All this, and educators claimed parents didn’t understand education.
/sow: affirm act helped the supeior and hurt those not well off as cos chose top to qualify, look good, avoid hassles and lawsuits. bottom put that much further out of comp. affim act.. makes it tuff to take a chance on someone less than top. ????
/ sow: better ed in harlem 40 yrs ago. vouchers, tax credit, open enrollment – all = choice. thus parents have imput. parents now treated poorly as schs have mono. previously they had more control. in 54 dunbar was made a neigh sch and went to pits. he’s seen no evidence bussing has helped.
al grps never come out same. in past germans and jews grad hs? at l00 times the rate of italians and irish
/say’s law
/where’s his bit on resentment of changes in neigh. /sowell: efforts toward equality too easily reduce freedoms. blks [as of 77?] have never supported affirm action, quotas.
/from end of slavery till ’45 most blk fams were 2 parent. sow.
/when sow grew up, blks were poorer, there was more discrim, and far less illigit..
/sow said our policies to help blacks help no grp in world. they are mw, occupational licensing, poor schs – graduating kids who are 40% func.. illit.. if you were lucky enuff to have started to rise before gov programs, you’re in good shape. sig
/assumed without any evidence that female headed blk fams came from slavery. nonsense. blk fams had 2 parents till wel. subsidized desertion and teen pregnancy. latter was only 3% till 25, said guttman’s study. rest were older women.
/all depends on whose ax is gored.
/costs non profits lot less to discrim than profits. sports and ent more ofriepen to minorities as its an economic matter. but closed things like pub util, founds, non profits didn’t have have the comp and could hold out.
/choice is vouchers, open enrollment, tuition tax credit,
/when blacks came out of slavery, few could read or write. in 50 yrs hald could. econ historians find that remarkable, said sow.
/has strange way of scolding, not reaching conclusions,
sow
/jap-am have been the most successful non white im grp. $, ed, lo rate of crime and social problems.
/west indian blks and am blks don’t get along. latter have a very small biz class.
/mutual aid is very sig for im grps. that type of help is better than charity which affects one’s self esteem.
/naive melting pot concept on p. … equally naive to say they retain a pure heritage. chop suey and chow mein are not indigenous to china. neither is the afro hair style, nor st. patricks day parade. it started here. when am irish return to ireland, they are not native irish. same with others. here some succeed in econ, others in pol,
jews, jap, w. indians stress ed, wk, biz, future, self denial.
opposite with irish an blks – oratory, lyrical, emotional, imaginative, lit, and music.
/indoor toilets from mid l9th cent. – shared by fams.
future orientation nec for success. police partiality toward minorities was common in past.
/irish and blks weren’t big on ed. didn’t use libraries much. raised hell on sat nights.
/holidays were time for irish and blks to raise hell. jews would reflect, atone, think of ancestors.
/present cultures tend to emphasize fate and luck rather than individ prep for and control of one’s future. l46
/grps with a lot of broken hms are big on macho.
/…. has a rate of alcoholism 50 times that of jews. irish? similar with blks, but its drugs instead.
/jews and jap-am have not produced charismatic leaders.
/blks leaders – charismatic, pol, given to grand designs
/took irish 3 gen to make it out of pov. no grp of ims makes it in less than two.
/regulated industries discrim more than non reg.. l59?
gov disrims more than pri sector.
/90% of defendants [poor] lose in small claims crt. biz use it as a collection agency.
/marines had no blks in wwii. l82? navy had em in civil war, eliminated em after wwi, let em in in 32 for kit jobs.
/sow: if pov money were divided among poor, ea fam would get 32k [/yr?]

/sow: academics have no backbone./what trad voc ed [pub or pri] teaches and what cos want has been 2 diff things. 70% never work in field of their training. us news ll/1/93
/[lib?] critics worry that voc-ed stus take easy academic classes. [of course dummy, they’re wc] us news 93/sow. nasty. 94.
/you’re never killed by a “hmless” person; it’s a “drifter” or a “transcient”.
/sow: so many of US on the left were cheering castro in the late 50s.‑ Previous to the mid‑60s, not one prison warden had a college degree. By the mid‑70s most had advanced degrees. Murders in prison tripled, gangs in prison gained more control of daily life and of the more frequent riots, and attacks on guards rose, as did their turnover.
/sown: lst blks in harlem were mc and uc blks who wanted to get away from the irish. lst lesson of econ is scarcity [never enuff to go around]; lst lesson of pol is to ignore this.
govs have typically plundered minorities. those min who want gov intervention gain famou leaders, but end up in dead-end [gov] jobs. thus we can name blk leaders, but not jewish or jap leaders. slavery occurred for milennia on EVERY continent and persisted in africa. it is NOT a distinctive blot on western civ. slavery everywhere has been associated with [=?] backwardness, not prosperty. #/in non-profits, it cost 0 to discrim, but if you discrim in a profit sit, like the wash redskins, it cost you and you have to cave in. as they did. sow
/idea that the ethnic make up of the pop should be represented locally and nationally, mil etc. is not questioned. but it doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. sow. 87? same with voting, what diff grps study in c.
/sow. nasty. 94.

