A very black Ugandan foreign exchange student friend of our Spanish (Basque!) foreign exchange student was shocked and horrified by black American culture.
She stayed very far away from all American blacks, and only associated with the white kids who shared her values.
Her background included Christian, father at home, everyone worked and respected authority.
Light reflectivity is not the problem. It’s culture. And black America has a heavy dose of bad culture.
That is Dr. Sowell's point, that it is culture, not race as the culprit. But what is tragic and weirdly amusing is that Americans who go to Africa are startled to realize they are not treated as special, treated as equal, or even treated well.
There was a book Out of America where a black reporter with romantic images of what Africa was like was reporting on the Rwanda Massacres involving the Tutsis and Hutus, thinking he would be treated with deference being a black American, only to realize that Rwandans were thinking he was a Hutu because of his facial bone structure and different shade of pigmentation, and that he was in great danger because of his "appearance" to the Rwandans.
The reporter (Keith B. Richburg) ever after that experience, valued his status as an American, not a black man, probably not unlike Muhammed Ali who famously said: “Thank God My Granddaddy Got on that Boat!" after his first look at what Africa was really like.