I gave the first one a watch, and from a cultural anthropological perspective—if what he’s saying holds up under deeper scrutiny—it’s certainly fascinating and commendable work. His observations on the origins of Afram vernacular and culture, particularly its roots in antebellum Southern redneck culture with ties to the British Isles, are really interesting and compelling.
That said, from an economic standpoint, his thesis seems pretty questionable. He appears to imply that Aframs could’ve simply LLC’d their way to liberation, while completely glossing over key structural and historical factors: Reconstruction-era cadaan terrorism, redlining, Jim Crow laws, and even the U.S. government’s role in flooding Afram neighborhoods with hard drugs at various points.
He doesn’t even give a brief mention to any of this. Which is insane to think about. Instead, the narrative is basically: "They inherited a self-defeating redneck culture, and then the welfare state showed up in the mid-20th century—and that’s why African Americans are struggling." It feels oddly simplistic and even deliberately evasive.
What makes this more befuddling is that in Sowell’s own writings, he’s clearly aware of the violent cadaan resistance to Afram advancement. He acknowledges how New England missionaries who came south to educate freedmen were routinely terrorized, and he touches on how Afram communities were confined to certain neighborhoods and economically sabotaged. But then he just moves on—as if these factors were things Aframs could attitude their way out of.
In my opinion, this reflects a broader issue with a lot of right-wing economic analysis: it tends to be shallow and conveniently ignores or downplays a lot. What Sowell does is like looking at today’s underdeveloped Somali regions, fixating on things like qabiilism, salafism, and mooryaanimo—and then claiming Somalia’s issues are purely cultural. All while completely ignoring how
the West deliberately wrecked the Somali economy through the IMF, funded rebel militias during the Barre collapse with zero post-Barre planning, and even worked to dismantle the ICU when it had finally stabilized the south in the 00s.
Then glossing over how Somaliland and Puntland are beholden to a non-functional central government the west herds around like its boy for any serious developmental funding. Then, finally and most egregiously of all, glossing over the Somali Civil War itself, the most important factor of all. Would anyone take someone seriously if they claimed to analyze Somalia’s current economic predicament while skipping all that? But this is more or less what he appears to do when analyzing Aframs' predicament.
This is the perfect example of how shallow right-wing economic analysis often is. No real material or systemic analysis and pretending success is all about “mindset,” while worshipping the almighty God that is the "invisible hand of the market". Waa anti-intellectualism, wallahi.
@Taintedlove
