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TAS Live
Thomas Sowell Live, Part II
We conclude our interview with the author of Intellectuals and Society, now out in a new edition.
This is the second part of The American Spectator’s recent interview with Thomas Sowell. Today we discuss issues of bilingual education, other racial issues, and whether Republicans can prevail in November. Sowell has just released the second edition of his book, Intellectuals and Society.
AmSpec: Now that the U.S. has so many Hispanic immigrants, how much damage can something like bilingual education do?
Sowell: It holds Hispanics back. They are following the opposite pattern that was successful for David Hume and the Scots. They’re keeping a language that does not give them access to all the knowledge that is available in the society around them which I believe they are perfectly capable of using to advance themselves just as other groups have.
Multiculturalism, when you think about it, its advocates are doing what the caste system did. They’re saying that where you were born and what you were born into is what you are stuck with for life. If you were born into this one particular culture, then you shouldn’t even aspire to get into a different culture. Your teachers shouldn’t try to facilitate you using the benefits of other cultures.
The big difference is that the caste system, at least, never pretended that it existed for the benefit of those at the bottom. Multiculturalism does.
AmSpec: Let’s turn to the question of race and intelligence. Why is mixing those two things together so explosive?
Sowell: I guess just the emotional impact of it is explosive. In the early part of the 20th century the Progressives were saying that some people were only capable of being “hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
I wish I’d been more explicit about this in the book that there are really two questions. One question is about the range of intelligence in different races. The other is about the statistical average of intelligence in different races. As far as the Progressives were concerned, they collapsed that into one question. There are some groups that can’t get above a certain mental level, and that’s it.
But that’s not what the more recent discussions such as those centering around The Bell Curve are about, which is about statistical averages. There are all kinds of reasons why two races with initially identical genetic potential for intelligence could end up with different averages. I was just reading Matt Ridley’s book in which he was arguing that during medieval times in England, the upper classes tended to leave more offspring than did the lower classes. The net result was that as time went on, a larger and larger proportion of the British population were descendants of the upper classes, even if all those descendants didn’t remain in the upper class. So they had upper class values that bred through the society, where today we have the opposite.
Ridley didn’t say this, but I wondered what if the British upper classes had higher intelligence? That would have meant that the average intelligence of the British was rising over time. We have no data on that. But the opposite can also happen, especially if you have a welfare state. You subsidize the production of more people in the lower classes, you can have a falling level of intelligence. The point being the statistical average doesn’t really tell you about the genetic potential of a particular race.
AmSpec: You quoted the late Tom Wicker at some length about this notion that when racial problems and disparities occur, it must be due to the racism of whites or some other societal injustice. Can you talk about that type of thinking, where it leads and why people like Wicker engaged in it so often?
Sowell: Wicker engaged in it not only on racial issues but on international issues. He was upset when the Czechs broke away from the Communist Bloc and were celebrating their freedom. He wrote that “freedom is not a panacea.” Well, nothing is a panacea.
But I have a feeling in a different way, and this has to be speculation of course, I think people like Wicker and Derrick Bell have personal, circumstantial problems they can resolve in their writings. In the case of Wicker, it was his being a Southerner. I’ve long said, “Heaven save me from guilty white Southerners.” It’s not that they don’t have things to be guilty about, but the fact is their guilt is only adding to the problem, not solving it. Get rid of your guilt at your own expense, not at the expense of the taxpayers and the cohesion of the whole society.
In case of the race, it’s amazing, Wicker’s reasoning and the New York Times’ editorials’ as well. They lament the fact so many more blacks are being imprisoned today than in the 1950s, and then there are black families breaking apart and so on. And they blame this on things like the legacy of slavery or else the shortcomings of whites today. But the obvious question arises, are you telling me in 1950 there was less racism than there is today? Are you telling me 1950 was not closer to the age of slavery than today? To even examine the internal logic of what they are saying makes their whole argument collapse like a house of cards.
AmSpec: One of the notions that you brought up in the book is “critical mass.” That is the idea that students can only excel if surrounded by students of the same race or gender.
About the Author
David Hogberg is a senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research. Follow him on Twitter.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (20) | Leave a comment
More Articles by David Hogberg
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Clint| 4.16.12 @ 7:56AM
" Thomas Sowell endorses Newt Gingrich
"Why not vote for the candidate who has shown the best track record of accomplishments, both in office and in the debates? That is Newt Gingrich. With all his shortcomings, his record shows that he knows how to get the job done in Washington." ~ Thomas Sowell"
Alan Brooks| 4.16.12 @ 7:28PM
Newt can't even pay his campaign debts, but he thinks he can fund the colonization of space??
