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Thomas Sowell...Everything Wrong With The Black Community in 12 Minutes · Gil I Am

0:05
Speaker 1: Listen, Tom. For the most as I read this book,
0:08
Speaker 1: for the most part, it's objective, it's objective throughout, it's calm,
0:13
Speaker 1: it's analytical. But when you take on this modern progressive
0:17
Speaker 1: position that racism accounts for anything, there are passages in
0:23
Speaker 1: which you're angry. I felt that there are passages in
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Speaker 1: which there's a motion that is very close to this.
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Speaker 1: So let me just read a little bit too. Median
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Speaker 1: Black family income has been lower than median white family
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Speaker 1: income for generations, but the median per capita income of
0:38
Speaker 1: Asian groups is more than fifteen thousand a year higher
0:43
Speaker 1: than the media per capita income of white Americans. Is
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Speaker 1: this the white supremacy we're so often warned about. For
0:50
Speaker 1: more than a quarter of a century, in no year
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Speaker 1: has the annual poverty rate of Black married couple families
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Speaker 1: married couple families been as high as ten And in
1:01
Speaker 1: no year has the poverty rate of Americans as a
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Speaker 1: whole been as low as ten percent. If black poverty
1:08
Speaker 1: is caused by systemic racism, do racists make an exception
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Speaker 1: for blacks who are married? I guess you're allowed to
1:19
Speaker 1: be angry.
1:20
Speaker 2: Yes, well, yes.
1:25
Speaker 1: So do you have the feeling when you're addressing this
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Speaker 1: notion that racism accounts for everything. Do you have the
1:38
Speaker 1: feeling that there's that the arguments are subtle, it's persuasive,
1:42
Speaker 1: you can forgive someone for buying that argument. Or do
1:46
Speaker 1: you have the feeling that it's wilful, that the case
1:49
Speaker 1: is so clearly mistaken that there's a wilfulness about it.
1:54
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I think that people don't look for
1:58
Speaker 2: certain evidence and therefore they don't find it, and so
2:02
Speaker 2: from from the on the basis of what they know
2:04
Speaker 2: at a given time, this may be very plausible. The
2:09
Speaker 2: problem is that you don't What you really need are
2:11
Speaker 2: other people with a different orientation, who who who are
2:15
Speaker 2: who are skeptical, and who will then look for things
2:17
Speaker 2: and find things that are very different from that. One
2:21
Speaker 2: of the one of the things that that I found
2:27
Speaker 2: interesting was the fact that there are various counties in
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Speaker 2: the United States which are among the poorest counties in
2:35
Speaker 2: the country, and six of those counties have a population
2:41
Speaker 2: that ranges from ninety percent white to one hundred percent white.
2:45
Speaker 1: Appalachian counties, Yeah, taken Ohio as they recall, Yeah.
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Speaker 2: And and but mainly it's this, it's it's it's the
2:52
Speaker 2: hillbilly communities, right. And of course there was that great
2:55
Speaker 2: book that was written, The Hillbilly Elergy, was on the
2:59
Speaker 2: best seller list from more than a year consecutively.
3:01
Speaker 1: And waits now, Senator Evans.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and and and there these are people who have
3:07
Speaker 2: faced zero racism. They are white, and they're white and
3:11
Speaker 2: and and zero racism. And also they're there. Back in
3:14
Speaker 2: the thirties when they did i Q studies, UH, their
3:17
Speaker 2: i qs were not only at the same level as
3:20
Speaker 2: those of blacks, they had the same pattern, namely that
3:23
Speaker 2: that that the young, the young people, whether they were
3:26
Speaker 2: black or hillbilly, would have an i Q very close
3:30
Speaker 2: to the national average UH at age six, but by
3:34
Speaker 2: the time they were teenagers it kept going down and
3:36
Speaker 2: down and down because it's relative to the other other
3:39
Speaker 2: people in the of that age group, and they simply
3:42
Speaker 2: were not worth falling behind.
3:44
Speaker 1: UH.
