It's The Culture Stupid

Thomas Sowell trots out the basic finding of his Race and Culture trilogy for the benefit of
Opinion Journal readers. The reason that blacks (and also Southern red-neck whites) have
fared
poorly in the United States is their violent, illiterate culture.

“The culture of the people who were called `rednecks’ and `crackers’ before
they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was
a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement,
as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. ”

Sowell’s great finding is that if you want to predict the speed at which an immigrant to the United
States will assimilate, you should look at his/her education and tradition of living under law. Groups like
Jews and East Asians that have revered education and have an experience of living under law have
thrived immediately. Groups like the Irish, the Scots-Irish, and the blacks have struggled because they lived under the
boot of oppression or knew only a culture of force and feud before they came to the land of self-government.
Michael Barone’s The New Americans makes the same point.