Black Rednecks and White Liberals (by Thomas Sowell)

Regardless of his qualifications of a writer, I doubt very much that an argument that black people are poor because of hip-hop and collard greens instead of the institutionalized racism and array of economic disadvantages can be anything but fallacious.Listening to rap doesn't make you poor. Wearing a do-rag and Timberland boots doesn't make you poor. Not being able to get a job because having a black-sounding name on your resume makes you half as likely to be called back for an interview as a guy with a white-sounding name and a felony conviction? That might tend to make you poor.But, hey. Blaming the victim is a lot easier than solving the problem, isn't it?Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I wonder if you've consciously misrepresented the facts of the case, or you simply don't know any better. Either way your cavalier treatment of the facts would seem to prove exactly the racism that you're denying.

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In the early hours of December 9, 1981, around 3:51 AM, Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed during an altercation that ensued from a routine traffic stop of a vehicle driven by William Cook, Abu-Jamal's younger brother...

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Abu-Jamal himself did not give the police his version of the events initially. In fact he did not address the shooting at all until almost 20 years later when his third set of lawyers offered the affidavit of a man who claimed he had in fact shot Officer Faulkner as part of a Mafia hit connected with a desire to keep Faulkner from testifying against corrupt police...

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There are discrepancies found in accounts of the number of witnesses and their statements to police after the shooting. This external link is a press release prepared by lawyers in defense of Mumia that says eye witness William Singletary informed the police that Mumia was not the shooter.

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from Mumia Abu-Jamal - WikipediaGosh, that seems like a long way from "he totally did it" and a little closer to "reasonable doubt." Especially the part where, according to police, Abu-Jamal confessed to police despite being completely unconscious from his gunshot wounds. I don't know anything about the case, but Abu-Jamal is certainly entitled to a vigorous defense and to the full excercise of his constitutional rights, wouldn't you agree?But, hey, you know, I guess I'm just a "liberal". Honestly I don't care that Abu-Jamal is black, or that Sowell is black. But if accuracy, law, and justice get a little fuzzy every time somebody black is before the bench, that would seem to substantiate the very racism that Sowell is so adamant is just a white liberal invention.

I don't know much about the case, but I know that this statement is false. For instance, I know that both William Cook and William Singltary deny that Abu-Jamal was the trigger man, along with half a dozen other witnesses who saw another man fleeing the scene.Moreover, the map itself gives your statement to the lie: "For purposes of enlarging the actual crime scene we have placed Veronica Jones in this position. Like Desie Hightower and Robert Pigford, Veronica Jones has stated that she was not an eyewitness to the shooting because a building blocked her view."In other words, NJ, once again you're misrepresenting the facts of the case. But, hey, we've got a dead cop and a black man. Why ask too many questions? I know. But what's so absolutely hilarious is that your own behavior has turned this into proof that racism is endemic in our criminal justice system. In fact, that's exactly his contention. Actually it's the cops I'm making the indictment against - cops who had a dead cop and a black man in front of them and didn't ask too many questions. Fabricated evidence to ensure conviction because they "knew" he was guilty.It's an old story. The men and women of the jury can only decide the case based on what was put before them, and it's the police who are largely responsible for what evidence and testimony is brought forward. Abu-Jamal's representation was apparently so incompetent he had to represent himself.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

See, this is just blame the victim nonsense. "Ghetto culture" is hot. Do you know who loves ghetto culture? White people. We can't get enough hip-hop and pimp cups and crap. We eat it up.Yet, somehow, white people are magically unaffected by the "self-destruction" that must assuredly be visited on anybody who wears his pants low and says "shizzle." Why is that, I wonder? I'm sure Sowell doesn't have an explanation. No, it's actually well-known scientific research: No webpage found at provided URL: http://faireconomy.org/press/2004/StateoftheDream2004.pdfPage not found | The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab

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We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is randomly assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews...

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Federal contractors and employers who list “Equal Opportunity Employer” in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names.

