Economist and bestselling author <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/thomas-sowell" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Dr. Thomas Sowell</a> said that relying on the government to enforce so-called “social justice” would only lead to a loss of freedom in an interview with Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro.
In an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7gh68Weimg&amp;t=654s">interview</a> posted to YouTube, <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/products/black-rednecks-and-white-liberals?_pos=1&amp;_sid=9ad91683a&amp;_ss=r">Sowell</a> joined Shapiro to talk about his new book, “Social Justice Fallacies,” and the dangers of the ideology that has been widely embraced across college campuses, large corporations, and by Democrat politicians.
When asked what the greatest dangers of social justice ideologies were, Sowell pointed to the belief held by many on the Left that the government should be used to make everything equal.
“When you simply give more and more power to the government on the illusion that they can [make everything equal], all that you&#8217;re doing is setting yourself for more and more of your freedom to be taken away by other people,” he said.
Shapiro and Sowell also discussed the social justice fallacy of assuming that disparity was caused by discrimination. Sowell pointed to the representation of black players in professional basketball and white tennis players as examples of disparities that were not caused by anything malicious.
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The two also discussed what the future would look like and how to fight back against the spread of social justice ideology, especially among young people.
Shapiro pointed to polling showing that young generations had embraced the social justice mindset, saying that “it&#8217;s hard to be optimistic in the face of a lot of the polling statistics that are showing that younger Americans believe an enormous number of these fallacies.”
Sowell responded by saying that educational resources not steeped in leftist ideology needed to be made available to young people.
“What I think needs to be done is to open up some other avenue of information for young people that they won&#8217;t get the constant propaganda indoctrination that they find in most colleges around the country,” Sowell said, pointing to free online courses from Hillsdale College.
“I think what needs to be done is for someone to organize a central place where people can hear other ideas that they are not likely to hear in the major institutions &#8212; whether someone will be able to do that or not, it remains to be seen,” Sowell added.
WATCH:
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MixCollage-18-Nov-2023-03-55-PM-1835

Thomas Sowell And Ben Shapiro Discuss How Social Justice Ideology Leads To Loss Of Freedom

Ben Shapiro

Education

General

Social Justice

Thomas Sowell

U.S.

In the latest five-minute video for PragerU, the Manhattan Institute’s Jason Riley, author of a new biography on Thomas Sowell, talks about the life and significance of economist, philosopher, and all-around intellectual giant, Thomas Sowell. 
Although Sowell is known well in conservative circles, not nearly as many people know about him in America at-large, where his notoriety is dwarfed by more institutionally favored left-leaning academics, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi. In fact, argues Riley, Sowell may be “the most important scholar you’ve never heard of.”
Sowell overcame many obstacles early in his life. Born in the Great Depression, he was orphaned at a young age, raised in Harlem, and dropped out of high school. After a stint in a homeless shelter, Sowell was drafted into the Marines during the Korean War. 
His time in the Marines, however, taught him discipline, enough so that after leaving he went to college, and found himself studying at Harvard and the University of Chicago.
“He began his intellectual journey as a committed Marxist, but soon reached a life-altering conclusion: Marxism didn’t work,” says his biographer. “After studying the effects of various government regulations, including minimum wage laws, he concluded that free markets were a far better alternative, particularly for disadvantaged groups.”
Later, as his career bloomed, Sowell wrote what many consider to be his best work — A Conflict of Vision — an analysis of the two visions that undergird U.S. policy disputes. 
So if Sowell is so great, why isn’t he better known? Riley argues it’s because of the racial controversies that have surrounded his work. 
Sowell, a black man, has criticized “liberalism’s misguided efforts” to help poor African Americans escape from poverty, says Riley. 
“His targets over the decades have included welfare programs, racial preferences, multiculturalism, and opposition to school choice. Sowell brings the same empirical approach to writing about social policy that he brings to writing about economics,” notes the Sowell biographer. “His focus is on the facts and the evidence.”
“The actual results of a policy matter much more to him than the good intentions of politicians and policy makers. This is perfectly captured in his concept of ‘Stage One’ thinking. Liberal politicians propose expensive policy solutions and never ask the only questions that really matter: what are the long-term costs and consequences? In other words, what happens beyond stage one? By the time these costs and consequences fully manifest themselves—and they’re usually disastrous—the politicians who originally set the policies in motion are long gone. They’ve derived all the political benefit and paid none of the cost,” says Riley. 
WATCH: 
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WATCH: The Great Thomas Sowell: Who Is He?

