Intellectuals and Race

Excellent read from a brilliant and logical thinker!

Sowell gives a scathing condemnation of intelligentsia's tendency to err, censor, and avoid science when it comes to popular ideas. Well-researched and well-written, Sowell decimates both the early tendency to explain racial differences by pointing to white superiority, and also the later tendency to explain those same racial differences by pointing to racism (which he seems to view as a type of white inferiority). Instead, Sowell believes that group differences stem from another source: other types of group differences. For example, each race has a different culture and even a different average population age. These racial differences, and many others, of course lead to racial differences in wealth, crime rates, and IQ scores. Given the fact that there is a near-infinite variety of group-based differences, including vastly disparate cultures, it would be shocking if racial disparities did NOT exist in almost any measure. Unlike what a previous reviewer said, Sowell does address intellectual differences among mulattos or people of mixed race. Northerners score higher on IQ tests than Southerners, in general. Sowell concludes it is no surprise that "black hicks" (who have moved to the North more recently) do poorly on IQ tests in comparison with "white Northerners." Similarly, people of mixed race often have ancestors who lived in the North for a longer period of time and so they have higher, more "Northern" IQ scores. Sowell also debunks the theory that, because race disparities in IQ have remained fairly consistent over time, that means race disparities in IQ are innate. IQ tests are graded so differently now than they were fifty years ago that blacks today are currently scoring higher than whites were fifty years ago. Either all of our innate hardware is changing quickly (unlikely), or the intellectual skills measured by IQ tests are much more a function of culture than we previously thought. Sowell critiques the intelligentsia urge to impose top-down "solutions" on others. He believes that trying to remedy cosmic injustices by implementing social policies often backfires, and particularly focuses on the ways that affirmative action, race-based leniency in lending, and welfare have harmed the very populations that they are intended to help. For anyone interested in the related way that social policy intended to reduce verbal discrimination has similarly harmed the populations that its trying to help, I strongly recommend Free Speech for Me (But Not for Thee), Unlearning Liberty, and A Slap In The Face. Oddly, once you enact hate speech codes, its often minority members and unorthodox thinkers who authorities believe have "course" language. Funny how that works...

Let me start with a quick word of warning: "Most, but not all, of these chapters first appeared in a special section on race that was added to the revised edition of a much larger and more sweeping study, Intellectuals and Society: Revised and Expanded Edition . Here I have belatedly taken the advice of my research assistant Na Liu, and published these chapters in a separate book for those who wish to focus on racial issues, rather than take on the larger and more time-consuming task of traveling on a more sweeping journey across the landscape of intellectuals' influences on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace." So, if you have bought, or plan to read, the revised edition of I&S, then you may not feel the need to purchase this book separately, although there are some chapters in this book which are not in I&S. That said, I have only read one other book by Thomas Sowell - Dismantling America: and other controversial essays . Overall, I was not too terribly impressed or swayed by much of what I read there. I did find myself however in agreement with the things Mr. Sowell had to say here in this book, Intellectuals and Race. I have read quite a bit in regards to race and all that goes with that. Some of the books which go into a great deal more detail, but also coincide with the general gist of this book, are: Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others , Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind , Us and Them: The Science of Identity , Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress , The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself , and Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World . In essence, you may agree or disagree with Sowell's premise, but I believe the general sweep of history supports his contentions, which this excerpt from Chapter 4 roughly conveys: "Although economic and social inequalities among racial and ethnic groups have attracted much attention from intellectuals, seldom today has this attention been directed primarily toward how the less economically successful and less socially prestigious groups might improve themselves by availing themselves of the culture of others around them, so as to become more productive and compete more effectively with other groups in the economy. When David Hume urged his fellow eighteenth-century Scots to master the English language, as they did, both he and they were following a pattern very different from the pattern of most minority intellectuals and their respective groups in other countries around the world. The spectacular rise of the Scots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - eventually surpassing the English in engineering and medicine, for example - was also an exception, rather than the rule. A much more common pattern has been one in which the intelligentsia have demanded an equality of economic outcomes and of social recognition, irrespective of the skills, behavior or performance of the group to which they belong or on whose behalf they spoke. In some countries today, any claim that intergroup differences in outcomes are dismissed by the intelligentsia as false "perceptions," "prejudices," or "stereotypes," or else are condemned as "blaming the victim." Seldom are any of these assertions backed up by empirical evidence or logical analysis that would make them anything more than arbitrary assertions that happen to be in vogue among contemporary intellectual elites." In sum, I think that both the historical analysis and global perspective which Sowell uses work together to support the idea that indigenous cultural differences (as opposed to genetic or discriminatory explanations) go further in explicating why certain minority groups excel, or flounder, in the presence of majority cultures. I would certainly recommend this book as worthy for anyone to read.