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Who said anything about reparations? Not me. Who said anything about being indebted for slavery? Not me. Nobody who owned slaves or was a slave is still alive today.But I'm part of a society that discriminates against black people right now. That's what we're indebted to. White privilege is still going on. Sit back and enjoy the privilege, I guess, if you want. It's not like you had to do anything to receive it except be white. But blaming the victims of institutionalized racism? That can only be emerging from your deep sense of shame and guilt. Well, that's great. And while we're dreaming, I'd like a pony.But while you're sitting around with your thumb up your asshole waiting for your magic egalitarian fantasy-land to come true, you'll pardon the rest of us if we take steps to address real racial economic disparities here in the real world, ok?

Yes, let's.

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William Cook, who might have been expected to testify on his brother's behalf, and who was present at the scene at the beginning, did not testify, but has stated in a signed affidavit that he is willing to testify and that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not kill Officer Faulkner.

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Page not found – Free Mumia

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William Singletary's testimony (11 August 1995) describes how police tore up his written statement, and forced him to sign a different statement which they dictated.

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Mumia Abu-Jamal - WikipediaYou being consistently wrong on the facts of the case, and clearly not interested in educating yourself, is the proof of the racism. I haven't reviewed the case? You're the one who was completely unaware that Falkner didn't pull over Abu-Jamal, he pulled over William Cook. You've been consistently wrong on the facts of the case, because you're not interested in challenging the popular narrative of black male violence against cops. In your mind it doesn't matter who was in the car, who shot first, whether or not there was any kind of ballistic evidence from the scene - in your mind, it's sufficient that a cop is dead and a black man was nearby. Case closed.That's what racism is, NJ. The simple facts of this case is that you listed a dozen people as corroborating witnesses, when in fact, almost every single one of those witnesses either denies the police account or wasn't a witness of any kind. Why would you do that if not a profound lack of curiosity into the facts of the case? And why would you be so profoundly incurious unless, to your mind, when you have a dead cop and a black man, the "truth" is obvious?That's what racism is. You're living proof, right here, that Sowell is wrong.

Yeah. The music industry and Hollywood. So what? If it's not your contention that it makes black people poor, who cares that people are wearing Timberland boots and gluing diamonds to their teeth? There have been much weirder trends, to be sure. Yet, plenty of people with the "mentality" do just fine. So clearly it can't be all that destructive.And it's pretty obvious that "mentality" has approximately zip to do with any real issue in your life. If you're saying that thug culture represents a genuine mental illness, that's something to take up with the APA, but I see Sowell is not a psychologist. They work just fine. You need Adobe Acrobat Reader (free download) to open PDF files. 50% more likely, in fact, because institutional racism is endemic throughout the American economy. There's zero evidence this is the case, since we're talking about nothing but resumes. Black people haven't even walked in the door before they're being discriminated against, sight unseen. Because it often is. If you won't call "Shaquanda" back even though she has the exact same qualifications as "Kevin", because you're pretty sure she's black and therefore won't work as hard as a white person - you're a racist. That's how simple this is, NJ. There's no evidence that attitude has anything to do with it. Why don't you look up some basic sociology? I don't know what that means, "more advanced culturally." Can you clarify? Are you referring to specific metrics of "cultural advancement" (whatever that might be) or is that just racist shop-talk for "more white?"Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Actually, there are considerable questions. Hundreds of organizations, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild, the parliments of both the EU and Japan, the AFL-CIO, the governments of San Francisco, Detroit, and the state of California all maintain that Mumia did not recieve a fair and unbiased trial, and have called for retrial.Mumia's death sentence was set aside in Federal court, NJ. Does that sound like an "open and shut case"? Only if you ignore the facts, I guess, which is pretty easy to do when it's a dead cop and a black guy on the hook for it. This is unsupportable hyperbole on your part. DNA evidence found at the scene linked OJ to the murders, but no fornesic evidence ever linked Mumia to the crime, and one of the few witnesses against him was a police informant facing her own charges on prostitution (in other words, a prime candidate for the police to lean on to provide false testimony.)In fact let's look at a few more of your mistatements and falsehoods: In fact, a majority of the witnesses exonerated him. Four witnesses claimed that they saw him shoot Falkner, but many more claimed that he did not. One of the witnesses couldn't correctly identify what Mumia was wearing at the time. Another of your witnesses had been drinking. And at least one of the accusatory witnesses has since claimed that the police forced them to make a false statement, and one of the others was the police informant I mentioned above. In fact, the gun was in a holster with no evidence that it had been fired. No GSW was recovered from Mumia's hands or clothing consistent with him having fired a gun. The police, however, did ram Mumia against a flagpole repeatedly as they tortured him on the way to the hospital. In fact, the weapon in Mumia's possession was never ballistically matched to the rounds recovered from Falkner, and the inital coroner's report was that the rounds in Falkner were of a different caliber than Mumia's gun. (On the other hand, the round taken out of Mumia was a ballistics match for Falkner's service weapon.) Once again you can't even be bothered to get even the basic facts correct. How does that make any sense at all? Don't you think that's a bit of an unreasonable overreaction, particularly for a man with no prior criminal record? You're probably correct that it's a motive - a motive for the police to frame a troublesome black man. In fact, there's clearly an enormous amount of doubt, since his death sentence was set aside in Federal court.Do you know that the presiding judge was overheard by two officers of the court (a steonographer and another judge) to say that he was going to "help them fry the nigger" shortly before the trial began?Oh, no racism there, I'm sure. And did you know that five of the officers orignally on the scene of the crime are now serving time for planting evidence and making false reports? That they were convicted of falsely incriminating a number of people who were later released?No? Oh, sure. Dead cop and a black man at the scene. Guilty as hell. Makes perfect sense in the world of the racist. Yeah. I'm sure some of your best friends are black, too. But, of course, when there's a dead cop and a black man on the scene, you don't ask too many questions, do you?