America has lost an inarguably great man. Walter Williams, one of the nation’s great economists and public intellectuals, died in the early hours of Wednesday morning after teaching his final class at George Mason University on Tuesday. He was 84.
A self-described &#8220;crazy-ass man&#8221; and libertarian economist with a black belt in karate, he focused on government&#8217;s role in perpetuating racial inequality.
A ferocious defender of free markets and a powerful explainer of the virtues of liberty, Williams brought a personal toughness honed as a Philly cab driver to his work; a contrarianism born of growing up poor in the city’s racially segregated housing projects. But he never allowed himself to be a victim of his circumstances.
A disciple of Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, Williams worked for 40 years at George Mason University, putting his heart and soul into transforming the economics department into a highly respected center of free market scholars. Talking with Robert Chatfield of the Free To Choose Network, Williams said he tried to avoid using anything written within the last 40 years in his economics class. He wanted students to know that Mises, Hayek, and Friedman were right then, and they’re still right today.
A nationally syndicated columnist and author of ten books including his seminal work, &#8220;Race and Economics&#8221;, a highly acclaimed must-read on the subject, his research was rigorous and his writings bold and unequivocal. His book, The State Against Blacks, was made into the television documentary &#8220;Good Intentions&#8221; in 1985, with his most recent documentary, “Suffer No Fools” debuting in 2015. He was one of the few economists who knew how to engage with the public. 
A libertarian in the truest sense, Williams refused the title as a descriptor, saying &#8220;I just do my own thing,&#8221; when asked by Reason Magazine in 2011 whether he saw himself as part of the libertarian movement. 
In a moving elegy to his best and closest friend of more than half a century, Thomas Sowell wrote, “There was no one I trusted more or whose integrity I respected more. Since he was younger than me, I chose him to be my literary executor, to take control of my books after I was gone. But his death is a reminder that no one really has anything to say about such things.”
Sowell shared a running joke between he and Williams, that there was a time when the entire black conservative community would have only consisted of the two of them, “Walter used to say the two of us should never fly on the same plane otherwise the whole movement will disappear if the plane goes down.”
To misquote slightly a line from Hamlet, “He was a man, Horatio, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.” 
Walter Edward Williams, rest in peace.

Walter Williams

Walter E. Williams, R.I.P.

George Mason University

Larry Elder often lets filmmakers interview him at his radio studio, but the syndicated talker rarely sees the results.
Well-intentioned filmmakers get distracted or come up short on the funding front, Elder explains.
Director Justin Malone, eager to capture what it’s like to be a black conservative in America, was different. Malone shared his footage with the best-selling author and talk show host.
“It was beautifully shot in black and white. I liked the angles,” Elder recalls. So he asked Malone how far along he was on the project. If this were a baseball game, Malone explained, he’d be in the top half of the first inning.
That didn’t scare Elder. He offered to help raise funds for the documentary. Two years later, “Uncle Tom” is available for rental at <a href="http://uncletom.com/">UncleTom.com</a> and has made back its modest budget and then some, says Elder, who co-wrote and produced the film.
“Uncle Tom” showcases the abuse black conservatives like Elder receive from the Left, something the L.A. native begrudgingly accepts as part of modern culture.
“I’ve been called an Uncle Tom for 35 years,” Elder says. Malone asked him the critical question on the subject.
Why? Why can’t liberals have an open discussion with black conservatives? Why does common sense scare them? Why slam black conservatives as “coons,” or worse?
“The more he said, ‘why,’ the more I thought, ‘this is pretty asinine’ … that was the tone of the whole documentary,” says Elder, whose self-titled radio show can be heard from noon to 2 p.m. PT weekdays on CRN with a rebroadcast from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. on KRLA AM 870 in Los Angeles.
“Uncle Tom” features familiar faces like Herman Cain, Candace Owens, and Lt. Col. Allen West sharing why they believe in smaller government and more freedom. The film also interviews blue-collar black conservatives who favor the American dream over &#8220;handouts.&#8221;
That describes Chad Jackson, a contractor from Texas featured in the film. He was a lifelong Democrat who had a change of heart after reading the specific platforms of both political parties.
You may not know much about “Uncle Tom,” though, if you only read mainstream U.S. media outlets. Elder says he’s been interviewed by reporters from Sweden, Australia, and England about the film.
The response stateside? Mostly crickets save select conservative outlets. Newsweek ran a piece on the film prior to its June 19 release, Elder notes. A conservative pundit covered it for the Chicago Tribune.
Elder can’t hide his disgust that the L.A. Times, his hometown paper, ignored the film, too. It’s part of a noticeable pattern.
“Not a single one of my books has been reviewed by the L.A. Times,” he says. “I’m a hometown boy and I can’t get arrested by the L.A. Times.”
<div id="attachment_131642" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-131642" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-131642" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Allen-West-973x576.jpg" alt="Allen West" width="800" height="474" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Allen-West-973x576.jpg 973w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Allen-West-300x178.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Allen-West-768x455.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Allen-West.jpg 1351w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />Courtesy Larry Elder</div>
So how could a film with little media coverage or film critic interest recoup its costs so quickly? The film’s talking heads, from Elder to Owens and Brandon Tatum, spread the word via their sizable social media accounts.
The film’s audience did its share, too. “Uncle Tom” has more than 2,000 reviews at imdb.com, most of them raves. The film’s overall rating stands at 9.4 out of 10.
Even liberals are giving the movie a chance, Elder says. Some say they were “suckered” into watching the documentary. No matter the explanation, the results are similar.
“I had no idea the grief that people like Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams get for having a different point of view,” he says.
Here’s one dramatic example from IMDB.com:
<blockquote>As a young black male who was psychologically entrenched in the &#8220;liberal sunken place&#8221; throughout his formative years, this documentary was the finalization of my red pill moment.
Uncle Tom provides all Americans a holistic understanding of when, how, and why Democratic policies have damned black America since the 60&#8217;s bringing a nuanced perspective to the issues plaguing black Americans today.
Uncle Tom is a must see documentary!</blockquote>
It wouldn’t be the first time Elder changed some hearts and minds. His long-running radio show likely does that on a regular basis. He also famously coaxed author and YouTube star Dave Rubin to leave the progressive movement following their famous dustup on race relations, captured in Rubin’s <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/toto-read-dave-rubins-dont-burn-this-book-before-its-too-late">“Don’t Burn This Book.”</a>
“Uncle Tom” isn’t Elder’s first foray into filmmaking. He previously wrote and directed 2005’s “Michael &amp; Me,” an attempt to correct far-left auteur Michael Moore’s Oscar-winning film, “Bowling for Columbine.”
<div id="attachment_131643" style="width: 810px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-131643" decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="wp-image-131643" src="https://www.dailywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Herman-Cain-1003x576.jpg" alt="Herman Cain" width="800" height="459" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Herman-Cain-1003x576.jpg 1003w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Herman-Cain-300x172.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Herman-Cain-768x441.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2020/07/Herman-Cain.jpg 1392w" sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" />Courtesy Larry Elder</div>
“I had no idea what I was doing. It’s a mediocre project at best,” he says. “‘Uncle Tom’ is light years better than that.”
“Uncle Tom’s” success has Elder thinking about a sequel among other possible film projects. And he’s not alone. He says other conservatives are getting into the film business – witness recent triumphs like “<a href="https://nosafespaces.com">No Safe Spaces</a>,” powered by talkers Adam Carolla and Dennis Prager.
“If we don’t make our own fare it’s not gonna be made,” Elder says, adding actor Antonio Sabato, Jr.’s <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/celebrities/2020/07/16/antonio-sabato-jr-plans-conservative-movie-studio/5456728002/">experience with the Hollywood Blacklist 2.0</a> reflects a growing body of frustrated conservative talent.
Dinesh D’Souza, the author and conservative pundit, considers himself a full-time filmmaker now, Elder notes, following films like “Hillary’s America” and the upcoming “Trump Card.”
“I think he’s on to something. It is that profound a medium,” Elder says.
More from Christian Toto: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/exclusive-adam-carolla-gets-raw-about-our-all-woke-no-joke-culture-friendship-with-jimmy-kimmel-truth-about-trump">Adam Carolla Gets Raw About ‘All Woke, No Joke Culture,’ Friendship With Jimmy Kimmel, Truth About Trump</a>

