Race and Culture: A World View [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Sowell's thesis maintains that differences in productive skills and cultural values are the key to understanding the advancement or regression of ethnic groups. In his opinion, skills and values make up the cultural capital of an ethnic group or of a people, whereas politics, environmental factors and genetics do not play the important roles widely attributed to the success of a group or nation.

Since Sowell's central topic is the universe of values, the reader will easily accept the general layout of his book: a world view. In order to make his universal perspective convincing, Sowell pays his respect to a one page long list of scholars world wide from whose wisdom he has been able to draw.

What is the result of Sowell's approach to "Race and Culture"? We learn that certain peoples have been more or similarly successful than others because of their human capital, their particular pattern of cultural values which enabled them to perform better than others. The Jews are said to have prospered wherever they went in the world because they were experts in the textile business. Italian immigrants we! re often similarly successful in the field of wine production. The Germans are said to have always been successful farmers and craftsmen, and the Chinese succeed everywhere as retailers and restaurant owners.

In one chapter he goes into the question whether intelligence tests allow any conclusion as to the genetic supremacy of one race over the other. The answer is negative. Chinese and some other immigrant groups have been economically and socially successful in America regardless of how they score on intelligence tests. This proves, in his opinion, that inherited traditional values and skills as well as the culturally based capacity to adapt to new conditions are the essential factors, and not genetics. He says the assumption that always environmental conditions are the determining factors of a group's success or failure is wrong. Consequently, he does not think that a disad- vantaged group of American society like the uneducated and poor blacks could be put on their feet by just improving the environmental factors of their lives. Throughout his argumentation he reproaches the intellectuals of often taking the lead in spreading misconceptions of history and doing harm to society: "The role of soft-subject intellectuals - notably professors and schoolteachers - in fermenting internal strife and separatism, from the Basques in Spain to the French in Canada, adds another set of dangers of political instability from schooling without skills." (p. 24)

He believes in hard core skills like the technologies and crafts which are the basis of cultural success. Cultures are conceived of as dynamically engaged ! in a competitive process in which the weaker and less successful elements are weeded out. At that, there are many parts of group cultures which do not deserve any respect. That is why he thinks the notion of "mutual respect" cannot always hold as a premise when comparing cultures.

To his mind there is the widely observable development of a modern world culture which gradually overcomes those cultures which are less apt. This looks much like social Darwinism.

No wonder that the book may easily be misunderstood as ultra conservative. In fact, its title would be almost impossible to translate directly into German because of the nazi connotations of the word "race".

The book provides stimulating reading because nowhere else does one get such a pragmatic concept with a material and substantial understanding of culture. Probably everybody has secretly believed that according to his private observations certain nations and cultures are more or less successful and deserve more or less respect. But for the sake of not nurturing prejudices everybody refrains from speaking out.

On the other hand it must be feared that the book will be grist to the mill of those conservative forces in society who have always believed that only they themselves deserve to be rich and powerful because in their blindfolded eyes the lower strata of society lack cultural stamina and don't like to work hard.

On this topic of race, the book is most provocative in Sowell's chapter "Race and Intelligence". Sowell is clear in his analysis and the reader comes away feeling that he has presented a balanced set of findings. Sowell is careful with his assumptions; he extensively reports the results of IQ tests worldwide without going so far as to suggest that these tests actually measure innate intellectual ability. Although he unflinchingly points to differences which fall along racial lines, he also points to the fact that these test scores change over time (dramatically in some cases, with some American immigrant groups acquiring 18 points of IQ as their racial group assimilated into American culture and the academic tradition.)

Differences in test scores, therefore, are presented as differences in performance. It is undeniable that some groups, such as African Americans, consistently score lower on certain standardized tests. It takes a balanced look at all the data to understand why. As an African American who is interested in such issues, I came away feeling that Sowell had not ducked the hard issues, considered all of the evidence, and reached valid conclusions.

At the end of the day it is clear that Sowell is an economist; one can almost see supply and demand curves superimposed on the page behind the wording. If there is a flaw in the book it is that his academic viewpoint as an economist skews his view of human nature. We're presented with repeated examples of the un-economic results of discrimination. While we know that this is true, we also know that people often make un-economic decisions for emotional reasons.

This, however is nit-picking (it is easy to bash economists). Overall this is a balanced treatment and an impressive work of scholarship that will leave the reader thinking. This is a book to which I'll refer in the future.