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"Translation: "It's okay for Southern whites [which I am, btw] to behave like ghetto Blacks because that is their quaint culture; but Blacks who behave like rednecks are leftist enemies of all that is good and pure in the world."

Somebody sounds like a liberal here, but it ain't Mr. Sowell."

I don't say it's ok for Southern whites to behave like ghetto blacks. I've noticed very few that do where I live.
what I object to is the premise that the Scotch-Irish immigrants had little interest in education. What about all the early colleges in the South? Many there were very well educated and probably more (percentage-wise) than in the North. Many in the North were recent immigrants and Irish. His whole arguement is so bogus that it reminds one of a liberal. I know of absolutely no blacks that behave like rednecks. Obviously his idea of rednecks is very different than mine.

Thank you for your very restrained response to my perhaps overly provocative post. My point was simply that it is a general tendency of human nature to condemn in others what one excuses or even celebrates in oneself and one's own. And I hope I made crystal clear my disdain for the hypocrisy of the liberals in this matter.

I will not argue with you about schools in the North vs. schools in the South, since each region had its educated and illiterate citizens. Neither will I be so forward as to contradict you when you say you know of no Southern whites who behave like ghetto Blacks, since you know your own experience.

However, I do wish to insist that many of the alleged "characteristics" of each of those two cultures is shared by the other, howevermuch the members don't want to admit it, and each is hypocritical when it excuses or praises in itself what it condemns in the other. Among these characteristics is the violence associated with a sort of "code of honor." This is illustrated by the code duello of the Southern aristocracy, the blood feuds of the poor whites of the mountains, and the violence of the ghetto between gangs or gangster rap clans. Another commonality is the language. "Black English" most certainly does not come from Africa (most certainly not the Anglo-Saxon obscenities which liberals like to think of as so "quaint" and "revolutionary" and "African"). "Ax" is Chaucerian Middle English, and the use of the infinitive of the verb to be was characteristics of certain British Isles dialects as well as of "hillbillies" and "pirates" (to this day the verb "ate" is often pronounced "et" in the British Isles). Even the omitted "r" in such words as "bu(r)st" has its origin in the aristocratic British pronunciation. I believe Mr. Sowell has actually written an article on the origins of "Black English" in the dialects of old Virginia.

Another cultural commonality of Blacks and poor whites is the very dualistic religious outlook, ie, a fervent emotional religious belief that often clashes with a very profane, alchoholic, or promiscuous lifestyle. Liberals often accuse white Fundamentalist preachers of sexual peccadilloes (the "Elmer Gantry syndrome"), yet white Southerners make the exact same accusation of Black preachers in order to discredit the "civil rights" movement. And is a suggestive blues record backed with a gospel song in praise of J*sus really that different from the same phenomenon when the A-side is a country song about drinkin' and cheatin'?

I also would like to point out that poor Southern whites and Blacks (or at least he latter's liberal white supporters) often exchange the very same accusations: laziness, stupidity, sexual immorality, etc. Were the "degrading" pictures of Blacks in the popular culture of another day (Willie Best, Stepin Fetchit, etc.) really that different from the "inbred backwoods morons" that are in our day (in the memorable words of Jim Goad, author of The Redneck Manifesto) "the only cardboard cutup left standing in our national ethnic shooting gallery"? And of course poor whites and Blacks have always belonged to essentially the same social/economic class and have had many of the same basic experiences (and note that after the last election blue state liberals were only too happy to accuse the red states of living off "welfare" created by their productive labor!).

What I am saying is that there is a sort of common low-class experience and culture common to the two oldest and most similar American ethno-cultural groups, as may be evidenced by watching most any episode of "The Jerry Springer Show" or "Divorce Court" and all other similar garbage (and no, I don't watch them). Call them Black/White trash, Black/White trailer park culture, or what you will. But the point is, partisans of each group enjoy hypocritically sailing into the other for all these characteristics that are basically held in common. That's all I'm saying.