Larry Elder

EXCLUSIVE: Larry Elder Says U.S. Media Is Ignoring His Film On Black Conservatives

Candace Owens

Conservatism

Herman Cain

Tim Allen

Famed economist Dr. Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, warned on Sunday that the U.S. might be approaching a &#8220;point of no return&#8221; and that the tipping point that breaks the country could be the election of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to the nation&#8217;s highest office.
Appearing on Fox News&#8217;s &#8220;Life, Liberty &amp; Levin,&#8221; Sowell was asked by host Mark Levin what he thought about the current events that were taking place across the nation in reference to the riots and crime surges in the country&#8217;s inner cities.
&#8220;Well, I must say, even though I&#8217;m regarded as pessimistic, I was never pessimistic enough to think that things would degenerate to the point where they are now, where adult human beings are talking about getting rid of the police, where they&#8217;re talking about reducing the number of police, reducing the resources put into police work at a time when murder rates have been skyrocketing over what they were just a year ago in 2019,&#8221; Sowell responded.
&#8220;I never dreamed we&#8217;d come to this point,&#8221; Sowell continued. &#8220;It just seems such utter madness, and what is frightening is how many people in responsible positions are caving in to every demand that is made, repeating any kind of nonsense that you&#8217;re supposed to repeat.&#8221;
&#8220;I do believe that we may well be, we may well reach a point of no return. I hope that of course, that will never happen. But there is such a thing as a point of no return,&#8221; Sowell said. &#8220;The Roman Empire overcame many problems in its long history, but eventually it reached the point where it simply could no longer continue on, and much of that was from within, not just the Barbarians attacking from outside.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Conservative economist Thomas Sowell on the United States and the point of no return: 
&quot;I never dreamed we&#39;d come to this point. It just seems such utter madness. And what is frightening is how many people in responsible positions are caving in to every demand that is made.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/sL5Cg8dc6W">pic.twitter.com/sL5Cg8dc6W</a>
&mdash; Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1283321994625220608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;You hear this phrase systemic racism, systemic oppression,&#8221; Levin said. &#8220;You hear it on our college campuses. You hear it from very wealthy and fabulously famous sports stars. You hear it from media types.&#8221;
&#8220;First of all, what does that mean?&#8221; Levin asked. &#8220;And whatever it means, is it true?&#8221;
&#8220;It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested in the way that one tests hypotheses,&#8221; Sowell responded. &#8220;It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels during the age of the Nazis, in which he is supposed to have said that people will believe any lie if it&#8217;s repeated long enough and loud enough, and that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re getting.&#8221;
&#8220;I don&#8217;t think — it&#8217;s one of many words that I don&#8217;t think even the people who use it have any clear idea what they&#8217;re saying,&#8221; Sowell said. &#8220;Their purpose is served by having other people cave in.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Thomas Sowell condemns &quot;systemic racism&quot; as a nonsensical, meaningless concept. 
&quot;It really has no meaning that can be specified and tested that one tests hypotheses. It does remind me of the propaganda tactics of Joseph Goebbels from the age of the Nazis.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/MZLQA33PZk">pic.twitter.com/MZLQA33PZk</a>
&mdash; Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1283322392693977088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;I want to know if you agree with me or not – you don&#8217;t have to, obviously,&#8221; Levin later said. &#8220;I see the 1860 election and the 1864 election as the two most important elections in American history. And now I see 2020 as one of the most important elections in history.&#8221;
&#8220;Even apart from the candidates, we&#8217;re talking about the 1776 Project versus the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/after-backlash-from-historians-nyt-forced-to-issue-significant-correction-to-1619-project">1619 Project</a>, and you can see where the Democrats have tied into the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/historians-shred-nyt-1619-project-claiming-slavery-defines-america">1619 Project</a>, and many of the Republicans are trying to defend the founding and the 1776 Project,&#8221; Levin continued. &#8220;Do you see it that way?&#8221;
Sowell responded, &#8220;What I see is that if the election goes to Biden, that there&#8217;s a good chance that the Democrats will then control all the two branches of Congress and the White House, and considering the kinds of things that they are proposing, that could well be the point of no return for this country.&#8221;
WATCH:
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Thomas Sowell says electing Joe Biden would be the point of no return for the United States. 
&quot;If the election goes to Biden, there&#39;s a good chance the Democrats will control all two branches of Congress and the White House.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Q4hbODUbfs">pic.twitter.com/Q4hbODUbfs</a>
&mdash; Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) <a href="https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1283322868810440705?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Thomas Sowell: Biden Win Maybe ‘Point Of No Return’ For U.S.; Claims Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Nazi-Like Propaganda

