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There are those who have tried to claim that various southern speech patterns and even religious practices are actually West African. That's not to diminish the contributions of Africa to southern cuisine, music and arts; there are many. But, the rhythmic exhortation and response of an AME Zion Church service is much more rooted in Scotland than Africa, and the gospel music finds more inspiration than is generally acknowledged from there, too.

Thomas Sowell has pointed out that the so-called "authentic African-American culture" actually comes from the British Isles and the whites the early slaves encountered. This includes the use of the infinitive "be" as a finite, the Chaucerian Middle English "ax," the Anglo-Saxon obscenities, the superstitions, the religion, and even the laziness, violence, and criminality that is attributed by outsiders to both cultures (gang wars/mountain feuds, crack houses/moonshine stills, etc.). The more "African" Black nationalists try to be, the more "cracker" they act and speak.

What is really sad is that stupid liberals wind up loving in Blacks the very same things they hate and ridicule in poor Southern whites and they don't even seem to realize it. You know, the ignorance of poor Southern whites is a subject of ridicule while the ignorance of poor Blacks is an act of revolutionary "otherness;" the poverty of poor Southern whites is a joke while the poverty of poor Blacks is a revolutionary indictment of the American economic system; etc.). It isn't the behavior that is approved or disapproved but who exhibits it--classic bigotry. I suppose these liberals and Black militants have to tell themselves that all these characteristics (when found among Blacks) come from Africa in order to excuse them.

Forty years ago white racists insisted that an unbridgeable gulf separated "white culture" and "Black culture." Now the liberals say the very same thing, though they reverse the roles. And foolish me, I always thought rural Southern whites and Blacks were all just "rednecks."

If you want to actually hear West Africa, going back more than three centuries on this continent, get down to the Carolina and Georgia coast, to the very few remaining Barrier Islands that are unmolested by the invading NY/NJ horde.

The Gullah. Clarence Thomas is Gullah.

Though I've heard practically none of it spoken, I've read and loved the Gullah dialect for years in old B.A. Botkin folklire anthologies and in the "Daddy Jack" stories of Joel Chandler Harris. Is there any place online I can actually hear Gullah spoken?

There is a whole series of recordings done by A. H. Stoddard of Daufuskie Island, SC, who was Gullah himself. Whether they're available online or not, I can't say.

I realize that the New Testament is no longer of great interest to you from a religious perspective, but it has been translated into Gullah:

So A da write ta all ob oona een Rome, oona wa God lob an wa e call fa be e own people. A da pray dat God we Fada an de Lawd Jedus Christ bless oona an gii oona peace een oona haat. - Romans 1:7

There are contemporary readings of this Gullah New Testament floating around the web somewhere, but not by native speakers.

As far as taking such a completely dismal view of Celtic-descended southerners and the obviously related culture of black America, I'll point out that there are some positive aspects. And, what you perceive as laziness might just be an unwillingness to work too hard for those who subjugated them in the past.

There's a legacy of bondage among both groups, one indentured and one enslaved. They're both quite capable of industriousness outside the confines of "normal" society as well. There's honor. There's God. It could be worse. They fight our wars, in large part.

At times, it appears that poor white southerners are all that stands between us and totalitarianism. For that alone, I'm much obliged, and am glad to have them.