“Just the facts, ma’am.” That was Joe Friday’s interrogation refrain on Dragnet. The same comment could serve as the sub-title of Thomas Sowell’s recent book, Discrimination and Disparities. Few works focused on politically explosive topics maintain such a consistent focus on empirical evidence while avoiding rhetorical jabs at opponents. On the other hand, empirical evidence cuts deep, especially when critics can’t protest the author’s “nasty” style. As radio talker Larry Elder observes, “Facts are to liberals what kryptonite is to Superman.”
Sowell’s title, if employed by a member of the leftist intelligentsia, would doubtless imply a causal link between statistical disparities and some form of discrimination--usually racial. Sowell, by contrast, marshals an abundance of evidence to show that this automatic assumption isn’t justified. Focusing simply on statistical probabilities, Sowell notes that if five prerequisites are needed for success in a particular field, and if the chances are two out of three that any person will have each characteristic, the chance of possessing all five characteristics is still only one in eight--a calculation that helps explain why most pro golfers have never won a PGA tournament while Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods have collectively won over 200 times. Consequently, “Given multiple prerequisites for many human endeavors, we should not be surprised if economic or social advances are not evenly or randomly distributed among individuals, groups, institutions or nations at any given time.”
Among leftists, however, assumptions about the random distribution of characteristics stand at the heart of various discrimination suits. Thus, if proportionately more blacks than whites are given tickets for speeding, this statistic provides for them prima facie evidence of racial discrimination. Sowell, however, offers clear counter-evidence that black drivers are more likely to exceed the speed limit than white drivers. Similarly, the assumption that racial discrimination is the primary reason blacks are overrepresented in the prison system is countered by noting that blacks are vastly overrepresented as both perpetrators and victims of murder--a crime that’s hard to ignore. Sowell further observes that fatherlessness clearly increases the likelihood that a person will end up in prison since a majority of prisoners “were raised with either one parent or no parent” --a domestic circumstance that applies to well over half of all black kids in the U.S.
In short, Sowell shows that many or most of the disparities that afflict black Americans are due to behaviors to which even other blacks have objected. In the early twentieth century, for example, long-time black residents in Chicago publicly chastened new arrivals from the South for behaviors that would, and eventually did, have negative repercussions for the entire community. Today, however, most black leaders ignore the plain fact that merchants in high crime areas, for example, must charge higher prices to squeeze out lower profits than stores in safer parts of town--preferring to blame the proprietors’ racist-fueled greed. Only blacks who’ve moved to safer suburbs can be counted on to protest government policies that again place large groups of unsavory characters near them under the failed assumption that a middle class environment will alter bad habits.
Sowell also provides surprising examples of cases where the desire for profit actually won out over racial discrimination. Early in the twentieth century, for instance, attempts to maintain a white Harlem were foiled by the sheer economic advantages available to landlords who ignored the neighborhood’s segregation policy. Likewise, privately owned municipal transit groups and railroads both protested and often ignored laws that mandated segregated facilities. Indeed, railroad management actively worked with Homer Plessy to overturn segregation mandates in that industry--a legal effort that ended unsuccessfully with the Supreme Court’s Plessy v Ferguson “separate but equal” decision in 1896. Amazingly, Sowell shows how the profit motive often trumped segregation laws or compacts even in apartheid South Africa and in the post-bellum South. Put succinctly, it was racist politicians, not transit owners, who insisted that Rosa Parks sit at the back of the bus.
Sowell focuses additional attention on well-intended government policies that succeeded in increasing, not decreasing, racial disparities. In this regard significant space is devoted to the negative consequences of minimum wage legislation. Sowell notes that in 1948, when the minimum wage was economically inconsequential, black teen unemployment was actually lower than white teen unemployment and a fraction of its rate when the minimum wage was substantially increased. Sowell also laments the destruction of a traditionally stellar black educational institution, Dunbar High School in Washington D.C., when self-sorting, education-focused black families and students were subjected to politically-driven and empirically-destructive fantasies that involved bussing and the abolition of selective institutions like Dunbar.
Similarly, in order to racially “unsort” neighborhoods (as they “unsorted” schools) politicians ignored economic facts that explained why banks (including black-owned banks) disproportionately rejected blacks’ mortgage applications. Instead, legislators insisted that financial institutions lower lending standards to achieve the politically desired “random” racial distribution of house ownership--a misbegotten policy whose economic chickens came home to roost in 2009. Meanwhile, various government laws that decreased the supply of housing and increased prices were “successful” at reducing the Bay Area’s black population in 2005 to less than half its number in 1970.