"This is the voyage of the Starship Gingrich...
His four year mission: to boldly go where no man has gone before"
I think Sowell is getting a bit senescent, time for a dose of ritalin.
Grock| 4.16.12 @ 8:54AM
As a young boy born in a southern state, then early years raised in Harlem, Dr. Stowell is living proof that with some support anything is possible. He is quite a remarkable man.
Von Mises Jr| 4.16.12 @ 9:27AM
I am happy to hear Dr. Sowell make the same point I repeat ad nauseam in my comments. The elite wish to re-establish a caste system such as serfdom.
Dr. Sowell uses "Multiculturalism" as an example. But other examples abound. The Pelosi/Reid/Obama tyranny over the last few years legislatively and setting up unaccountable boards such as IPAB. The "top Down" rule of Agenda21 and EPA dictatorial decrees on our property. Rampant abuses in stock manipulation and insider trading. The Chevy Volt. Dodd Frank codifying a banking industry dedicated to the funding the Treasury. It is all the same with minor nuances.
Message: Do as the Nobles command, or be broken on the wheel.
Bostonian| 4.16.12 @ 9:42AM
Please fix typo:
in "never gotten passed elementary school" , "passed" should be "past".
Thanks for the interview.
Bob K.| 4.16.12 @ 11:17AM
There are a lot more people of Hispanic heritage who have immigrated into the USA than the Scots ever did. And thanks to our Government's current Immigration policies, or lack of them, they have done it at a much faster rate. So for that reason alone it will be much more difficult to get Hispanics to convert to English than the Immigrants who came into the USA in the great, but controlled, immigrations of the 19th and early 20th Century did.
And if you will allow me a touch of sarcasm here, comparing their language problem to that of the Scots is nonsense and I wonder if Professor Sowell even made it? (I note again, as I did in the earlier article, that there are no quotation marks around his comments.) The Scots could speak English as could the Irish and it made their entry into American culture even easier than that of immigrants who knew no English.
John Navratil| 4.16.12 @ 11:45AM
Bob K.,
Perhaps you recall the Spanish began migrating into California in the early 1500's and governed it, to greater or lesser effect, until 1850 - long before the, so called "controlled", immigrations of the 19th and 20th centuries. The U.S. had no laws on immigration until 1875 and quotas weren't imposed until 1921 - after immigration has peaked.
Bob K.| 4.16.12 @ 3:08PM
Yes I do. And they have been assimilated and are not the ones Dr. Sowell is discussing.
Bob K.| 4.16.12 @ 3:33PM
Hardly the language barrier that peoples like my mother's Polish ancestors encountered. She was born 2nd generation Polish just prior to WW I and still had to speak Polish at home in the mining community she grew up in. By that time the Scots and the Irish were running the mines having learned any English they did not know generations before. My mother and her brother were required to speak English by the Irish nuns who taught them and they were treated by them with the same indifference the English, Scotch and Irish Coal Barons treated the Slavic peoples who worked in their mines and died in them.
This incident happened in Northeast PA and although hardly typical it does give a picture of the historical nature of those times.
http://www.portal.state.pa.us/.....cre/478735
When my mother died recently she still spoke Polish fluently and was able to converse with new Polish immigrants.
What David Hogberg writes about, in reality did not exist. He portrays an idealistic picture of people who in reality pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. As I said earlier about these 2 articles, I doubt very much if Dr. Sowell said these things. None of the remarks are in quotes.
Stuart Koehl| 4.16.12 @ 2:48PM
Actually, you have to divide the Scots and the Irish into the Highland Scots, the Lowland Scots, the Gaelic Irish and the Scots Irish.
Of these, the Highland Scots spoke Scottish Gaelic, and little or no English (a situation that pertained down to the beginning of the 20th century in the Western Isles); the Lowland Scots spoke Scots and could understand and make themselves understood in English; the Gaelic Irish (most of whom only began to arrive around 1849) spoke Gaelic and little or no English; and the Scots-Irish spoke a dialect unto themselves combining Scots, English and Gaelic that could be (as many Appalachian accents are today) generally incomprehensible.
So, yes, there was a real language barrier, especially for the Highland Scots (who arrived between the 1750s and the 1770s; and the Gaelic Irish, who arrived from the 1840s through the 1870s.
Bob K.| 4.16.12 @ 3:36PM
Mr. Koehl,
My response to your comment somehow ended just above your comment as a response to my response to Mr. Navratil--if that makes sense!
