By Walter
E. Williams
I don't mind saying that this column
represents a grossly understated review of "Discrimination and
Disparities," just published by my longtime friend and colleague Dr.
Thomas Sowell.
In less than 200 pages, Sowell lays waste to myth after myth
not only in the United States but around the globe.
One of those myths is that but for
the fact of discrimination, we'd all be proportionately represented in
socio-economic characteristics, such as career, income, education and
incarceration.
The fact of business is that there is no evidence anywhere on
earth, at any time in human history, that demonstrates that but for
discrimination, there would be proportionate representation in anything by
race, sex, nationality or any other human characteristic.
Sowell shows that
socio-economic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in
ways that cannot be explained by any one factor, whether it's genetics,
discrimination or some kind of exploitation.
A study of National Merit
Scholarship finalists shows that firstborns are finalists more often than
their multiple siblings combined. Data from the U.S., Germany and Britain
show that the average IQ of firstborns is higher than the average IQ of
their later siblings.
Such outcomes challenge those who believe that heredity
or one's environment is the dominant factor in one's academic performance.
Moreover, the finding shows that if there is not equality among people born to
the same parents and living under the same roof, why should equality of
outcomes be expected under other conditions?
In Chapter 2, Sowell provides
evidence that people won't take racial discrimination at any cost. The higher
its cost the less it will be tolerated, and vice versa.
One example is
segregated seating on municipal transit in the South. Many companies were
privately owned, and their decision-makers understood that they could lose
profits by offending their black customers by establishing segregated seating.
Transportation
companies fought against laws mandating racially segregated seating, both
politically and in the courts, but lost.
Companies even chose to ignore the
law.
Faced with heavy fines, though, they began to comply with the law.
The point is that the difference
between the white transportation owners and the white politicians and
segregationists was the transportation company owners had to bear the cost
of alienating black riders and the politicians and segregationists didn't.
Sowell
broadens his analysis to show that regulated companies and organizations --
such as public utilities and nonprofit entities, including colleges and
government agencies -- will be at the forefront when it's politically popular
to discriminate against blacks but also will be at the forefront when it's
politically popular to discriminate in favor of blacks.
Why?
Because in
either case, they don't bear the burden of forgone profits.
In Sowell's chapter titled "The
World of Numbers," he points out what I'm going to call out-and-out
dishonesty.
In 2000, a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study pointed out that
44.6 percent of black applicants were turned down for mortgages, while only
22.3 percent of whites were turned down.
These and similar statistics led to
charges of lending industry discrimination and demands that government do
something about it.
While the loan rejection rate for whites was 22.3
percent, that for Asians and native Hawaiians was only 12.4 percent.
Those
statistics didn't see the light of day.
Why?
They didn't fit the racial
discrimination narrative.
It would have been difficult for the race
hustlers to convince the nation that lending institutions were discriminating
against not only black applicants but white applicants, as well, in favor of
Asian and native Hawaiian applicants.
At several points in the book,
Sowell points to the tragedies created in the pursuit of social justice.
He
gives the example of the Gujaratis expelled from Uganda and the Cubans fleeing
Cuba.
Many of the Gujaratis arrived in Britain destitute but rose again to
prosperity.
It's the same story with the Cubans who came to the U.S. and
prospered.
By losing their most productive people, both Uganda and Cuba became
economic basket cases.
The general public, educators and
politicians would benefit immensely from reading "Discrimination and
Disparities," if only to avoid being unknowingly duped.
