Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Sowell and the Communities of Culture and Class

Not all blacks are the same, nor are whites, or any other "racial-ethnic" group. One of the most overt and inexcusable fallacies of the liberal intelligentsia is to treat one "color" as a monolithic whole, especially among "white" people.

Families of different wealth and education share the same values, which clash with individuals of different life experience. Men and women of the same nationality do not mix together, necessarily, either because of the more minute regional, linguistic, and cultural differences which lead birds of one feather to flock together.

Self-segregation is a choice which the government has not right to impinge upon. The values, or lack thereof, that characterize certain ghettos in large societies have no right or reason to prevent the thriving growth in other communities, where individuals of different cultural backgrounds are willing to make different sacrifices or invest more in assisting friends and neighbors as needed.

Professor Thomas Sowell is one of few intellects who makes the compelling and erudite case that human behavior, identity, and community depends on much more than the color of one's skin or the short-term level of income. Geography, communal ties, and historical conflicts all influence and inform the development of immigrant communities all over the world. The federal government has no reason to cram diverse peoples into one box that gets checked once every ten years on a census sheet.

A man is more than color or character -- the culture and community where he comes from also influences his upbringing, elements of a man which current ethnographers ignore at their peril.

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