Race and Culture: A World View. Thomas Sowell. Basic Books, N.Y., 1994. xvi + 331 pp. endnotes, index. USA $25.00. CDN $35.00. Reviewed by G. R. Pool Anthropology, University of New Brunswick, P.O. Box 4400, Fredericton, NB, E3B 3A5 Canada Thomas Sowell has attempted to combine a study of "race" and culture, which is probably one of the most difficult tasks one can imagine. As Raymond William's has suggested, "Culture is one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language" (1976). "Race" on the other hand is misunderstood by all regardless of language. Sowell's grasp of the subject leaves much to be desired and he does not really define what is meant by either culture or "race." One could not hope for much, given the fact that he has, in the words of one reviewer on the jacket, for "...nearly a generation defined the terms of debate on affirmative action" in the United States. Embroiled in that debate, a black African-American can understandably be swept along in a political battle where race is a black and white issue. However Sowell's study is world-wide in scope and has to an amazing extent gone beyond American issues. He mentions in his acknowledgements that he took four lengthy international trips in the 1980s to collect information, and he thanks a wide range of scholars around the world (pp. xv-xvi). The book is divided into eight chapters. Chapter 1, "A World View" identifies the subject matter, i.e., what are the group differences and what constitutes cultural attitudes? What follows are chapters on "Migration and Culture," "Conquest and Culture," "Race and Economics," "Race and Politics," "Race and Intelligence," "Race and Slavery," and "Race and History." Of all the chapters in the book the one Sowell handles most adequately is on "Race and Slavery", although specific criticisms follow below. Each chapter is somewhat artificial: anthropologists have long understood how difficult it is to "factor" the political aspect or the economic aspect. Sowell might be forgiven for his lack of anthropological holism, but the book is not truly accessible to anthropological readers for a variety of other reasons. In general, Sowell's journalistic style and sweeping generalizations are more suited to articles in the several newspapers to which he has contributed as occasional and syndicated columnist. What may be most difficult for anthropological readers is the hazy attempt to define "race" in the first chapter and the problems which flow from the definition. I personally have a difficulty with all racial categorization. Since there is no biological meaning to race (not that there is no human variation), the concept is usable only as a social construction. Further, following Robert Miles (1982, 1989), I feel that the more we use the term as scholars, the more we contribute to the racialization process itself. Rather than use "race" as a category (e.g., "What is his/her race?"), let us ask: How has racism and racialization contributed to the conflict between people? How did the lines of group divisions get drawn and why? While there is no denying that groups conflict along lines of perceived physical difference, scholarship can contribute to increased racial consciousness by using the concept/word race and failing to recognize other root causes of conflict (poverty, class conflict, government oppression, etc.). Perhaps the best way to get a sense of the book is to quote short parts. On the question of "race," Sowell throws away all caution: Plain and obvious as cultural differences in effectiveness in different fields should be, there has developed in recent times a reluctance or a squeamishness about discussing it, and some use the concept of "cultural relativism" to deny it. After archaeology and anthropology have revealed the cultural achievements of some groups or dismissed as "primitive," and especially after the ravages of racism shocked the world when the Nazi death camps were exposed at the end of World War II, there has been an understandable revulsion at the idea of labeling any peoples or cultures "superior" or "inferior." Yet Arabic numerals are not merely *different* from Roman numerals; they are *superior* to Roman numerals. Their superiority is evidenced by their worldwide acceptance, even in civilizations that derive from Rome (p. 5). Roman numerals are still used of course; does that mean that those who do are being "backward" or less than modern? One might also wonder at the implication that Arabic society and culture is superior just because the numbering system is superior. Such questions are rarely asked in this book, and assumptions are constantly made that because some individuals within a group are "progressive" or even "aggressively" dominant that the entire group is of the same mettle. The logic is that individual differences are somehow transferable to the group as a whole. Sowell continues: ..It is not necessary to claim that a particular people or a particular culture is superior in all things or for all time. On the contrary, world leadership in science, technology, and organization has passed from one civilization to another over the centuries and millennia of human history. But neither is it necessary to deny the greater effectiveness of particular cultures for particular things at particular times and places - even if other contemporary cultures may be superior for some other