Controversial Essays

by Thomas Sowell

  The last time we were going to Israel, we saw some poor lady right ahead of us held up for more than half an hour while the security guard opened up her suitcase and spread her belongings all over the counter. When our turn came, he waved us on impatiently, as if he didn't want to waste time on us.

  Back when I was a young Marine who had graduated from the Navy's photography school at Pensacola, a group of us were assigned to the photo lab at Camp Lejeune, N.C. We were a bunch of cocky young guys who got a reputation as troublemakers and became known—not always affectionately—as “the Pensacola gang.”

  When the captain in charge had about as much of us as he could stand, he had us all transferred out—and separated. Months later, another graduate from Pensacola was assigned to the lab but, the moment he set foot on the base, he was told that his orders had been changed. He was transferred sight unseen.

  He was not judged as an individual. Just the one word “Pensacola” probably sent the captain's blood pressure up through the roof. Except for me, all these people were white, so race had nothing to do with it. But it was profiling.

  The new guy, a very easy-going fellow who would undoubtedly have fit in well at the lab, had a right to be resentful. But toward whom? Just the captain or also those Pensacola graduates who preceded him?

  An even more personal example involved a physician who referred me to a cardiologist for extraordinary testing after he had given me a routine physical. The physician said that nothing he had seen in his examination of me would have led him to refer me to a cardiologist. He did it because three of my brothers had died of heart attacks. I was not judged as an individual—nor should I have been.

  We ought to be concerned because taxis avoid picking up black males at night. But we ought to be concerned about what causes it, not just seize another opportunity for self-righteous denunciation.

  THE MAGIC WORD

  Perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell's decision to pull the American delegation out of the so-called U.N. World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa, will be just a footnote in history. But we can at least hope that it may be a turning point toward a future time when “racism” will no longer be a magic word used to gain money or political concessions.

  Within the United States, Jesse Jackson and others have repeatedly scared millions of dollars out of big corporations, just by threatening to use the magic word “racism.” Even the police have sometimes turned a blind eye to violations of the law, lest they be tarred with that magic word that will bring the whole liberal media crashing down on them. But letting criminal activity go on unimpeded and unpunished has hurt minority communities most of all.

  Against this background, it was to be expected that some African and Arab nations would hope that invoking this magic word might scare some money out of the United States as “reparations” for slavery and get some kind of United Nations condemnation of Israel as a bonus. But this time the magic didn't work.

  Singling out Israel to blame for the Middle East's problems was probably the straw that broke the camel's back, leading both the U.S. and Israel to withdraw their delegations from the conference in Durban. Arab caricatures of Jews with big noses and bloody fangs were hardly a way of being against racism.

  The real world-class chutzpah, however, was the demand of African and Arab nations for reparations of slavery. Just who do you suppose enslaved the millions of Africans who ended up in the Western Hemisphere? It was the Africans. And who enslaved the even greater number of millions of African slaves who ended up in the Islamic world? It was the Arabs.

  During the era of African slavery, Europeans died like flies in tropical Africa, where diseases flourished for which they had no biological immunity and for which medical science had yet to devise a cure. Capturing people to sell into slavery was the work of Africans in West Africa and of Arabs and Africans in East Africa.

  Europeans came in their ships, bought slaves from the Africans, and then left the scene quickly before they fell sick from African diseases. Even so, many white crewmen on the ships bringing slaves from Africa to the Western Hemisphere died on the way. The notion that it was white people who introduced slavery to Africa, or who captured most of the slaves themselves, may fit the mindset of those who thought that Roots was history, but this myth will not stand up to facts, logic or economics.

  Since it was the Africans and the Arabs who actually caught and sold slaves, do the African and Arab nations plan to send reparations over here to the descendants of enslaved Africans living in the Western Hemisphere? Of course not. They want the United States to lay some of those American dollars on them! We have fallen for so many other sucker plays in the past, why not try this one on us?

  When slavery is mentioned, too many people automatically think of whites enslaving blacks. That is not even one-tenth of the story of slavery, which existed on every inhabited continent. The very word “slave” derives from the word for some white people who were enslaved on a mass scale—the Slavs—for more centuries than blacks were enslaved in the Western Hemisphere.

  Moreover, slavery existed in the Western Hemisphere before the first black or white person ever set foot on these shores. The indigenous peoples of this hemisphere enslaved one another, just as Asians enslaved Asians, Europeans enslaved Europeans, and Africans enslaved Africans. Attempts to limit the discussion of slavery to slavery in the United States or in Western civilization make sense only as a strategy to get money or political concessions.

  Western civilization was the first civilization to regard slavery as morally wrong and it is the civilization with the most sense of guilt about it. To this very moment slavery continues in parts of Africa and the Islamic world. Very little noise is made about it by those who denounce the slavery of the past in the West, because there is no money to be made denouncing it and no political advantages to be gained.