3:44
Speaker 2: So it was clearly not biologically, it was it was social.
3:48
Speaker 2: But despite that, these these hillbilly counties had income incomes,
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Speaker 2: they were not only lower than the national average, they
3:59
Speaker 2: were lower than the an average of black incomes for
4:04
Speaker 2: a period of half a century. It may have been
4:07
Speaker 2: longer than that, because i only went through half a century,
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Speaker 2: but in every study that was done over that half century,
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Speaker 2: they scored lower. Their family incomes were lower than the
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Speaker 2: family incomes the blacks. So obviously there must be other
4:20
Speaker 2: things that cause people to be poor other than racism.
4:24
Speaker 1: All right, people in low income American hillbilly counties already
4:29
Speaker 1: face zero racism because they are virtually all white. Yes, yes,
4:34
Speaker 1: they have lower incomes than blacks. Just as you were saying.
4:37
Speaker 1: In other words, some behavior patterns seem to pay off. Now,
4:44
Speaker 1: this book is dedicated to fallacies, to showing errors in
4:49
Speaker 1: premises and errors in analysis. It's not dedicated to an
4:53
Speaker 1: alternative explanation. Nevertheless, you've got this argument lurking in here
4:59
Speaker 1: that it's the way people live, it's the way cultural tests.
5:03
Speaker 1: So what are the patterns that pay off?
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Speaker 2: Well? What, oh, my heavens, that's a much much larger
5:10
Speaker 2: book than this.
5:11
Speaker 1: Well, you've got time on your hand.
5:18
Speaker 2: In terms of policies for public policy, what does not
5:21
Speaker 2: pay off is having charismatic leaders depending upon government to
5:26
Speaker 2: do things. Because if you look what has happened to
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Speaker 2: blacks before and after that, there was a massive government
5:34
Speaker 2: effort on their behalf the poverty rate among blacks if
5:41
Speaker 2: you start in nineteen forty instead of nineteen sixty. Nineteen
5:43
Speaker 2: sixty is the magic number for people who are saying
5:46
Speaker 2: the governments he did all these wonderful things, and blacks
5:49
Speaker 2: advanced because of it. In nineteen forty, the black poverty
5:54
Speaker 2: rate was eighty seven percent. By nineteen sixty it was
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Speaker 2: down down to forty seven percent.
6:01
Speaker 1: That's dramatic.
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Speaker 2: From nineteen sixty or nineteen seventy, it went down in
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Speaker 2: US it went down to thirty percent, and in nineteen
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Speaker 2: seventy affirmative action was now in place, it went down
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Speaker 2: to twenty nine percent. So in the in the twenty
6:19
Speaker 2: years prior to nineteen sixties, the black poverty rate went
6:23
Speaker 2: down by forty points. In the twenty and in the
6:26
Speaker 2: twenty years after nineteen sixty it went down by eighteen points.
6:32
Speaker 2: But again you have the same thing you had with
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Speaker 2: what was the Ralph Nader effect you see.
6:36
Speaker 1: Started in nineteen sixty. You missed this, miss all of that.
6:39
Speaker 1: So you've got in this book. This is a point
6:42
Speaker 1: you make again and again in the section on racial
6:47
Speaker 1: fallacies that I started thinking of it. I don't think
6:50
Speaker 1: you use these terms, but this is not an original
6:52
Speaker 1: thought with me. I started thinking of it as a
6:55
Speaker 1: as a hidden century of black progress. Yes, from emancipation,
7:02
Speaker 1: with the end of the Civil War through to nineteen
7:06
Speaker 1: sixty five, let's say, the Civil Rights Act of nineteen
7:10
Speaker 1: sixty four, sixty five through the early through the mid sixties,
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Speaker 1: You've got a century. And you argue, Black educational attainment rises,
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Speaker 1: Black proverty rate drops dramatically. And these are people who
7:25
Speaker 1: started with no property, overwhelmingly illiterate. This is from the
7:29
Speaker 1: moment sort of the year zero in eighteen sixty five
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Speaker 1: for African Americans, and they climb. And the other point
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Speaker 1: that you make at a number of places is that
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Speaker 1: the black family is overwhelmingly intact.