things (p. 6). Even non-relativists may have a hard time with such vast generalizations. When it comes to defining race, Sowell has more difficulty with being definite: Cultures are of course not spread randomly among the world's population but are concentrated separately in different peoples - different racial or ethnic groups. Neither races nor the cultures are pure, but both biological and cultural differences can be discussed in general terms that correspond, at least roughly, to a recognizable social reality. The term "race" was once widely used to distinguish the Irish from the English, or the Germans from the Slavs, as well as to distinguish groups more sharply differing in skin color, hair texture, and the like. In the post World War II era, the concept of "race" has more often been applied to these latter, more visibly different, categories and "ethnicity" to different groups within the broader Caucasoid, Negroid, or Mongoloid groupings. However, this dichotomy between race and ethnicity is misleading in its apparent precision. Neither race nor related concepts can be used in any scientifically precise sense to refer to the people inhabiting this planet today, after centuries of genetic intermixtures. The more generic term, race, will be used here in a loose sense to refer to a social phenomenon with a biological component, rather than make a dichotomy whose precision is illusory (p. 6). Sowell's statement that race is illusory is acceptable, but the notion that people across the world are somehow divisible into races and cultures, however, "impure," is artificial. It is as if cultures and races are "givens," rather than created by specific historical patterns and events. The notion of "African-American" is certainly related to the history of slavery, as is "African" to the colonization of that continent by various European powers, each with its own cultural notions of "race" and superiority or inferiority. Throughout the remainder of the book, one finds Sowell's argument returns to the proposition that differences can be evaluated in a qualitative way as being good or bad and that these differences are totalizing, i.e., group characteristics. So, when writing about "Migration and Culture" in Chapter 2, Sowell speaks about how male/female ratios affect the migration patterns. While there is no question that such ratios have an effect, Sowell overlooks the important questions. Sowell states: Even among immigrant groups which are predominantly male in the early exploratory phases, it is not uncommon for more women than men to immigrate in later years, after the group has decided to settle permanently and form families. (p. 40). But in many cases of migration males migrate first simply because they are the ones acceptable as workers. Immigration law and the selection policies of employers do have something to do with sex ratios. For example, the emigration of Indian indentured workers in the nineteenth century was predominantly male, but a policy was set to ensure the emigration of females, which varied from a quarter to a half over the period 1845-1917. Such policies were set due to the variable values of women as workers or as wives and sexual partners (as a control on the immigrants). Chinese migration to Western Canada was predominantly male due to the fact that the workers were contracted for work on roads, in mines or on railroads. However, racialization of Western Canada in the early part of the century led to head taxes of $500, effectively preventing the immigrants from bringing their families (Bolaria and Li, 1985: 81ff). To say that a group simply decides to settle permanently hides significant controls on migrant workers or on the history of racialization. When Sowell begins discussion of "Middlemen Minorities" (p. 46ff), he really shows where his categorical statements may lead. The sexism in this title is not, by the way, unique in the book; throughout the text one finds male only pronouns, giving the impression that men are the movers and shakers. Sowell picks on specific groups for his characterizations: The overseas Chinese and the Jews of the diaspora are obviously of different races and have different religions, food, and language... Excuse me, but the example is interesting - Judaism is a religion, isn't it? And do Jews have a different language? It seems that Sowell has really misunderstood a great deal here. ...Yet they - as well as Lebanese, Armenians, and Gujaratis and Chettyars from India, among others - have been noted for such patterns as working long hours, thrift, peacefulness (sometimes equated with cowardice), commercial reliability, and "clannishness." Much of this pattern simply goes with the economic role they play (pp. 46-7). A bundle of stereotypes about whole groups is paralleled by sexism about such groups, which Sowell defends: Middleman minorities around the world are often accused of "taking advantage" of other people's "weaknesses," such as customers' buying things on credit that they cannot readily afford. Accusations of this sort were as commonly made against the Jews in eighteenth-century France as against the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Both customers and social theorists thus displace responsibility and anger onto the middleman, and often cite his "exorbitant" prices as the reasons for the customer's difficulties in making the payments, when