Bob S| 4.16.12 @ 11:52AM
This latest immigration wave isn't the first to hit the US. A century ago Europeans were migrating to the US en masse. They too endured hardships and prejudice, but they are among the more successful in American society today. Why is that? Because they didn't embrace this multiculturalism crap. The only hint of multiculturalism you'll see today from people with European (mostly southern and eastern European) ancestry is in the food, something we can all enjoy. Besides that, they're as American as anyone whose family was here since 1776.
You also see a contrast between Americans of Chinese ancestry and Chinese immigrants today. Asians in general in the United States have been pretty well off in recent decades, but you still see many Chinese immigrants fleeing communism. You never see these immigrants in any prominent position, where Americans who descended from Chinese immigrants who arrived over a century ago are prospering.
Multiculturalism is holding back minorities today, not just latino immigrants, but also blacks. They refuse to assimilate. In black communities, assimilation is even stigmatized (you'll get hounded for "acting white"). In latino communities, you get many people speaking Spanish and as a result feeling that you don't need to learn English. They contain and close off their communities to outside cultural influences, and prefer to stay stuck in their economic condition rather than advance by assimilating into American culture. Many of them are even content with letting "The State" handle their affairs, so long as "The State" does not force them to live "white".
The worse part of it all is that anyone who tries to bring attention to these issues is immediately branded racist and executed in the court of public opinion by the mainstream media.
Bugs| 4.16.12 @ 12:38PM
I hope Dr. Sowell attributes black underperformance in school to culture, not biology.
Tiddly| 4.16.12 @ 2:40PM
Why?
Trinacria| 4.16.12 @ 4:05PM
Bugs,
I believe he makes this point in the passage about his siblings, none of whom had the same strong family support that he did (and, consequently, had less opportunity for future success).
It isn't likely, however, that this fully accounts for the underperformance. As Dr. Sowell speculates in his example regarding the British upper class (who tended to have more children than the lower class), the modern welfare state might be creating a system in which the least genetically gifted are rewarded for creating more offspring. Statistically speaking, this could certainly result in lower median scores among races that are disproportionally represented in the welfare class (though the high end of the range of scores for that race would not necessarily be affected).
MikeN| 4.16.12 @ 2:59PM
In one of his books, Mr Sowell wrote that eldest siblings are much more likely to be smart, contradicting his point about upper classes having large families, as this lowers the share of eldest siblings. How does Mr Sowell reconcile this?
Bob K.| 4.16.12 @ 3:46PM
The biggest problem with the recent mass migration of Hispanics from south of our border is that there are now getting to be places in our Southwest where it is not necessary for them to learn English. The Spanish language and culture dominates in many large areas of California, Texas and Arizona.
This will surely cause troubles in the future for the United States.
John Navratil| 4.16.12 @ 8:32PM
Bob K.
I'm quite sure you are correct. Failure to assimilate is a problem, but a problem which is not necessarily associated with immigration, legal or illegal.
I am the son of a Czech immigrant. He had no foolish idea of being able to practice law in the Czech language. The question was simply preposterous in 1950. Yet, when I moved to Texas in 1972, Czech was reported to be the second most widely spoken language in the state followed by German. Yet these communities are assimilated even though the language is preserved.
I had a (legal) housekeeper whose principal language was Spanish, her English was poor. Her daughter was raised speaking English, preferred English and was banished to Spanish instruction by the public schools here in Houston, despite her mothers pleas. It set her back two years, academically.
We have, in Houston, Chinese and Vietnamese communities where the street signs are in these languages. These are not illegals, but are balkanizing themselves.
I, myself, have lived abroad and speak conversational (but very bad) German. I can get around in French. Even there, I prefer to speak in English - of course should I move there, I would expect myself to become more proficient. Indeed, It would be expected of me.
There is the problem and this is Dr. Sowell's point, I think, that we create much of the problem ourselves.
Bob K.| 4.17.12 @ 2:37AM
I agree with that.
But on the matter of language it often takes more than a generation to complete assimilation. I can remember older Lawyers in the small city I was born in with a sign under their shingle which read "Polski Advocat."
In the past I also often saw County Courthouse employees translating for older people who had to be there for business and I once saw an elected official translate a Will written in Italian which was filed for probate.
It seems that the Czechs from Bohemia settled to a great extent in the mid west and Texas. There were many Slovaks who settled in our area and their language could be understood by the Polish immigrants and there is even a Moravian University in Allentown, Pa.
Richard Baker| 4.16.12 @ 6:56PM
Used to be a teacher in Florida and my black students who worked hard and excelled were often ridiculed as "acting White" by those blacks who didn't. Misery loves company, I guess.