Wow. I've been reading on topics of this nature for almost 15 years, yet mostly political. I am so glad to have found Sowell. While I previously have reached many conclusions in this book by my own research, he has affirmed a great deal. Beyond that, and in the majority, he, in this text, has opened my eyes to the depth of research available, and reasoned so strongly why many do NOT want to accept it's prevalence. It's a shame, and I yearn for our kids to have access to works of this nature. Impeccably presented, and he so skillfully transitions from intellectual to lay conversation on most major points, to capture readers on various levels. I will be reading all of his works, and wish I had started as an adolescent.

By “intellectuals”, Sowell means people whose work begins and ends by creating or disseminating ideas that are not supported by factual evidence. They judge their ideas by whether they “sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public”. Intellectuals therefore differ from scientists, whose work often also begins and ends by creating or disseminating ideas, but these have to be supported by factual evidences on which their peers will base their judgment. His main thesis is that, although African-Americans have clearly been subject to intense “racial discrimination” in the past and are still now subjected to both positive and, to a far lesser extent, negative discrimination, “racial discrimination” is NOT the main cause of the current differences in performance between blacks and other ethnic groups – contrary to what most intellectuals claim “without a spec of evidence”. He furthermore shows that these differences are largely due to other causes, the main one being cultural differences, especially the current culture of victimhood, resentment and grievance that intellectual’s ideologies of “racial discrimination” have promoted inside black communities. Sowell provides many factual evidences supporting his thesis, such as many cases worldwide where subgroups have underperformed in the clear absence of “racial discrimination”, or where subgroups clearly subjected to “racial discrimination” have outperformed the ruling group. He shows how African-Americans’ performance has overall deteriorated since the advent of the civil right movements and the outlawing of “racial discrimination” against them, and how affirmative action has globally been detrimental to African-Americans achievements. Throughout his book, his arguments are well supported by numerous references to reputable sources, although many of them are rather old. My only two (minor) criticisms are: (a) At a few places, some facts are not sufficiently developed to fully support his arguments. (b) In chapter 5 “Race and Intelligence”, he develops at length some convincing arguments against the heredity hypothesis, but fails to even mention any of the arguments supporting it. However, he courageously takes the defence of the book “The Bell Curve” against “the firestorm among the intelligentsia” that it ignited for suggesting a genetic origin to some of the interracial IQ differences.

Great book! Thomas Sowell is a legend and should be much more known in wider society. The book survived the packaging and shipping, and arrived in good shape.

Empirically dispels many of the presuppositions concerning race, through providing historical accounts and experiences of race and constructing a powerful argument that will be very insightful for the objective reader, who is willing to lay their emotions aside to focus on the evidence. As is typical with Thomas Sowell, he provides a thorough, objective and relatively easy to read piece of research which I believe will be interesting for every demographic of readers, given the ethnographic breadth and depth of the book. I would certainly recommend reading this as well as opposing arguments to come to your own conclusion, that is what true critical thinking is about.

AWESOME

) Great book and it came fast :)