RACE AND CULTURE
A World View
by Thomas Sowell
(reviewed by Jim Powell)

Why are people in some cultures so much more healthy, prosperous and
dynamic than people in other cultures? That’s one of the many intriguing
questions answered by distinguished scholar Thomas Sowell in his latest
book. It goes well beyond his previous works on race‑‑reflects a
decade of research, two trips through the Pacific Basin and two trips
around the world.
Sowell demolishes widely‑held views that cultures‑‑especially minority
cultures‑‑benefit from government intervention. Throughout history, he
shows, governments typically have used their power to plunder minority
cultures. He cites case after case which makes clear why minorities are
best‑advised to have as little as possible to do with government.
Sowell explains why government intervention generally provokes violent
conflict among competing cultures. The more educated people are, the
more bitter the conflict. “Education of the sort useful only for being a
clerk, bureaucrat, or school teacher,” says Sowell, “jobs whose numbers
are relatively fixed in the short run and politically determined in the
long run‑‑tend to increase intergroup strife.”
Sowell shows why people who hope to improve themselves through
government intervention might gain famous leaders but they end up in
dead‑end jobs like bureaucrats. “Less successful ethnic groups,” he
observes, “are often richly endowed with leaders. Any well‑informed
American can readily name half a dozen black leaders, current or from
U.S. history, but would probably have difficulty naming a similar number
of Jewish or Japanese American ethnic leaders. Similarly, it is doubtful
if they could name as many prominent Italian American ethnic leaders as
prominent American Indian chiefs.”
In an effort to protect culture from supposedly corrupting foreign
influences, government cuts it off from the outside world, but Sowell
explains why this condemns culture to backwardness. He writes, “Where
Jews have been enabled‑‑or forced‑‑to maintain small separate
communites in cultural backwaters such as the villages of Eastern Europe
or of Yemen, for example, there they have lagged far behind the
achievements of other Jews exposed to the wider world of either Islamic
or European civilization…”
Sowell explains why government‑sanctioned multiculturalism is doomed.
Reflecting Adam Smith’s famous insight about progress being limited by
the size of a market, Sowell explains that “the size of the cultural
universe is fundamental to cultural progress, so this conclusion has grim
implications for organized attempts to Balkanize societies in the name of
cultural ‘identity’ or of ‘multiculturalism,’ as in late twentieth
century America, Britain, Canada, or Australia, for example.”
Sowell makes a passionate case that cultures thrive to the degree
people can freely cultivate contact with the outside world. He tells
how almost every great city arose on a river or by a harbor where it was
easy for different people to gather. Sowell tells how every great culture has
borrowed substantially from others‑‑wheat from Egypt, paper from China,
“Arabic” numerals from India, and so on.
Sowell emphasizes the crucial stimulus of immigrants. Historically, he
notes, immigrants seldom brought much wealth to a new land. He tells how
they frequently started in dirty, low‑paying jobs which got them
started. Since large numbers of immigrants lacked political connections,
they went into commerce rather than government. Sowell explains how
commerce gives people incentives to be thrifty, reliable and peaceful‑‑
qualities essential for success. He tells how Lebanese in West Africa,
Chinese in Southeast Asia, Parsees in India and Koreans in the United
States, among many others, achieved fabulous success by providing useful
services.
Sowell brings his remarkable global perspective to the issue of
slavery. He dispels the dogma that slavery was a distinctive blot on
Western civilization, showing how slavery occurred for millennia on every
continent. He tells how the West‑‑notably Britain‑‑became the first to
fight the slave trade (1807), inspiring American abolitionists. Sowell
notes how slavery persisted in Africa, Asia and the Middle East long
after it disappeared in the West. Sowell notes that slavery everywhere‑‑
including the American South‑‑has been associated with backwardness,
not prosperity.
In this magnificent new book, Sowell offers an abundance of provocative
insights as he shows how, around the world, people do best when they can
pursue their cultural values freely, without government intervention.

A sampler from RACE AND CULTURE:

* “Few mixtures are more volatile than race and politics. The normal
frictions and resentments among individuals and groups seldom approach
the magnitude of frenzy and violence produced by the politicization of race.”

* “There is no such group as ‘Hispanics’ anywhere in the world except
in the United States, because only in the U.S. do government programs
recognize such a category.”

* “A common charge against immigrants… is that they take jobs from
native‑born workers. But there is no fixed number of jobs from which
those going to immigrants can be substracted.”

* “Exaggerated group ‘identity’ makes copying from others akin to
treason.”

* “Goals which depend upon the creativity, skills, thrift, work
habits, organizational abilities, and technological knowledge in the population
at large are much less within the power of incumbent officials to achieve…”

* “Political ‘solutions’ are often long on immediate symbolism and
short on lasting results.”

Chris Whitten
Managing Editor
Laissez Faire Books
1‑800‑326‑0996

Sowell’s RACE AND CULTURE
C‑News Moderator
mark572@obu.arknet.edu
======================
I’m especially excited about distributing this review. Thomas Sowell
reports that the book has been 12 years in the making. Roy Childs,
Laissez Faire’s late editor, saw an early version and said this was
Sowell’s magnum opus.

Sowell agreed to autograph 200 copies for us, so you have a special
opportunity. The autographed copies are first‑come, first‑served. Since
you’re are seeing the review before the catalog mails, if you order it now
you may be able to get one.

Liberty, a key reason why some cultures
are so much more successful than others

/sow raises his voice.
/sub to sow or did I
/is sow’s annointed about libs?