THOMAS SOWELL, SYSTEMIC RACISM, AND STATISTICS
Thomas Sowell is an American economist, turned social
theorist, political philosopher, and author. He is currently Senior Fellow at
the Hoover Institution, Stanford. (Wikipedia)
Disparities in outcome do not prove systemic racism (SR).
Instead, Sowell argues that statistics have been erroneously invoked to make
charges of SR. One example is that blacks have been turned down for loans twice
as much as whites. However, the charge of racism can only be made if certain
other stats are ignored. Sowell writes:
·
If such data are included, it turns out that, in
2000, black applicants were turned down for prime mortgage loans twice as often
as white applicants—and white applicants were turned down nearly twice as often
as Asian American applicants. (Intellectuals and Race)
Sowell reasons that since it cannot be that whites are
turned down twice as often as Asians because of racism, then there is no clear
grounds to assume SR in regards to the rejection of blacks. Besides:
·
black-owned banks turn down black mortgage loan
applicants at an even higher rate than do white-owned banks, and it seems
equally unlikely that this is due to racial discrimination.
The Left can point to disparities to erroneously use them to
prove SR and to inflame blacks against the system. Sowell demonstrates that the
misuse of statistics doesn't stop there:
·
It is much the same story in the public schools,
where black students are disciplined for misbehavior more often than white
students—who in turn are disciplined more often than Asian American students.
Therefore, these simple disparities do not constitute
evidence of white discrimination against blacks.
Sowell credits the paternalistic Left and its “I know better
than you” attitude for the problems in his community:
·
At the heart of the Left’s vision of the world —
and of themselves — is that they know better what is good for other people.
This means that the Left sees itself as having both a right and a duty to take
away other people’s options.
Sowell had experienced this “I know what’s better for you”
attitude in many ways:
·
Many years ago, in a debate on William F.
Buckley’s program Firing Line, I was told by a left-wing lawyer that black
parents without a good education themselves could not make wise choices for
their children’s education. But hard evidence says otherwise. There are whole
chains of charter schools, such as the KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program)
schools and the Success Academy schools, where ghetto kids have academic
achievements equal to those of children in affluent suburbs — and sometimes
higher achievements…Black parents who enroll their children in charter schools
have apparently made better choices than the know-it-alls on the left.
Sowell also claims that the “I know best” Left has also hurt
and marginalized by denigrating law-enforcement:
·
When it comes to crime and violence, the
political Left, including much of the media, are having a great time demonizing
the police. Blacks are the biggest victims of the sharp upturn in murders that
has followed. But, yet again, hard evidence carries very little weight when the
Left is feeling good about themselves, while leaving havoc in their wake. The
absurdity to which this kind of media frenzy about the police can lead is shown
by the fact that a black policeman in Charlotte, North Carolina, shooting a
black suspect who had a gun, has been blown up into a racial issue across the
nation. Have we become so gullible that we are so easily manipulated and
stampeded?
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/441176/california-ballot-proposition-58-shows-left-taking-school-choices-away-parents
The “divide and conquer” Leftist strategy has hurt whites as
well as blacks:
·
None of the most popular political panaceas for
helping black communities has a track record of making things better, and some
have made things much worse. (Sowell)
This should raise the question, “Who really cares, who is
truly our friends, and who is just using us are a pawn to support their
political agenda?” According to Sowell:
·
Many things that are supposed to help blacks
actually have a track record of making things worse. Minimum wage laws have had
a devastating effect in making black teenage unemployment several times higher
than it once was.
·
In later years, as the minimum wage was
repeatedly raised to keep up with inflation, black teenage unemployment from
1971 through 1994 was never less than 3 times what it was in 1948, and ranged
as high as more than 5 times the 1948 level. It also became far higher than the
unemployment rate of whites the same age.
Ironically, the Left continues to unfold their charges of SR
and the alleged racist attempts to maintain “white privilege,” creating hatred,
distrust, and polarization However, the Left’s attempts to replace the present
system might have done more to un-privilege the black community than anything
else. Sowell charges:
·
The relations between the police and the black
community are another issue that has gotten a lot of attention, and produced
counterproductive results. After all the rhetoric and all the efforts towards
more tightly restraining the police, the net result has been that murder rates
have soared in cities where that policy has been followed — and most of the
people killed have been black.
Our culture of blame and shame refuses to compare the status
of blacks before and after the institution of their liberal policies. However,
Sowell wants us to see the larger picture:
·
In my own life, I was very fortunate when I left
home in 1948, at age 17 — a high school dropout with no skills or experience.
At that time, the unemployment rate of black 16- and 17-year-old males was 9.4
percent. For white males the same ages, it was 10.2 percent. http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell091316.php3#4KH2HlYyLYYSVZxU.99
The Left has little interest in such statistics, only those
that they can twist to show that our entire system is so corrupt that it must
be removed.
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