No, I actually did some research before I posted.That's why, after all, my posts were factually correct and yours were filled with falsehoods (like "Falkner pulled over Mumia Abu-Jamal".) The only one who rushed to judgement knowing nothing about the case was obviously you, which proves my whole point about racism. No. I think that, if the choice was between facing a gross miscarriage of the American justice system, as well as the open wound of an closed, unsolved murder; or not asking too many questions about a 20-year-old case, you'd choose the latter. Especially if the dead man was a cop and the putative "murderer" was black, because that would fit into your worldview where black people get special treatment from liberals. C'mon, NJ, your own link backs that up. Your legend lists at least three people who you called "witnesses" who actually didn't see the shooting. At the trial, only three witnesses were called by the prosecution. One of them was drunk at the time. (There's a star witness.) One of them couldn't identify Mumia. And the third was a police informant facing her own charges, whose story changed significantly throughout the trial.That's not what I would call an open and shut case. I'd heard the name. Let me tell you about that.Until a couple of weeks ago I lived in Columbia, Missouri. It's a pretty liberal town with a lot of activism going on. It wasn't uncommon to see anti-war activists standing at the corner of Providence and Broadway with "Honk if you hate war" signs, and a lot of honking was going on.So I'd see "Free Mumia" stencil-painted on lampposts on 9th street, and on the sidewalks, and that kind of stuff. I'd see stickers about how "Mumia Abu-Jamal was facing the death penalty after an unfair trial", and I assumed it was jackass, wingnut activists. "Free Mumia, huh? Probably another one of those high-profile 'framed but guilty" jackasses. Couldn't care less!" I said to myself.So, you see, I came to the issue with almost exactly the same attitude you have now. I was pretty sure that Mumia was guilty. And, in fact, I'm still pretty sure that the people who spraypainted Mumia's picture all over town were jackasses. You know, people who use progressive politics as an excuse to be cool and get laid.But when I read about the case? I was astounded, shocked, and angry. not to mention amused that your own racist incuriosity had given me everything I needed to prove Sowell absolutely wrong.Seriously, NJ - how hard was it to actually check your facts? "Open and shut?" I mean you're being ridiculous. The off-topic diversion ends just as soon as you admit you've been wrong about nearly every facet of the case you've presented.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