2020 Election

Defund The Police

Joe Biden

Mark Levin

Race

Dr. Thomas Sowell has been both a friend and a colleague of mine for over a half-century. On June 30, he will have completed his 90th year of life, and I want to highlight some important features of that life. Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina, in 1930. As part of the great black migration northward during the 1930s and &#8217;40s, he and his family moved to Harlem, New York. Sowell attended the prestigious Stuyvesant High School but dropped out. In 1951, he was drafted into the military and assigned to the U.S. Marine Corps where he became a photographer. Photography remains his hobby today.
After his military tour of duty, Sowell took night classes at Howard University where he was encouraged to apply to Harvard University. He earned a bachelor&#8217;s degree in economics and graduated magna cum laude in 1958. The next year, he earned a master&#8217;s degree from Columbia University. Ten years later, Sowell earned a Ph.D. in economics, from the prestigious economics department at the University of Chicago. As Sowell explains in his autobiography, &#8220;A Personal Odyssey,&#8221; for most of his time in college, he considered himself a Marxist. After studying the effects of a variety of government regulations such as the minimum wage law, Sowell concluded that free markets are the best alternative, particularly for disadvantaged people.
Sowell taught economics at several universities including Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College and UCLA. Since 1980, he has been a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds the Rose and Milton Friedman fellowship. By the way, Nobel laureates Milton Friedman and George Stigler were two of Sowell&#8217;s tenacious mentors as a student at the University of Chicago.
Most of those familiar with Sowell&#8217;s writings do not have any idea about his early research interests in the history of economic thought. His dissertation, titled &#8220;Say&#8217;s Law and the General Glut Controversy,&#8221; analyzed the work of French economist Jean-Baptiste Say. His early research in the history of economic thought that appeared in refereed academic journals included writings on Sir Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Karl Marx, Samuel Bailey and Jean Charles Leonard de Sismondi. These and later writings make up his 19 scholarly publications.
Most academics do not publish that many scholarly articles in a lifetime. And, in addition, Sowell has written 56 books, among them &#8220;Say&#8217;s Law: An Historical Analysis,&#8221; &#8220;Knowledge and Decisions,&#8221; &#8220;A Conflict of Visions,&#8221; &#8220;Late-Talking Children,&#8221; &#8220;Basic Economics,&#8221; &#8220;Discrimination and Disparities&#8221; and most recently &#8220;Charter Schools and Their Enemies.&#8221; A full list of his publications can be found on his website.
Sowell&#8217;s writings do not end with scholarly publications and books. He has authored 72 essays in periodicals and books, wrote 32 book reviews and was a regular columnist for Creators Syndicate for 25 years, Forbes magazine for eight years, Scripps Howard News Service from 1984 to 1990, and the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner from 1978 to 1980. Sowell has had occasional columns in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Washington Star, Newsweek, The Times (London), Newsday and The Stanford Daily. My colleague not only writes when you and I are asleep or enjoying ourselves, but he might write with two hands.
Sowell cares about people. He believes that compassionate policy requires dispassionate analysis. He takes seriously the admonition given to physicians, &#8220;primum non nocere&#8221; (first, do no harm). In many respects, Sowell is an Austrian economist like the great Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, who often talked about elites and their &#8220;pretense of knowledge.&#8221; These are people who believe that they have the ability and knowledge to organize society in a way better than people left to their own devices — what Hayek called the fatal conceit. Their vision requires the use of the coercive powers of government.
In my book, Thomas Sowell is one of the greatest economist-philosophers of our age, and I am proud to say that he is one of my best friends. Sowell demonstrates something that is uniquely American; namely, just because you know where a person ended up in life, you cannot be sure about where he started. Unlike many other societies, an American need not start at the top to get to the top. That is something all Americans should be proud of and jealously guard — the socioeconomic mobility that comes from a relatively free society.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Book

