{"id":186,"date":"2011-08-07T22:08:03","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T02:08:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=186"},"modified":"2011-08-07T22:08:03","modified_gmt":"2011-08-08T02:08:03","slug":"black-and-conservative-a-look-at-thomas-sowell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2011\/08\/black-and-conservative-a-look-at-thomas-sowell.html","title":{"rendered":"Black and Conservative: A Look at Thomas Sowell"},"content":{"rendered":"

While it is true that the majority of black Americans lean leftward, and while it is no less true that the majority of black American intellectuals <\/em>are full blown leftists, there are <\/em>black American thinkers who have decidedly\u2014and decisively\u2014repudiated leftist ideology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thomas Sowell is one such thinker.<\/p>\n

Sowell is a conservative in the classical or traditional sense of that term. That is to say, Sowell\u2019s thought is located squarely within the intellectual tradition of which Edmund Burke is widely recognized as the inspiration.<\/p>\n

Burke, it may be recalled, articulated that vision that subsequent generations would call \u201cconservatism\u201d in response to the abstract, rationalist metaphysics that the Jacobins enlisted in the service of the French Revolution.\u00a0 Although rationalism is a philosophical disposition that has manifested itself in many places and at many times, it reached its zenith during the Revolution.\u00a0 That is, it is during this <\/em>time that its erroneous character, translating, as it did, into an unmitigated disaster, compelled the attention of critics like Burke.<\/p>\n

Like Burke and other conservatives before him, Sowell has distinguished himself as among the most notable\u2014and scathing\u2014critics of rationalism of our generation. In his seminal Knowledge and Decisions, <\/em>Sowell says of rationalism that it \u201caccepts only what can \u2018justify\u2019 itself to \u2018reason\u2019\u2014with reason being narrowly conceived to mean articulated specifics.\u201d\u00a0 That the rationalist relies upon \u201chighly rational intellectual \u2018models\u2019 of human behavior\u201d that \u201csuffer from an air of unreality\u201d is born out by the consideration that they consist of \u201chypothetical, computer-like incremental adjustments by coolly calculating decision makers\u201d\u2014not <\/em>\u201cthe flesh-and-blood reality of decision by inertia, whim, panic, or rule of thumb.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Apparently, many people who are familiar with Sowell\u2019s work fail to realize that it is ultimately rationalistic <\/em>accounts of inter-group differences that he has spent much of his life combating.\u00a0 Sowell pays particularly close attention to \u201cthe animistic fallacy,\u201d a staple of rationalist thought.\u00a0 The animistic fallacy is the doctrine that whenever there is a pattern of some sort, there is \u201cpurposeful activity toward the goal achieved [.]\u201d\u00a0 When statistical disparities between racial, ethnic, and religious groups are attributed to \u201cdiscrimination\u201d or \u201cracism,\u201d you know that the animistic fallacy is at work.<\/p>\n

However, rationalism is no less implicated by genetic-based theories of inter-group disparities.\u00a0 This is especially interesting given the mutual exclusivity of the discrimination and genetic models.\u00a0 Sowell writes:<\/p>\n

\u201cIronically, the innate inferiority [genetic] doctrine and the opposed \u2018equal representation\u2019 [discrimination] doctrine proceed on the same intellectual premise\u2014that one can go from innate ability to observed result without major concern for intervening cultural factors<\/em> (emphasis mine).\u201d<\/p>\n

All <\/em>rationalist theories, whether they are oriented toward racial or other issues, render culture or tradition <\/em>negligible.\u00a0 But since it is his study of racially-oriented topics that most accentuates the anti-rationalist, conservative presuppositions informing Sowell\u2019s worldview, it is upon this topic that we will here focus.<\/p>\n