  If the American delegation walking out of the U.N. Conference Against Racism represented a belated waking up to the scams being played, that could be a very healthy sign for the future—not only on the international scene, but within the United States as well.

  RACE AND THE NEW CENTURY

  W. E. B. DuBois once said that the problem of the 20th century world was going to be the problem of the color line. Like many ringing predictions, it missed the mark by a wide margin. The biggest atrocity of this century against any people—the Holocaust—involved people of the same color as those who killed them. So do the current atrocities in the Balkans and in Africa.

  In one sense, however, DuBois was right. The biggest political problem of this century for black Americans has been the fight to abolish the color line, epitomized by Jim Crow laws in the South.

  With a new century approaching, it is by no means clear that the biggest problem facing black Americans is still the problem of the color line. Indeed, that problem has already been superseded by another: self-destruction, both cultural and physical.

  In the high-tech world that is already upon us and shows every sign of expanding dramatically in the next century, know-how is king. People who started businesses in garages have gone on to earn fortunes because they had the know-how. You don't even have to find someone to hire you. You can start up your own business.

  People from India are not only hired in Silicon Valley, they own their own companies in Silicon Valley. So much for the color line. But you have to have the know-how. And even college-educated blacks are seldom going into the fields where you can get high-tech know-how. Ghetto schools seldom provide the skills on which science and engineering are based.

  The public schools are where the battle needs to be fought, but too many black political “leaders” are too dependent on labor unions in general and the teachers union in particular to fight that battle. And they are too dependent on a vision of victimhood to risk telling young blacks that they have to get their own act together too.

  On the contrary, Jesse Jackson is currently defending hoodlums who have been expelled from school. This i
s a classic example of black “leaders” who are leading their people to cultural suicide, just as surely as cult leader Jim Jones led his followers to physical suicide in Guiana. There are few things more dishonorable than misleading the young.

  It is an old cliche that generals try to fight the last war over again. That is what a whole generation of black “leaders” is doing—fighting the old war against the color line. Jesse Jackson's claim that blacks are shut out of Silicon Valley jobs is that old war—as well as a lie. Blacks with the technical know-how already own their own businesses in Silicon Valley.

  Fortunately, Silicon Valley CEO T. J. Rodgers challenged Jackson to a public debate on the issue—and Jesse backed out. Too many other CEOs in too many other corporations find it easier to pay off Jesse Jackson and other hustlers. That may be the path of least resistance for these corporations, but it is a disservice to America, including black America.

  It has been said that the truth will set you free. In the present situation, the truth is the only thing that will set young blacks free. So long as a whole generation of young blacks continues to be told, day in and day out, that their problems are caused by whites, they are never going to be prepared to take advantage of the opportunities in Silicon Valley or anywhere else.

  Many of those who still push the old party line on race also try to get young blacks to study hard in school and prepare themselves for the opportunities available. But mixed messages don't hack it.

  All across the country, there are heartbreaking stories about young blacks in schools who condemn those among them who try to be good students as “acting white.” Sometimes the condemnation extends to ostracism and beyond—to outright violence.

  Many blacks who are sending mixed messages to the young are horrified at such attitudes. But there is no point creating the cause and then being appalled at the effect.

  Perhaps the biggest problem of the 21st century will be moving on beyond the problems of the 20th century to confront the new realities—and the new opportunities. But that may require a whole new generation of black leaders to arise, no longer looking back at the struggles of the 1960s but ahead to the demands of a very different world.

  That takes time. But it ought to start now.

  “ACCESS” TO RESPONSIBILITY

  Dishonesty has become so routine in discussions of racial issues that perhaps I should not have been surprised at a headline in the San Francisco Chronicle that read: “Minority Students Need Access to Honors Classes.”

  Are there honors classes which refuse to accept minority students who meet the same standards as others? If so, that should be the subject of a lawsuit, not a mere op-ed piece. But, of course, this is not the case.

  “Access” is one of the great dishonest words of our times. I have had as much access to a career in professional basketball as Michael Jordan had. He just happened to play the game a lot better. Indeed, practically everybody has played the game a lot better than I did.

  My problem was not “access” to basketball. Neither is the problem access in most other situations in which this slippery word is used politically. At the very least, we need to distinguish access from performance.

  Blurring that distinction is at the heart of many claims of discrimination based on statistics. The claim behind the misleading headline in the Chronicle is that the University of California system is discriminating against black and Hispanic students who apply—by judging them by the same standards applied to others!

  One of the factors taken into account in admissions decisions in the University of California system is a grade-point average that gives extra points for grades earned in honors courses. High schools in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods offer fewer honors courses. Therefore, the lawsuit claims, the admissions criteria are discriminatory.