Really? Somebody call the APA; "destructive mentalities", after all, constitute mental illnesses. I'm sure you're just about to present Sowell's qualifications as a psychologist as well as the peer-reviewed research he's based his conclusions on.No? Oh, come on. You don't have ridiculous, expensive hobbies? How much do your golf clubs cost, NJ? Or your running shoes? How many guns do you own?I've got at least four computers around a 2-bedroom apartment. The one I'm using now, my wife's machine, the MythTV box that records TV shows, and the Mac laptop that we take on the road and my wife does her research on. Are my "priorities out of whack?" Or am I just an adult who makes choices about what to do with his disposable income? I use Firefox as well, but Firefox is a web browser, not a PDF reader. Acrobat is a plug-in and it works just fine with Firefox. PDF is a web standard, as well as the standard format for reading published journal articles, so you're not going to get very far at EvC without it. Where "crappy" = "black-sounding." Look, they researched the reasons, too, and they found out race was the cause. It had nothing to do with impressions of work ethic, or social status, except as those conclusions stemmed from the impression that they were looking at a black person's resume.Just read the research, ok? It doesn't make any sense for you to try to rebut research that you haven't even read. You're just arguing from your assumption that racism isn't as prevalent as it is, but your assumption is demonstratively incorrect. We're not talking about "odd names." We're talking about black names. Would you call a name like "Yoshi" or "Sergio" odd? Why are names only "odd" when black people have them?Because of racism. No, this is how racism works: "Huh, this guy has a great resume but his name is 'Cornelius'; he's probably a black dude so clearly he had affirmative action the whole way, and he's probably lazy and angry to boot. You know, it's just like my old man used to say, you just can't trust a nigger. Huh, lemme see John Smith's resume. Hrm, felony conviction for robbing his last employer, but he's almost certainly a white guy. Let me just call him up..." (In research, a black man was less likely to be called back than a white man with the exact same resume qualifications plus a felony conviction for stealing from employers, that's how racist the hiring market is.) I don't know what the hell you're talking about. You've never heard of the Genteel Antebellum South? Or Cajuns? Snowbird Floridians? How racist do you have to be to assume that every state south of the Mason-Dixon line is populated entirely by people with cars sitting on cinderblocks out on their lawns?

So now it's about choices, is it? And you know better than millions of people what choices they should make? Well, that's "small-government conservatism" for you. So, naturally, you begrudge those that do. Especially if they're an "uppity nigger." Why? Why is a more expensive car something someone has to have? Maybe they like their old car, and they want some rims on it.I seriously don't see what you're on about, except for a big ol' helping of self-pity mixed in with some class envy. Bizzare to white people, you mean. Answer the question. Are "Yoshi" or "Sergio" weird names? Or do you recognize those names as entirely normal in the cultures that they're from?So why not extend the same break to black people? Names like "Condoleeza", after all, are completely normal and natural to the culture in which those names belong. But because you flag them as "black" (and because it's becoming pretty clear you have some major racist tendancies), they're suddenly "bizzare".That's racist. I don't understand your point. These resumes did have credentials and contact information.Do you just not understand the research? You really need to read these articles before you attempt to respond to them, don't you think? Well, I have another explanation. I suspect you don't want to hear it. I'm telling you that exact situation happened over and over again, in the research. Identical resumes (with the exception of the felony conviction added to the white man's application), different names, much greater likelihood of the white application/resume getting called back than the black one, even with the felony conviction on the white application.The name and the felony conviction were the only two things different on the applications. Obviously, the race the name implied was the deciding factor. Who you think were rednecks? No, you're not from the South.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