WILLIAMS: An Underappreciated American Scholar

Economics

My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of &#8220;Discrimination and Disparities.&#8221; It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell shows that socioeconomic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it&#8217;s genetics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide.
In his book &#8220;The Philadelphia Negro&#8221; (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois posed the question as to what would happen if white people lost their prejudices overnight. He said that it would make little difference to most blacks. He said: &#8220;Some few would be promoted, some few would get new places &#8212; the mass would remain as they are&#8221; until the younger generation began to &#8220;try harder&#8221; and the race &#8220;lost the omnipresent excuse for failure: prejudice.&#8221;
Sowell points out that if historical injustices and persecution were useful explanations of group disadvantage, Jews would be some of the poorest and least-educated people in the world today. Few groups have been victimized down through history as have the Jews. Despite being historical targets of hostility and lethal violence, no one can argue that as a result Jews are the most disadvantaged people.
Jews are not alone in persecution either. The number of overseas Chinese slaughtered by Vietnamese mobs and the number of Armenians slaughtered by mobs in the Ottoman Empire in just one year exceeds the number of black Americans lynched in the history of the U.S. From 1882-1968, 4,743 total lynchings occurred in the United States, of which 3,446 of the victims were black. Sowell concludes this section suggesting that it is dangerous for society to depict outcome differences as evidence or proof of malevolent actions that need to be counterattacked or avenged. Politicians and others who are now calling for reparations to blacks for slavery should take note of Sowell&#8217;s argument.
There&#8217;s considerable handwringing among educational &#8220;experts&#8221; about the black/white academic achievement gap. Part of the persistence of that gap can be laid at the feet of educators who replaced what worked with what sounded good. One notable example of success is the achievement of students at the all-black Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., from 1870 to 1955. During that period, Dunbar students frequently outscored white students on achievement tests in the Washington, D.C., area. Sowell, who studied Dunbar and other high-achieving black schools, says, Dunbar &#8220;had unsparing standards for both school work and for such behavioral qualities a punctuality and social demeanor. Dunbar&#8217;s homework requirements were more than most other public schools. Some Dunbar parents complained to the D.C. Board of Education about the large amount of homework required.&#8221;
Dunbar High School was not the only black school with a record of success that would be the envy of today&#8217;s public schools. Schools such as Frederick Douglass (Baltimore), Booker T. Washington (Atlanta), PS 91 (Brooklyn), McDonogh 35 (New Orleans) and others operated at a similar level of excellence. By the way, these excelling students weren&#8217;t solely members of the black elite; most had parents who were manual laborers, domestic servants, porters and maintenance men.
Observing the historical success of these and other black schools, one wonders about the catchwords of Chief Justice Earl Warren&#8217;s statement that separate schools &#8220;are inherently unequal.&#8221; That vision led to racial integration going from being a means to an end to racial integration becoming an end all by itself. Sowell doesn&#8217;t say this, but in my view, integration becoming the goal is what has made diversity and inclusion the end all and be all of today&#8217;s educators at many levels.
Dr. Thomas Sowell&#8217;s &#8220;Discrimination and Disparities&#8221; is loaded with pearls of wisdom from which we can all benefit, and as such, this will not be my final discussion of his masterpiece.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

WILLIAMS: Discrimination And Disparities

Discrimination

I don&#8217;t mind saying that this column represents a grossly understated review of &#8220;Discrimination and Disparities,&#8221; just published by my longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell. In less than 200 pages, Sowell lays waste to myth after myth not only in the United States but around the globe.
One of those myths is that but for the fact of discrimination, we&#8217;d all be proportionately represented in socio-economic characteristics, such as career, income, education and incarceration. The fact of business is that there is no evidence anywhere on earth, at any time in human history, that demonstrates that but for discrimination, there would be proportionate representation in anything by race, sex, nationality or any other human characteristic. Sowell shows that socio-economic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be explained by any one factor, whether it&#8217;s genetics, discrimination or some kind of exploitation.
A study of National Merit Scholarship finalists shows that firstborns are finalists more often than their multiple siblings combined. Data from the U.S., Germany and Britain show that the average IQ of firstborns is higher than the average IQ of their later siblings. Such outcomes challenge those who believe that heredity or one&#8217;s environment is the dominant factor in one&#8217;s academic performance. Moreover, the finding shows that if there is not equality among people born to the same parents and living under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected under other conditions?
In Chapter 2, Sowell provides evidence that people won&#8217;t take racial discrimination at any cost. The higher its cost the less it will be tolerated, and vice versa. One example is segregated seating on municipal transit in the South. Many companies were privately owned, and their decision-makers understood that they could lose profits by offending their black customers by establishing segregated seating. Transportation companies fought against laws mandating racially segregated seating, both politically and in the courts, but lost. Companies even chose to ignore the law. Faced with heavy fines, though, they began to comply with the law.
The point is that the difference between the white transportation owners and the white politicians and segregationists was the transportation company owners had to bear the cost of alienating black riders and the politicians and segregationists didn&#8217;t. Sowell broadens his analysis to show that regulated companies and organizations &#8212; such as public utilities and nonprofit entities, including colleges and government agencies &#8212; will be at the forefront when it&#8217;s politically popular to discriminate against blacks but also will be at the forefront when it&#8217;s politically popular to discriminate in favor of blacks. Why? Because in either case, they don&#8217;t bear the burden of forgone profits.
In Sowell&#8217;s chapter titled &#8220;The World of Numbers,&#8221; he points out what I&#8217;m going to call out-and-out dishonesty. In 2000, a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study pointed out that 44.6 percent of black applicants were turned down for mortgages, while only 22.3 percent of whites were turned down. These and similar statistics led to charges of lending industry discrimination and demands that government do something about it. While the loan rejection rate for whites was 22.3 percent, that for Asians and native Hawaiians was only 12.4 percent. Those statistics didn&#8217;t see the light of day. Why? They didn&#8217;t fit the racial discrimination narrative. It would have been difficult for the race hustlers to convince the nation that lending institutions were discriminating against not only black applicants but white applicants, as well, in favor of Asian and native Hawaiian applicants.
At several points in the book, Sowell points to the tragedies created in the pursuit of social justice. He gives the example of the Gujaratis expelled from Uganda and the Cubans fleeing Cuba. Many of the Gujaratis arrived in Britain destitute but rose again to prosperity. It&#8217;s the same story with the Cubans who came to the U.S. and prospered. By losing their most productive people, both Uganda and Cuba became economic basket cases.
The general public, educators and politicians would benefit immensely from reading &#8220;Discrimination and Disparities,&#8221; if only to avoid being unknowingly duped.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

