“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
.
