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.
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.