The Trump Justice Department recently announced to its civil rights division through an internal memo that it would begin &#8220;investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.&#8221; The Left responded by shamelessly insisting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions wanted to promote the enshrinement of white nationalism in admissions processes.
Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers&#8217; Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, insisted even challenging the notion of Affirmative Action &#8220;could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.&#8221;
I cannot help but reflect on these wise words from Thomas Sowell: &#8220;Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.&#8221;
The black Hoover Institution economist has spent years proving the vitriolic language and policies of the Left have disproportionately hurt minorities&#8217; socioeconomic wellbeing across the country and around the globe.
Now the DOJ has challenged Affirmative Action due to empirical evidence proving it damages majority and minority groups alike. One recent Princeton University study revealed that Affirmative Action policies gave black students a bonus of 230 points on SAT scores based on the 1600 scale. Meanwhile, Asian applicants were penalized 50 points. Despite the facts, the Left is in a panic.
Clarke argues that the Civil Rights Division was &#8220;created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation&#8217;s most oppressed minority groups,&#8221; revealing that the leftist concept of &#8220;intersectionality&#8221; has crept into institutions obligated to protect the civil rights of all peoples. Yet, it is proven affirmative action disproportionately affects Asian and Jewish communities.
General consensus would claim Affirmative Action is intended to aid the black community. However, study after study concludes quite the opposite: Affirmative Action hurts the black community.
Sowell recounts when he was a professor at Cornell, the average white student scored in the 99th percentile on their SATs. Therefore, the professors taught to that level. Since black students were on average the 75th percentile, they lacked the proficient skill set to keep up. Sadly, this led to academic probation for 50% of Cornell&#8217;s black students. On standardized tests, Blacks admitted into MIT scored in the top 10% of math nationwide, but once at MIT they predominantly scored in the bottom 10%.
This has been found to be consistent across higher education. According to Richard Sander and Stuart Taylor Jr., students that were mismatched with their schools because of affirmative action were left in the &#8220;bottom 20% of their classes (and the bottom 10% in law school).&#8221;
Plenty of these minority students are capable of thriving at crawling vine institutions like UCLA or Vanderbilt, just not the more elite ivy league school that admitted them for the sake of diversity.
Campus administrators and professors like Sowell understand this. In fact, when anonymity protects academia from public scrutiny, a majority of professors oppose affirmative action in hiring and admissions according to a 1996 Rapper Poll.
Why does the Left continue to turn a blind eye to empirical evidence?
Thomas Sowell argues the reason is that the left would lose their moral pedestal. &#8220;Perhaps that is because, whatever its economic and social benefits, it offers few rewards to politicians, activists, and intellectuals or to those who wish to seem morally superior by denouncing society,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Only if the goal is the advancement of the less fortunate, rather than the aggrandizement of those who would be their guardians or spokesmen or elected officials.&#8221;
Sowell said this in 2004, and he is still exactly correct. Virtue signaling about the principles of affirmative action far outweigh its negative outcomes for the Left. If the Left actually addressed the issues of affirmative action, they&#8217;d be forced to look in the mirror and confront the reality that demagoguery, intersectionality, and virtue signaling have little to do with successful policy.
Below is a video of Thomas Sowell in 2013. WSJ live and the Hoover Institution came together to discuss his book &#8220;Intellectuals and Race.&#8221; Minutes 17-21 are the most pertinent to this article.
<div class="embed video fluid-video"><iframe allowfullscreen="true" frameborder="0" height="288" width="512"></iframe></div>

