“As to so-called ‘affirmative action” …I am old-fashioned enough to be against it simply because it is wrong…I cannot find the cleverness to justify discrimination now, either to others or to myself.” – A Man of Letters
A few years back, a poll was taken to determine the Greatest Player of All Time. Michael Jordan led the pack, followed by Babe Ruth, Muhammad Ali, and even our girl, Serena Williams, broke into the top five. Yet not all greatness is measured in the field of athletics. If I had a vote, my Greatest Player of a different sort would be Thomas Sowell. Therefore, to celebrate his 90th birthday today, June 30, 2020, I pay tribute to one of America’s Greatest Intellectual Scholars. Born in 1930, Sowell’s life started simply, as he described, without hot water, heat, or electricity. His family's ongoing poverty would force him to drop out of school as a teen, before eventually earning his diploma at night school. Drafted in 1951, Sowell served in the Korean War as a US Marine before attending college with the help of the G.I. Bill. He graduated from Harvard, Columbia, and the University of Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D.
An avowed Marxist throughout his 20s, Sowell discovered the errors of his ways while working as an Economist at the Department of Labor analyzing minimum wage laws, and quickly changed course. While compiling IQ data for the Urban Institute project, Sowell describes finding the IQ score from his school in Harlem, at a time when he was attending and struggling to keep pace. The average IQ was 84! Yet within a few years, he had gained enough ground to match his peers who had IQs over 120. Sowell's own experience and subsequent research revealed that IQs rise as circumstances change. Since then, through his many columns and commentary, Sowell unknowingly became a mentor to many, including me. His written analyses cover a vast array of subjects but are exceptionally strong in the areas of race, something he knows well.
Sowell the Economist: “Every census from 1890 through 1930 showed blacks with a higher labor force participation rate than whites. In recent years it is just the reverse, and the gap is widening…The Fair Labor Standards Act (minimum wage laws) - has simply priced inexperienced black youngsters out of the market.” Known mostly as an economist, Sowell wrote often about the impact of minimum wage laws, particularly on black teens. From the end of slavery to the mid-1900s, black unemployment was lower than whites; there was a higher percentage of married blacks than whites, and poverty was in decline. Minimum wage laws reversed that course by increasing unemployment for the unskilled and the young. These job losses disproportionately prevented young blacks from getting a foothold on the ladder to better jobs and opportunities. While the key to success for all Americans is through the economic system, minimum wage laws contributed to a shift from using industry to prosper, to employing political tactics instead. Some blacks have all but abandoned work, ceding to a life of dependency. And while black billionaires have begun to advance the idea of reparations, Sowell's own life stands in direct defiance to using further preference as a substitute for economic progress.
Sowell the Social Theorist: “To me, the psychology of the Negro is the biggest single obstacle to race progress.” With barriers to employment placed in their way by government interference, the easiest means to success seemed to come through special treatment via quotas and other advantages. Separate treatment is not only morally wrong, but it also diminishes the critical values needed to develop a good work ethic. Sowell notes that despite the racial discrimination that existed during his upbringing, his generation had not only a better education but a better attitude in which to surmount it. Today, the barriers to black achievement have been reduced to excuses, paranoia, dependency, and lower standards of behavior. The mindset that saw racial quotas and racial preferences as the answer, has prevented blacks from meeting the basic standards important to their development and future success in life.
Sowell on Education: “Poor test scores reflect their (blacks) actual level of achievement, not test bias.” Preferential treatment on college campuses has led to a lowering of admission standards for blacks. Affirmative action has cruelly placed some blacks into colleges with standards higher than their abilities, leading to unintended failure that could have been avoided. Some schools refuse to flunk black students, simply because they are black. But blacks, like all students, need accurate testing, and accurate grades to assess their situations and guide their lives. Advancing mediocre students has created problems for more competent blacks whose own achievements are then in question. History has shown that blacks actually did better in schools during the first half of the 20th century than in the latter. In grade schools and high schools, some black students who excel in the classroom are now harassed and accused of acting white.
In Thomas Sowell’s 2007 book, “A Man of Letters”, Sowell recounts his life and career through letters sent and received over four decades beginning in the 1960s when he was a graduate student in Chicago. Both personally and professionally, Sowell’s letters narrate the course of history from the civil rights movement to the social and political events that followed. It is a unique retelling of the history of our country, as it happened in real time.
It is fair to say that few have done more to advance the cause of liberty in our time than Thomas Sowell. Despite growing up in a time of racial inequalities and poverty, Sowell excelled on his own merit. The past decade has seen various challenges to raise money and awareness for pet causes. Therefore, I will suggest a challenge of my own. To commit to reading the entire Thomas Sowell library from one of his earliest, “Knowledge and Decisions”, to his most recent “Charter Schools and Their Enemies” published today. Doing so will not only make you a more informed individual but a better human being. Happy 90th Birthday, sir.
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