  If this argument were meant seriously, instead of politically, then the remedy would be to have high schools in black and Hispanic neighborhoods offer more honors courses. If anybody should be sued, then it should be the public schools, rather than the University of California, which has nothing to do with how many honors courses are or are not taught in various high schools.

  The real point of the lawsuit, and of the op-ed support of it, is to get the admissions standards repealed or circumvented, so that there will be a larger body count of so-called “underrepresented minorities” on University of California campuses. If this effort is successful, blacks and Hispanics may not get any better education in high schools, but their symbolic presence will be greater at Berkeley, UCLA, etc.—even if they flunk out before graduating.

  Use of the term “underrepresented minorities” is not accidental. It would be hard to make the case that white folks are keeping out non-whites, when Asian Americans are greatly over-represented among students in the University of California system, as they are in other top-level institutions around the country.

  If the real problem is access, then why do the Asian American students happen to have it, while black and Hispanic students don't? You could turn the question around and ask: Why do blacks seem to have “access” to professional basketball, while Asian and Hispanic Americans seem not to?

  The answer in both cases is the same: Access is not the issue. Performance is the issue.

  You cannot have more honors classes in schools where students do not do honors-level work, unless you are prepared to define honors classes downward and have the term become meaningless. There is far too much research available on academic performance differences between Asian American students and students from “underrepresented minorities” for this simple, uncontested fact to be unknown to those who are accusing the University of California of “discrimination” for treating all applicants alike.

  What are called “inequities in secondary education” could more accurately be called differences in the extent to which students are prepared to do the kinds of work required in honors courses. A case might be made that individual black or Hispanic students who are ready for honors work suffer from the fact that there may not be enough of their classmates who share their dedication.

  There are various ways this problem might be dealt with—if one honestly wanted to deal with it, instead of using it to claim special exemptions from university admissions standards. But no such exemptions are likely to do nearly as much good for “underrepresented minorities” as “access” to personal responsibility.

  PART III

  POLITICAL ISSUES

  POVERTY AND THE LEFT

  The privations and sufferings of the poor have long been central themes in the vision of the political left. That is what attracted many of us to the left in our youth. But the actual consequences of the agenda of the left on the poor—and on others—is what eventually drove many of us to the right.

  Most of the leading opponents of the left, in the United States and around the world, began on the left. These include Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman and the whole neo-conservative movement, as well as Raymond Aron in France and Friedrich Hayek in Austria. There is no comparable exodus from the right to the left.

  Why is this so? The favorite explanation by those who remain on the left is that their former comrades “sold out.” But nobody sells out to the lowest bidder. The real money, for intellectuals at least, is overwhelmingly on the left. Black intellectuals, especially, can easily earn six-figure incomes just from lecture fees alone at colleges and universities around the country.

  All it takes are some heated accusations of “racism” against whites and denunciations of American society in general, with perhaps a few antisemitic remarks thrown in for good measure. Nowhere can you make more money with less effort or ability. By contrast, there is very little demand for conservative speakers—black or white—on campus, and the few who show up are likely to be heckled or shouted down.

  Nor are journalism or the arts havens for conservatives. Far from it. Whatever blacklist existed against Communists and their fellow-travelers in Hollywood during the McCarthy era, it has b
een completely outstripped by the blacklisting or intimidation of conservatives there now.

  If the exodus from the left is not due to people selling out to the lowest bidder, then what does cause it?

  Let us go back to the poor. Why are we concerned about them? Some are concerned lest the poor have inadequate food, shelter or other basic requirements for life. Others are concerned because of the inequalities, disparities or “gaps” that they represent. And still others are concerned because the poor can serve as a rationale for increasing the political power of the left.

  Those who are primarily concerned about the well-being of the poor are likely to discover over time that much of the agenda of the left does not really do much good for the poor, and some of that agenda—environmental extremism, for example—actually makes the poor worse off.

  Meanwhile, nothing has a track record of lifting millions of people from poverty to prosperity like a free market economy. Most officially “poor” Americans today have things that middle-class Americans of an earlier time could only dream about—including color TV, videocassette recorders, microwave ovens, and their own cars. Moreover, half of all poor households have air-conditioning.

  Leftist redistribution of income could never accomplish that, because there are simply not enough rich people for their wealth to have such a dramatic effect on the living standards of the poor, even if it was all confiscated and redistributed. Moreover, many attempts at redistributing wealth in various countries around the world have ended up redistributing poverty.

  After all, rich people can see the political handwriting on the wall, and can often take their money and leave the country, long before a government program can get started to confiscate it. They are also likely to take with them skills and entrepreneurial experience that are even harder to replace than the money.