Race and Culture: A World View Book

This is an excellent book, very well researched and intensely practical as a worldview. The only fault is that is often dry and technical due to the voluminous research reported within it. Sowell uses a wide array of evidence from around the globe and across the human timeline to ensure his observations are transcendent over contemporary hot-button issues, yet simultaneously applicable to them.

The final pages, where Sowell, bears down on the judgments and implications of his work, are piercing with their insight. Perhaps the most salient message to 21st century social justice types is, "The same approach which treats sins common to the human race as peculiarities of "our society" often also makes the fatal error of confusing victimhood with virtue, by lining up on the side of the victim, instead of lining up on the side of a moral principle." (Sowell, 250). The book backs up this statement with facts from world history.

It is particularly important for today's compassion peddlers to recognize the larger realities of our contemporary issues. We will perpetuate the dysfunctions by pandering to them. Western civilization is under siege from members of its own who have proven Sowell's claim, and made the correlated mistakes of assuming 'our society' is to blame for basic human flaws and preferring victim politics to principled policies in the public square. Everyone who shares an interest or concern about racial issues needs to read this book in order to set our thinking on productive tracks toward overcoming racial and cultural tensions that commonly exist among different people groups.