Thomas Sowell Perfectly Predicted How The Left Will Defend Affirmative Action

Racism

A summer reading list of conservative books was just banned at an Alabama high school.
<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/23/health/alabama-reading-list-trnd/index.html">Gene Ponder</a>, a former Republican candidate for Alabama lieutenant governor, provided a reading list over the summer to students taking his Advanced Placement Government class at Spanish Fort High School that consisted of several books written by conservatives and libertarians, including Mark Levin, Thomas Sowell, Ronald Reagan, Walter Williams, John Stossel and Ann Coulter. Students were instructed to write a report about one of the books on the list.
Here&#8217;s the <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jun/23/alabama-high-school-pulls-conservative-reading-lis/">full list</a>:
<div class="embed tweet">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en">
Spanish Fort High School in Alabama gave this AP Government summer reading list.
RT if you agree that this propaganda isn&#8217;t okay. <a href="https://t.co/FzsxAX2lhS">pic.twitter.com/FzsxAX2lhS</a>
&#8212; Rachel Gonzalez (@RachelGonKCMO) <a href="https://twitter.com/RachelGonKCMO/status/877579961103556608">June 21, 2017</a></blockquote>
</div>
Social media posts like the above tweet spread throughout the community, as some were outraged over the &#8220;lack of diversity of ideas,&#8221; which is ironic given that academia is generally hostile to viewpoints that run counter to left-wing orthodoxy.
Nevertheless, the complaints about it caused the Baldwin County Board of Education to force Ponder to rescind the reading list.
Baldwin County Superintendent Eddie Tyler <a href="http://www.gulfcoastnewstoday.com/stories/spanish-fort-high-ap-reading-list-pulled-after-concerns-from-residents,50812">said</a> in a statement, &#8220;Mr. Ponder&#8217;s reading list that is going around on social media has not been endorsed by the school system. The list has been removed by the teacher. Baldwin County Public Schools has a process to vet and approve reading lists so that a variety of sources are used. I expect all employees to follow our processes, procedures and policies.&#8221;
Fox News&#8217; Todd Starnes didn&#8217;t buy Tyler&#8217;s excuse.
&#8220;Yeah, right,&#8221; <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/06/23/alabama-school-bans-reagan-coulter-levin-summer-reading-list.html">wrote</a> Starnes. &#8220;Why do I get the feeling the controversy surrounding Mr. Ponder&#8217;s reading list was more about politics instead of procedures?&#8221;
Indeed, it seems hard to believe that Ponder would have been forced to pull his list if it had consisted solely of left-wing authors like Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Toobin.
The incident highlights the fierce grip the political left holds on the current education system and the need &#8220;to break up the monopoly&#8221; it has over America&#8217;s schools, as Levin <a href="https://www.facebook.com/LevinTV/videos/vb.1546815202270918/1938322456453522/?type=2&amp;theater">said</a> during a Friday Facebook live stream.
&#8220;School choice, whether it&#8217;s tax credits, whether it&#8217;s vouchers, whatever it is we need it,&#8221; Levin said.
<a href="https://twitter.com/bandlersbanter">Follow Aaron Bandler on Twitter.</a>

This School Board Just Banned A Summer Reading List Of Conservative Books

Ann Coulter

Ronald Reagan

In what we can only hope is the final heartbreak of 2016, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution Thomas Sowell announced his retirement from his syndicated column. Sowell isn&#8217;t just one of the great thinkers of our time. He&#8217;s a genuine voice of decency and truth in a time when screaming and hysterics gain headlines. His voice will be missed every week.
Sowell, who is 86, announced his retirement because he&#8217;s simply tired of writing about politics every week. &#8220;Being old-fashioned, I liked to know what the facts were before writing. That required not only a lot of research, it also required keeping up with what was being said in the media. During a stay in Yosemite National Park last May, taking photos with a couple of my buddies, there were four consecutive days without seeing a newspaper or a television news program &#8212; and it felt wonderful.&#8221;
That is perfectly understandable.
Sowell&#8217;s final thoughts are typically well-stated: America has progressed materially in &#8220;almost unbelievable&#8221; fashion. &#8220;Most Americans did not have refrigerators back in 1930, when I was born,&#8221; Sowell says. &#8220;My own family did not have electricity or hot running water, in my early childhood, which was not unusual for blacks in the South in those days.&#8221; Implicit in this reminiscence is a celebration of America: a black child growing up in the segregated south is now one of the most important political thinkers in America, living in wealth. That&#8217;s almost unbelievable, too.
Sowell also laments the state of our politics. &#8220;Politics, and especially citizens&#8217; trust in their government, has gone way downhill,&#8221; Sowell writes. &#8220;Years of lying Presidents &#8211; Democrat Lyndon Johnson and Republican Richard Nixon, especially &#8211; destroyed not only their own credibility, but the credibility which the office itself conferred.&#8221; Sowell concludes, &#8220;We cannot return to the past, even if we wanted to, but let us hope that we can learn something from the past to make for a better present and future.&#8221;
Sowell has made sure we learn something. For years, I&#8217;ve named Sowell as the man I&#8217;d most love to see as president. That doesn&#8217;t end just because his column has.
Here&#8217;s a brief list of some of my favorite Sowell books:
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0684864630/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-9&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">The Quest For Cosmic Justice</a>: Sowell explains where leftist desire to rule springs from, and why they can&#8217;t accept the world of reality.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Basic-Economics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465060730/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-3&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">Basic Economics</a>: Sowell&#8217;s seminal work, and one that every high school and college student should read and re-read.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wealth-Poverty-Politics-Thomas-Sowell/dp/046509676X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-1&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">Wealth, Poverty, and Politics</a>: Sowell breaks down why income inequality occurs. Brilliant and necessary in today&#8217;s Bernie Sanders world.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Black-Rednecks-Liberals-Thomas-Sowell/dp/1594031436/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-4&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">Black Rednecks and White Liberals</a>: Sowell skewers sacred racial cows with abandon, and brings enlightenment to an area everyone wants to avoid.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Intellectuals-Race-Thomas-Sowell/dp/0465058728/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">Intellectuals and Race</a>: More from Sowell on race, particularly what obsesses leftists about race.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Conflict-Visions-Ideological-Political-Struggles/dp/0465002056/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1482852899&amp;sr=1-11&amp;keywords=Thomas+Sowell">A Conflict of Visions</a>: Sowell investigates the deeper roots of political philosophy.
All of Sowell&#8217;s work is worth reading. Check it out now.