Throughout the book Sowell discusses a number of other factors that clearly lead to “disparities,” leaving aside the kneejerk assumption of racist motives. Being first-born or an only child, for example, has immense advantages, benefits indicated by the fact that twenty-two of the twenty-nine original Apollo astronauts fell into one of those two categories. Additionally, in a chapter titled “The World of Numbers” the author debunks several beliefs about disparities that are rooted in false assumptions about statistics and the lack of economic mobility. Thus, one study found that 95% of the people in the bottom income quintile were no longer there fifteen years later and that 29% of them had risen to the top quintile. Elsewhere Sowell explains how falling “household” incomes are consistent with rising “personal” incomes simply because the average size of a household has fallen substantially. (A two-person household where each individual earns $20,000 represents a household income of $40,000. But if both members of the household begin to earn $30,000 and establish separate residences, the income of each one-person household is now 25% below what it was before.)
Much of Sowell’s book is recapitulated in his final chapter--and with a bit more rhetorical intensity than previously exhibited. A few new topics, however, like the destructive consequences of a grievance mentality and “black English,” are also addressed.
Overall, Sowell’s book is a protest against the unfounded assumption that “there would be no disparate outcomes unless there were disparate treatment.” Sowell observes that this ideologically-driven assumption “seems almost impervious to evidence.” Accordingly, those who cling to this dogma with religious fervor will likely avoid Sowell’s fact-filled book like kryptonite. Folks with less dogmatic proclivities, however, would do well to peruse this concise work.
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer living in Southern California whose book Moral Illiteracy: "Who's to Say?"... is also available on Kindle .
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If there is not equality of outcomes among people born to the same parents and raised under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected—or assumed—when conditions are not nearly so comparable?Highlighted by 973 Kindle readers- The disparities can also reflect the plain fact that success in many kinds of endeavors depends on prerequisites peculiar to each endeavor—and a relatively small difference in meeting those prerequisites can mean a very large difference in outcomes.Highlighted by 828 Kindle readers
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Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell is another well researched and put together material by the author. The book outlines two types of discrimination, why people discriminate against their own actions and against others, how others have aimed as a third-party to intervene in a discriminatory process , and the disparities between intended outcomes and the desire for acting for, or against particular kinds of discrimination.The author starts out by defining discrimination in two ways; discrimination 1, is the rational separating of things, circumstances, and individuals based on particular needs or particular outcome needed. For example, choosing between two separate pairs of shoes as to the one that would lead to the best outcome for the purpose of wearing. While discrimination 2, is a more general aggregate characterization of particular circumstances, situation, persons, or things based on group criteria. For example, saying that a particular pair of shoes will not fit your need because the group of shoes that it falls under generally does not.What I find compelling about this book is the fact that the author went into an understanding of why people choose to discriminate or not discriminate against particular groups or individuals. The main thing that he highlighted that may lead to either discrimination one or two when dealing with individuals and society is, The Cost of Discrimination. I find this point to be quite important. If the cost of discriminating is high then there would be less discrimination, whether it is discrimination 1 or 2. The converse is true, if the cost of discrimination is low then they’ll be more discrimination. Examples were given about discriminating against black workers in the south during the Jim Crow era, and how southern companies, given the laws supporting discrimination in choosing white workers, many still defied the laws and hire black workers, when the cost of discrimination was too high. When they had to choose between whites and blacks to hire they end up choosing both when the cost of the process of discrimination was too high. When the government enforce the laws and the cost of not discriminating then became higher than the cost of discriminating through government prosecutions and fines, then they did what cost least, they discriminate. The argument here is that if companies are left on their own , they will discriminate or not discriminate based on the cost. Given the free market society we live in companies will choose not to discriminate, since the cost of discrimination is high.Another major point of the book is that politicians and the media sometimes look at data and interpret and present them in a mistaken way, either deliberately or by accident. They are looking at the same data and coming to different conclusions based on particular agendas. The author highlights the destructive nature of this behavior. I personally believe that this is particularly dangerous as the average person do not read the facts for themselves, or analyze the data thoroughly for themselves. Therefore, they are left to interpret the filtered version given to them by wherever they consume that information.A striking fact but the author touched on in the book is about slavery, and how people have sorted themselves through time in groups in particular organizations. As it relates to slavery the author highlighted that slavery has become in this country an argument of one race enslaving another, while it’s a known fact that slavery has been around for thousands of years and it mainly began with one race and slaving their own. Proving that the fact that slavery was abolished in the west showed that while they engage in this horrendous activity they somehow “saw the light“ and decided that this was no longer something that could continue and lead the charge in abolishing slavery.The other point by the author is that people sort and on sort themselves into groups and societies based on their own needs. They are grouped into communities, Attend schools and provide goods and services to each other based on how they have sorted and on sorted them selves in these groups, communities, and organizations.The most important point about this book, is that individuals should be left alone to sort and on sort themselves in various groups, communities an economic activities, based on their own discrimination (discrimination 1) as they see fit. It is also claiming that the government should stay out of this process. It made some valid points and proved that when people act independently the results are far greater, but when a third-party act for individuals it makes the situation worse, and the intended end of the intervention is never achieved.
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clive price
Everyone should read this
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 30, 2018J
Will you like it? Depends on your bias.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 31, 2018Mr F Fadipe
A Must Read Masterpiece
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on July 17, 2020Dutch
Should be made compulsory reading in all schools/universities.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 26, 2021
