August 14, 2013 “Intellectuals and Race” Thomas Sowell Basic Books 139 pages 2013 Given the emotional reactions to the George Zimmerman trial and the recent Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act of 1964, serious students of race relations should feel compelled to read Tom Sowell’s new book on this most contentious of issues. Sowell, an eminent economist and the Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow for Public Policy at the Hoover Institution, uses extensive research to place the events of 20th century race relations in a modern context that will be useful to anyone who wants to understand how we collectively arrived at this point in history. Key to this exercise is the outsize influence of “intellectuals” who shaped the debate we have daily in our individual relations. In Sowell’s thinking, their passions and prejudices are critical to understanding how the arguments are likely to occur. After beginning with a summary of disparities that existed between ethnic and religious groups since the advent of human civilization, he focuses on the dominant intellectuals of the Progressive Era at the turn of the last century. Calling this period the “high water mark of ‘scientific theories’ of racial differences”, Sowell concentrates on intelligence testing, eugenics, and other concepts of genetic determinism that fixated the academic culture of the time. The racial philosophies of politicians like Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt as well as academics like Edward Ross and Francis Walker are scrutinized to identify the mainstream of contemporary thought regarding how the human condition could be shaped and influenced for the improvement of all Americans. In particular, the influence of Madison Grant’s “The Passing of the Great Race” is used to demonstrate how groups that were judged to be inferior ethnically were to be discouraged from immigrating to America and, if here already, to be discouraged from procreation. To support the historical context of these ideas, Sowell references disparities existing elsewhere in the world to demonstrate how other cultures as well dealt with the concern from a holistic perspective. Here the book calls a sidebar to address intelligence testing specifically because of its prominent role in measuring the differences in human capabilities. Acknowledging the inherent difficulties of measurement and the prevailing biases among academics conducting the tests, Sowell lays out its subjectivity while providing relevant facts on the events surrounding the debate. Having set the table with Progressive Era history and the murky debates over intelligence testing, the author’s focus on intellectual thought turns to the second half of the 20th century which to him was “the liberal era on race in the United States, which in turn metamorphosed into the multicultural era”. Central to the issue was the concept of “racial justice” which attributed differences between blacks and whites to internal social causes like discrimination rather than genetic distinctions. Gunnar Myrdal’s 1944 book “An American Dilemma” was the catalyst for debate about how “a white man’s problem” distorted American culture overtime and that a reckoning was long overdue. Although Myrdal’s assertion that this would occur quickly in the aftermath of WWII missed the mark badly, it did simplify the question dramatically for intellectuals who no longer felt the need to research the behavioral difference between blacks and whites in America. Sowell notes that the subsequent era of multiculturalism might be considered an extension of the liberal era but sees differences as well. In particular, he highlights how “diversity” further reduced the need to recognize empirical consequences and shifts the discussion from “racial” to “social justice”. Sowell’s conclusion is sharp, “a crucial fact about the theories and social visions of intellectuals is that the intelligentsia pay no price for being wrong”. His primary intention is to reduce the “gullibility towards ideas in vogue” that may produce dire outcomes to the intended beneficiaries and that the existence of such a “thinking class” does not absolve the rest of us from examining the fundamental assumptions of their visions. For those who genuinely seek a common ground on race relations, his admonition has meaning regardless of one’s viewpoint. Gary Owen
Posted on: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 19:49:06 +0000
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