Farewell to Thomas Sowell, Dean of Conservative Columnists

Some on the right are embracing a form of government policy as a means to end poverty: universal basic income. The notion has been championed by conservative and libertarian scholars like <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-guaranteed-income-for-every-american-1464969586">Charles Murray</a> and Milton Friedman, while others like <a href="https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/06/16/is-personal-responsibility-obsolete">Thomas Sowell</a> are vehemently opposed to the idea.
Which viewpoint is correct?
The Daily Wire will provide you with the case for and against universal basic income, and let you make up your own mind.
The Case For Universal Basic Income
The likes of Murray and Friedman argue that universal basic income provides a good alternative to the welfare state&#8211;instead of the bureaucratic quagmire of several federal and state government programs providing a various cash and welfare benefits, there is simply one streamlined cash flow to individuals.
Murray explains the details of his idea of universal basic income:
<blockquote>
Second, the system has to be designed with certain key features. In my version, every American citizen age 21 and older would get a $13,000 annual grant deposited electronically into a bank account in monthly installments. Three thousand dollars must be used for health insurance (a complicated provision I won&#8217;t try to explain here), leaving every adult with $10,000 in disposable annual income for the rest of their lives.
People can make up to $30,000 in earned income without losing a penny of the grant. After $30,000, a graduated surtax reimburses part of the grant, which would drop to $6,500 (but no lower) when an individual reaches $60,000 of earned income. Why should people making good incomes retain any part of the UBI? Because they will be losing Social Security and Medicare, and they need to be compensated.
</blockquote>
Murray acknowledged in his piece that there would be an increase in &#8220;net voluntary dropout from the labor force: since they&#8217;re given a guaranteed stream of income, but it&#8217;s necessary to get others who were previously on welfare back in the labor force. It also provides as a safety net for those who will have their jobs displaced by automation.
&#8220;The entire bureaucratic apparatus of government social workers would disappear, but Americans would still possess their historic sympathy and social concern,&#8221; Murray wrote. &#8220;And the wealth in private hands would be greater than ever before. It is no pipe dream to imagine the restoration, on an unprecedented scale, of a great American tradition of voluntary efforts to meet human needs. It is how Americans, left to themselves, have always responded. Figuratively, and perhaps literally, it is in our DNA.&#8221;
The cost of some sort of universal basic income would likely come at around $2.14 trillion, per <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/08/why-arent-reformicons-pushing-a-guaranteed-basic-income/375600/">The Atlantic</a>.
The Case Against Universal Basic Income
Critics of the universal basic income like Sowell and the Manhattan Institute&#8217;s <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/436621/universal-basic-income-ubi-terrible-idea">Oren Cass</a> argue that universal basic income is unworkable and goes against conservative values.
Cass points out at National Review that it would be impossible to simply replace Medicare and Social Security with the universal basic income, noting that &#8220;Medicare already spends more than $11,000 per recipient; Social Security spends $16,000.&#8221;
&#8220;Murray&#8217;s UBI covers only half of what the elderly&#8217;s &#8216;earned&#8217; entitlements paid,&#8221; writes Cass. &#8220;Anyone left to rely on the UBI would be unable to afford both Medicare-quality insurance and other essentials.&#8221;
Therefore, any sort of universal basic income would likely be added on to the welfare state rather than replacing the welfare state, which would only worsen the problem.
Cass also argues that it&#8217;s silly to think that they&#8217;ll lose jobs to automation, given that the economy has added &#8220;80 million net jobs since computers started coming on the scene in the 1960s and more than 25 million since the Internet became mainstream in the 1990s,&#8221; meaning that even as new technology has developed and replaced old jobs, new jobs still find a way to spring up in its place.
Also, the notion that universal basic income would end poverty is highly misleading, because what constitutes as poverty is arbitrarily defined by the government.
&#8220;Most Americans living below the official poverty line today have central air-conditioning, cable television for multiple TV sets, own at least one motor vehicle, and have many other amenities that most of the human race never had for most of its existence,&#8221; writes Sowell. &#8220;Most Americans did not have central air-conditioning or cable television as recently as the 1980s. A scholar who spent years studying Latin America has called the poverty line in America the upper middle class in Mexico.&#8221;
But most importantly, universal basic income violates basic conservative tenants: it discourages personal responsibility and working&#8211;the skills and self-worth that come with it&#8211;and places the government as society&#8217;s caretaker rather than individuals, families and communities&#8211;the exact opposite of the civil society that is the bedrock of conservatism.
&#8220;The track record of divorcing personal rewards from personal contributions hardly justifies more of the same, even when it is in a more sophisticated form,&#8221; writes Sowell. &#8220;Sophisticated social disaster is still disaster &#8212; and we already have too much of that.&#8221;

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Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell And Ben Shapiro Discuss How Social Justice Ideology Leads To Loss Of Freedom

WATCH: The Great Thomas Sowell: Who Is He?

Walter E. Williams, R.I.P.

EXCLUSIVE: Larry Elder Says U.S. Media Is Ignoring His Film On Black Conservatives

Thomas Sowell: Biden Win Maybe ‘Point Of No Return’ For U.S.; Claims Of ‘Systemic Racism’ Nazi-Like Propaganda

WILLIAMS: An Underappreciated American Scholar

WILLIAMS: Discrimination And Disparities

WILLIAMS: Discrimination And Disparities

Thomas Sowell Perfectly Predicted How The Left Will Defend Affirmative Action

This School Board Just Banned A Summer Reading List Of Conservative Books

Farewell to Thomas Sowell, Dean of Conservative Columnists

The Case For And Against Universal Basic Income