in reality the likelihood of default is the reason for prices being higher than in stores which either require payment in cash or more sweepingly exclude credit risks (pp. 48-49). And so it goes throughout the book, as Sowell both categorizes and defends the categories and the treatment of disadvantaged groups. In the chapter on "Race and Economics" he writes about "Cheap Labor," a heading he puts in quotes, to suggest that the phrase is an erroneous concept: It has become and oft-repeated statement, among scholars as well as journalists, that employers have sought or directly imported "cheap unskilled labour" from abroad, often members of a different racial or ethnic group. While this has in fact happened in some countries, it has also often been the case that the labor imported has been no cheaper than the labor locally available - when transportation and other costs born by the employer are counted - but has been imported for its greater productivity or reliability (pp. 92-93). Sowell then suggests that the labor is not as productive and therefore is not "cheap" but of an equal value. As far as employers paying for their passage, it was common practice in the Indian indentured schemes to have the government pay for the passages out of export taxes. Trinidad and Jamaica were interesting examples of how that worked. In Jamaica the sugar areas had long suffered soil exhaustion while Trinidad had a large area of good land for sugar, resulting in higher land productivity. Therefore, Trinidad's sugar exports per unit of labour/land were high and a small export tax could finance more labour imports to Trinidad. Jamaica's plantations were in much more distress and a similar tax on sugar exports could do little to pay for indentured immigrants. Trinidad, on the other hand imported tens of thousands of indentured immigrants. As to labour productivity, planters acknowledged that labourers were of different value (a constant subject of commentary and no doubt conversation). What the planters knew well was that despite the indenture contract specifying hours and wages, the worker could be paid less, given the power the planter class. One finds throughout Sowell's examples that answers to questions lack comprehensive analysis and exhibit a vague understanding of the relationship between social class and power. One almost expects Sowell to defend imperialism and lay blame on the disadvantaged groups, but there is never any explicit statement as such. However, in the chapter on slavery, Sowell achieves a broad view of the phenomenon while focusing on slavery in the Americas. This is probably one of his best chapters, but even here he makes suggestions that are puzzling. At the same time as he condemns the "pure" slavery, he identifies the "modified" slavery: domestic slaves, urban slaves and the roles of free blacks in the Americas, African women in Islamic societies or slaves in Southeast Asia. Considering the fact that slavery existed in virtually all parts of the world for thousands of years and now is virtually wiped out, Sowell considers the implications. First, the end of slavery in the Americas was the result of a "...confluence of circumstances which permitted this moral revulsion to drive a policy which resulted in the stamping out of slavery across most of the planet in a period of a century and a half..." Sowell suggests that this moral force and mobilization into a political concern, coupled with the dominance of European powers was responsible for the destruction of slavery everywhere: Even in parts of the world which retained their independence or autonomy, the indelible stigma that slavery acquired in European eyes made abolition a policy to be pursued for the sake of national respectability, even in societies which had no strong feelings against slavery itself. The irony of our times is that the destruction of slavery around the world, which some once considered the supreme moral act in history, is little known and less discussed among intellectuals in either Western or non- Western countries, while the enslavement of Africans by Europeans is treated as unique - and due to unique moral deficiencies in the West. Moreover, what is and is not considered to be a legacy of slavery is too often determined by what advances the ideological visions of today, rather than what accords with the record of history (p. 222). One can only wonder at the implications: despite the cruel and dominating influences of Europeans, they did some good by eliminating slavery. Europeans civilized the world? I wonder. Equally disturbing is the attributing of special and generalizable cultural characteristics of different groups throughout the book ("the Jews," or "the Gujaratis"). In summary, the book is limited by its failure to examine and compare particular situations in a controlled way where details of a case need much more contextualization. While *Race and Culture* is wide-ranging, it perhaps because of Sowell's attempt to present *A World View* that the vision he presents is out of focus. References cited: Bolaria, B. Singh and Peter S. Li 1985 *Racial Oppression in Canada*. Toronto: Garamond Press. Miles, Robert 1982 *Racism and migrant labour*. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. 1989 *Racism*. London: Routledge. Williams, Raymond 1983 *Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society*. London: Fontana.