[ExI] Class Differences Among Black People

[Olga Bourlin]

From: "Lee Corbin" <lcorbin at rawbw.com>
To: "ExI chat list" <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2007 9:37 AM


> Olga writes
>
>> [Lee wrote]
>>
>>> As explained in the chapter on slavery in Thomas Sowell's
>>> "White Liberals and Black Rednecks", England alone
>>> deserves the lion's share of the credit for stopping it,
>>
>> Thomas Sowell doesn't talk much about white privilege
>> (not just in the U.S., but around the world) because in
>> his role as a Latter-Day Tom (hey, the name even fits)
>> he cannot afford to. (And don't tell me white privilege
>> doesn't exist, into today - big time.)
>
> Actually, white privilege, as you say, does exist in every single
> country (except Zimbabwe) where there are significant numbers
> of whites. It seems to be the natural order, somehow.

I did not say that white privilege is limited to the U.S.A.

Did you say the natural order?  The natural order?

> Even in Japan, the whiteness of their skins was a point of pride, and
> the Japs only grudgingly admitted, when they encountered them,
> that Europeans were fairer than themselves. (They still maintained
> that their *women*, however, were even whiter than the
> Europeans.)

You got it.  Racism exists.

> Sowell certainly admits that white privilege exists, but, yes, he
> does not dwell upon it at length, to uselessly whine about it.
> Instead, he tries to *explain* it, at least insofar as what
> changed in America around 1900.

Read my reply to Samantha, please - regarding Sowell.

> Who are the three most politically prominent black people to
> have obtained high office in the United States?  That would be
> Justice Thurgood Marshall, Justice Clarence Thomas, and
> Condoleeza Rice, I think. All of them are middle or upper
> class (especially as denoted by the linguistic difference of
> pronouncing their g's --- see separate thread).

What does that have to do with the state of poor black people in the USA. 
Don't they count for anything?

> In his book, Thomas Sowell's huge complaint is that racism
> against blacks was almost entirely absent in the north before
> 1900. Neighborhoods were completely integrated. But then,
> huge numbers of blacks from the deep south, sporting their
> southern redneck culture (which can be traced back to southern
> whites, and further back to the Scots-Irish, Scotch, and Irish
> before them, and to Celts going all the way back to Julius
> Caesar's time).

Hmmmm ... almost entirely absent.  Interesting.  Even though states (beyond 
the Southern) had laws against "miscegenation" (I believe the state of 
Oregon, e.g., recalled those laws only in 1951 ... and the like).

I need to run ... will come back to this matter and the rest of your post 
(if necessary) later.

Olga