The End of Racism [Audio Cassette]

Let us first look at the meat of D'souza's work, which I will sum up in three points.

1. Slavery has nothing to do with current black poverty.
2. Black poverty is caused by black culture.
3. The pathologies of black culture are a result of slavery.

While not making any link, D'souza explains that blacks' condition is a result of the fact that black individuals are more likely to be lazy, criminal, etc... than whites. He then (actually, he does this earlier in the book) explains convincingly how slave culture obviously lends itself to laziness and theft. Both of these points are probably true, but they contradict the central thesis of the book which is that past oppression has little to do with current black poverty.

The secondary thesis of this book is that Western Culture is superior to that of any other. Let us now look at his claim of Western Moral superiority. He claims that modern western cultures were the first to ever voluntarily abolish slavery, and he cites a study which attempted to complete the difficult task of researching every culture that ever existed and the way they dealt with slavery. However, it is a known fact that slavery was outlawed in Ancient India.

Another problem with this book is that it supports the neocon claim that Martin Luther King supported black and white equality and colorblindness. D'Souza avoids the many things king wrote explicitly in favor of reparations for slavery, affirmative action, separatism, and black economic protectionism such as:

"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for him, to equip him to compete on a just and equal basis."

"No amount of gold could provide an adequate compensation for the exploitation and humiliation of the Negro in America down through the centuries...Yet a price can be placed on unpaid wages. The ancient common law has always provided a remedy for the appropriation of a the labor of one human being by another. This law should be made to apply for American Negroes. The payment should be in the form of a massive program by the government of special, compensatory measures which could be regarded as a settlement in accordance with the accepted practice of common law." (MLK's 1964 book "Why we cant wait")

D'Souza attacks a straw man about how while king believed in equal results by claiming that he felt the way to accomplish
this was through equal rights, and that if he had lived longer, he would have seen his error.

D'souza's account of Christopher Columbus is terrible History. (For an equally shoddy, but opposite point of view, read anything by Howard Zinn) He simply selects certain quotes by explorers that support his conclusion, while eschewing others that may serve to contradict it.

Most of the early part of the book, which focuses on a time in a more distant past, is made up of anecdotes from contemporary figures, which he uses as "proof" of the way the world was. If someone did that to describe present day America, they would be laughed at, why don't people do this for ancient history?

D'Souza offers his opinions on just a sliver of the whole truth, which is insulting to real social scientists. He draws the completely wrong conclusions from facts that for the most part have a shred of truth. D'Souza is a product of Right wing, racist America; Rich, ignorant, and afraid of change. Read this book if you want to get a poorly painted picture of Black American life today.

If you want to see how D'Souza stands up to real facts, I highly reccomend you do an internet search on his debate with Dr. Manning Marable. Marable mops the floor with him on nearly every point, and all D'Souza is able to do is ramble incoherently.

Before reading this book, I had no notions of who this man was, however, since I've finished it I have realized I have absolutely no respect for this man.

unfortunatly, i cannot recall the black mans name, but he was the first black tenure proffesor at harvard or yale or some ivy league in the Economics department.

now i remember, his name was Glenn Loury. anyway, he said, "after reading a book in the mid 90s by Dinesh D'Souza i said, 'wait a minute' and started to question this whole situation again".

well, after that tony brown show i came to Amazon.com and searched for the book. i guess this was it. i didnt pay for this filth, i found it at a college library. god i couldnt endure reading half of it.

my goodness. this book is the "protocols of zion" for black people. my god. you can judge just how much racism is a problem in america from all the people who say in there reviews, "ive never agreed 100% with anyone, but this book is all the truth".

im suprised "birth of a nation" wasnt used a reference in this book because all this book is, is the directors transcipt of that movie.