And, what's your evidence that this is prevalent? Your assumptions about lazy niggers? And you think a mentality that promotes flashy purchases at the expense of intelligent ones is limited soley to black urban culture? And what's your evidence that black people, in large part, are doing this? I've never even met a black person with expensive rims. You're not rich, no, but you're clearly budget conscious. And, in fact, if you knew you wanted to pop some fancy rims on that car, you might very well decide to save money on the car - Civics get great gas milage, are comfortable, and have an excellently low cost of ownership.But, apparently, when a black person makes decisions about how they want to spend their money, they're just a shiftless nigger. Of course, a white person making strategic decisions about how to spend their money is being intelligent. But those aren't the names we're talking about. "Sunbow" is a goofy name, except in hippy culture. And I'm sure William Robert does just fine in the job hunt, thank you very much.It's still not clear to me why you find "Cornelius" a "bizzare" name, when "Yoshi" and "Sergio" and "Gunter" are entirely normal names. Well, I should say that it is clear - you're racist. Incorrect. What's been shown is that giving your child a black-sounding name lessens their chance of getting called back for interviews - because racism is prevalent among employers. No. What I'm trying to do is make it so that you can't argue from racist assumptions without it being explicit how racist you're being. Those assumptions would be:1) black people are lazy and don't know how to spend money
2) black people are all rednecks
3) black people are too dumb not to give their children bizzare namesand so on. I've already linked it, so if this were true you'd already have seen it. You refused to open PDF's, remember? For someone who would "love to see" some studies, you're doing jack-all to make that possible. What do I have to fucking do, print them out and hand-deliver them to Oregon? No, because you think that Southern culture includes nobody but rednecks, you can't possibly be from the south. If you think "redneck" describes the plantation-owning upper-class whites of the antebellum south, you've never lived far enough south to know what a "redneck" is. Rednecks are poor whites from Appalachia, not rich whites from Georgia. You're as far off the mark to call them "rednecks" as I would be if I tried to tell you that Daniel Goldman, a Jewish lawyer who lives in a flat in Manhattan's Upper East Side, is a "redneck".No, of course he's not, and of course the upper-class genteel whites of the south aren't "rednecks."

The question for me is this: how seriously are we supposed to take the argument that black people pinp their rides because they learned it from Southern Scotsmen who lived before automobiles were even invented?And if the slave masters of Old Dixie are all Scottish, why did they say "shuga'" instead of "ach mon!"

Well, I should know - I'm from a long, long, long line of rednecks. (No scots as far as I know - my distant paternal relatives are Portsmouth folk. And I've got a root in the boot on my momma (mia!)'s side.) There's a US president there, too, but that's not uncommon.

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data." What's your evidence? Which is as likely to be a white kid living with his parents in Suburbia as anybody else. (Like mc chris says, white kids love hip-hop.) Which pretty much undercuts your entire racial argument. So, then, it really doesn't have anything to do with race, or with ancient Scotsmen pimping their rides up in the Highlands, does it? If you're talking about putting fly rims on a car that simply isn't mechanically sound, well, once again, do you know who's doing that? White people. Christ, don't you ever watch "Pimp My Ride"? Whose rides are they always pimping? White kids'. And who's doing the pimping? Hispanic entrepreneurs, largely. The only black guy involved is the guy who hosts the show, seems like. Yes. Racist people. That's the point. Can you name me one racist who will come out and tell you they're a racist? Everybody, even the racists, knows that being racist is bad. They say all kinds of shit as a smokescreen - "I'm no racist, but..." "Now, some of my best friends are black, but..." "No prejudice on my part, but the data..." - but they're easily picked out by their arguments.If you're making an argument that a certain race experiences disadvantages, not because of discrimination, but because of personal flaws or failings "common" to that race, you're a racist. It's just that simple. If you're excusing second-class status for a certain race for reasons inherent to the biology of race, you're a racist. QED. Which is idiotic, as I've explained, because:1) You've mistakenly conflated antebellum upper-class southerners with lower-class Appalachian mountain people and field laborers (aka "red-necks"); and
2) Your example is fly rims on cars, but neither the antebellum southerners, nor the rednecks, nor the Scots had cars. Even generalizing to a personal failing of putting conspicuous consumption ahead of practical priorities, the rednecks of the south didn't have the money to do that.Hopefully Sowell puts forth a much more intelligent argument than you, because his argument as you've related it is incoherent nonsense. You wanna ride with a guy named "Crash"?Think about it, for a second. No, it's really not. It refers to people who have red necks, in other words, sunburned necks from working out in the sun.The slave owners of the antebellum south didn't work in the sun. They had the slaves do that. And there weren't a lot of poor white people doing that work, either, because they were outcompeted by slaves.The people who owned slaves were more Colonel Sanders than Jeff Foxworthy. Which makes your whole argument completely ridiculous.

I've never heard of this, I guess.