadians like Shirley Chisholm, Trinidadians like Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) -- and asking why, allegedly, they have done so well compared to native-born blacks; their "success," he suggests, helps to underscore why too much is made of racism as a barrier to progress, since these immigrants have overcome despite racism. His plaint amounts to asking, "Why can't the African-Americans be more like immigrants?"
Of course, my Rhodesian interlocutors ignored the fact that the African-Americans who travelled thousands of miles to live in Zimbabwe were a self-selected group and were there precisely because of a profound motivation to escape our erstwhile home. Obviously, we brought certain skills with us, not least a certain gumption.
But sadly, those who juxtapose African-Americans against Zimbabweans or Jamaicans against African-Americans are not necessarily interested in an objective analysis or rational discourse. No, too often the agenda is simply to cast aspersions upon a particular group, preventing the raising of the charge that rank exploitation may have something to do with their plight.
These points come to mind when considering Thomas Sowell's latest book, where he purports...