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Why Is IPAB M.I.A.?
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Sowell, Race Hustlers, and David Hume
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Thomas Sowell and the Intellectuals
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Thomas Sowell Live
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Snooki on Shore Leave
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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.
(Page 2 of 2)
Sowell: Again, one of those ideas that is impervious to facts. All the evidence I’ve seen, and all the impressions I’ve gotten myself and from others who have taught black students in different settings say just the opposite. One study, for example, found that the more black students there are in a class, the more negative effects that has on the students around them, especially on those black students with higher IQs. Higher IQ blacks do better in a class where there are not a lot of other black students. That buttresses another study that found whereas white or especially Asian-American students who have straight-A averages, are on average more popular with their classmates than people of lower achievement. With blacks it is just the opposite. Blacks that are straight-A students are less popular with other black students. That is just a huge handicap particularly for people who are going through adolescence where peer approval can be so important.
AmSpec: Anything else on the subject of race and intellectuals?
Sowell: Yes, let me make a remark about racial justice, which many people consider part of social justice. Well, what they call “social justice” I’d call “cosmic justice.” There are two different questions regarding justice and society. The first question is, Is life fair? The second is, Is society fair? Those are two radically different questions. Life has never been near being fair in any society recorded anywhere in thousands of years of human history. Now, the question becomes, is a particular society fair? The particular society might have rules that are fair in that they are applied to everyone equally and that people are rewarded or punished according to the same criteria. But that will not get you anywhere close to fairness in life chances. The family you were raised in, they will have far more to do with that. I’m especially sensitive to that because I was one of those people who was adopted in infancy, grew up unaware of my siblings who were adopted by other families hundreds of miles away. Later on as an adult I learned they were raised in families similar to mine in being poor and not well educated. But the family in which I was raised happened to consist mostly of people who themselves had never gotten passed elementary school but were absolutely determined that I would have an education. But none of my other siblings had that same good fortune. When you consider all the factors that are at work, there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that different individuals or groups are going to have the same achievements.
AmSpec: Turning to politics, the most controversial has been your promotion of Newt Gingrich as the best for the GOP in November. What led you to that position?
Sowell: The ability to articulate, which is enormously lacking throughout the Republican Party. Think about it. We are in a country where millions more people identify themselves as conservatives than liberals, and yet in 2008 the Democrats won overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress along with the White House. When someone loses and they were dealt low cards, you say, we’ll that’s the way it is. But when they were dealt the high cards and lost, then they are doing something wrong.
And it’s not just a matter of glibness on Gingrich’s part. When he discusses issues, he does have a depth of understanding that is very obviously greater than that of the other candidates. Unfortunately, he has personality characteristics that have just negated all of that, and which make his chances now virtually zero. After the Illinois vote, and especially the Tea Party endorsing Romney, it’s pretty much over.
AmSpec: It always seemed to me that, yes, Gingrich is very articulate, but he is very volatile and very self-absorbed, even for a politician. It seemed to me that those qualities would prove fatal in November. The voters need to like you. In addition to being articulate, you have to be likeable. And Gingrich is not that likeable.
Sowell: Yes, there’s that. But the real question now is whether Romney can be brought up to the point where he has a serious chance of defeating Obama. And that is by no means a slam dunk.
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.