The version of rationalism with which Sowell has spent considerable time reckoning is what he calls \u201cthe civil rights vision\u201d (what I will term \u201cCRV\u201d from this point onward).\u00a0 As we have already noted, at the heart of the CRV lies the principle that statistical inequalities among groups can only be accounted for in terms of discrimination.\u00a0 <\/em>This principle, in turn, presupposes three plausible yet demonstrably false assumptions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first,\u201d Sowell explains, \u201cis that discrimination leads to adverse effects on the observable achievements of those who are discriminated against, as compared to the discriminators or to society in general.\u201d\u00a0 The second is only slightly less evident than the first.\u00a0 \u201cThe second assumption is\u2026that statistical differences signal, imply and\/or measure discrimination.\u201d\u00a0 And the third and perhaps most critical notion to the CRV is \u201cthat large statistical differences between groups do not usually arise and persist without discrimination\u201d\u2014i.e. discrimination is necessary <\/em>in order to account for such differences.<\/p>\n

The CRV, Sowell states bluntly, is false.\u00a0 Statistical disparities are \u201ccommonplace\u201d in societies throughout the world, a brute empirical fact owing to many \u201chistorical and cultural reasons\u201d that haven\u2019t anything at all to do with discrimination.\u00a0 In fact, the historical record is replete with accounts of groups\u2014Jews in lands throughout the world, the Chinese in Southeast Asia, East Indians throughout different continents, Japanese in America, etc.\u2014that by any number of social indicia were more successful <\/em>than the majority populations with which they co-existed in spite of <\/em>having been systematically discriminated against by the latter.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Take the Japanese in America, for example.\u00a0 The Japanese \u201cencountered persistent and escalating discrimination, culminating in their mass internment during World War II,\u201d it is true; but within a little more than a decade following the war\u2019s end, they \u201chad about equaled the income of whites,\u201d and a decade after that, \u201cJapanese American families were earning nearly one-third higher incomes than the average American family.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Blacks, Sowell admits, constitute a \u201cspecial case,\u201d given their history inAmerica.\u00a0 But even with respect to blacks, the idea that discrimination explains the statistical discrepancies between this group and others fails.\u00a0 Blacks in Latin America, Sowell informs us, never suffered remotely the degree of discrimination that they suffered inAmerica.\u00a0 However, economically speaking, blacks in, say,Brazil are significantly further behind blacks in the United States.<\/p>\n

Even when we look more closely at blacks in the United States, we discover further strikes against the CRV\u2019s discrimination model of inter-group disparities (and, for that matter, the genetic model).\u00a0 If the high rates of crime, illegitimacy, incarceration, and other such pathological phenomena that we witness among contemporary blacks were either \u201ca legacy of slavery\u201d or rooted in nature, then we shouldn\u2019t expect to learn that such pathologies are relatively recent.\u00a0 But this is <\/em>what we learn.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sowell states: \u201cMost black children, even under slavery, grew up in two parent households.\u201d\u00a0 Moreover, \u201cas late as the 1920\u2019s, \u201ca teenage girl raising a child with no man present was a rarity among blacks [.]\u201d<\/p>\n

As for crime, in 1984, Sowell wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cFew people today are aware that the ghettos in many cities were far safer places just two generations ago than they are today, both for blacks and whites.\u00a0 Incredulity often greets stories by older blacks as to their habit of sleeping out on fire escapes or on rooftops or in public parks on hot summer nights.\u00a0 Many of those same people would not dare to walk through those same parks today in broad daylight.\u201d<\/p>\n

If crime among blacks is \u201ca legacy of slavery,\u201d if it is the product of discrimination, then one would expect for it to have been much worse during a time when discrimination was much worse.\u00a0 But, what we see is that in generations past, when blacks encountered much more discrimination than anything of which contemporary blacks are familiar, crime, like illegitimacy, black youth unemployment, and other social indicia, didn\u2019t remotely approximate the perilous levels at which they currently stand.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is indeed much in the way of their own intellectual tradition that conservatives, black, white, and other, can learn from Thomas Sowell.\u00a0 And there is much in the way of race relations that Americans of all colors and political persuasions can learn from him as well.<\/p>\n

Jack Kerwick, Ph.D.\u00a0<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While it is true that the majority of black Americans lean leftward, and while it is no less true that the majority of black American intellectuals are full blown leftists, there are black American thinkers who have decidedly\u2014and decisively\u2014repudiated leftist ideology.\u00a0 Thomas Sowell is one such thinker. 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