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Speaker 2: Yes, right up to nineteen sixties, most black pea Yeah.
7:51
Speaker 2: Not only not only do people take credit for things
7:53
Speaker 2: that were not their doing, they overlook the negative things
7:59
Speaker 2: that came in after the nineteen sixties as a result
8:02
Speaker 2: of policy. In nineteen forty seventeen percent of black children
8:09
Speaker 2: were raised in single.
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Speaker 1: Parent homes seventeen percent.
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Speaker 2: Seventeen at the end, I forget the exact date in
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Speaker 2: the twentieth century, but after these wonderful reforms were put
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Speaker 2: in that quadruples to sixty eight percent of black children
8:26
Speaker 2: were being raised in single parent homes. Now there's a
8:30
Speaker 2: whole literature on all the bad things that happened to
8:33
Speaker 2: kids who are raised by single parents, whether they are
8:36
Speaker 2: black or white, American or British. The studies showed the
8:40
Speaker 2: same things. One study said that followlessness has a bigger
8:45
Speaker 2: effect than even race in poverty. And certainly, I think
8:51
Speaker 2: back in my own life I was. I realized how
8:54
Speaker 2: fortunate I was because even though my biological father died
9:00
Speaker 2: before I was born, I would and I was adopted.
9:03
Speaker 2: I was adopted into a family where I was the
9:06
Speaker 2: only child in a family of four adults. Uh. And
9:11
Speaker 2: and these are not people who are out having an
9:13
Speaker 2: active social life something that the life was there in
9:16
Speaker 2: the home.
9:16
Speaker 1: They gave you their time. Yes, yes, And.
9:18
Speaker 2: I remember years later when I became a parent, and
9:22
Speaker 2: like other new parents, I wanted to know when was
9:24
Speaker 2: the kids supposed to do this? When he's supposed to
9:25
Speaker 2: do that? But I said, I said, uh, how old
9:28
Speaker 2: was I when I started to walk? And this the
9:33
Speaker 2: loan surviving member of the family of raised me said, Tommy,
9:36
Speaker 2: and nobody knows when you could walk. Somebody was always
9:39
Speaker 2: carrying you, you know, but.
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Speaker 1: So you had four adults don'ting.
9:44
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, And that's that's what. And then part
9:50
Speaker 2: of the part of the rise of blacks before was
9:53
Speaker 2: because the things that were done by blacks, I thought. Example,
9:59
Speaker 2: I think of a lot was a kid who grew
10:02
Speaker 2: up in Hall ofm at the same time I did.
10:04
Speaker 2: We were in the same school, lived two blocks from me,
10:10
Speaker 2: and we met many years later by accident on the
10:13
Speaker 2: street in San Francisco, and we talked about the old times.
10:16
Speaker 2: And one of the things he mentioned to me because
10:18
Speaker 2: he had gone on he was making more money than
10:20
Speaker 2: I was, and he would become wealthy, and he lived
10:24
Speaker 2: overseas with servants, and he came back and moved out
10:27
Speaker 2: to the wine country and all that stuff. But one
10:30
Speaker 2: of the things that struck me he said that he
10:33
Speaker 2: could remember times when he was growing up when his
10:36
Speaker 2: father would sit at the dinner table watching the children eat,
10:39
Speaker 2: and not eat anything himself. Now it's not that's what,
10:45
Speaker 2: And now the father isn't even there. Yes, that's right,
10:48
Speaker 2: that's right. So that those kinds of things, of what
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Speaker 2: do it right? The greatest danger to the liberal vision
10:59
Speaker 2: a fat about the consequences of liberalism itself and the laws, policies,
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Speaker 2: and ways of life that the left has spawned. That
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Speaker 2: the black family, which survives centuries of slavery and generations
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Speaker 2: of discrimination, has disintegrated, and the wake of the liberal
11:15
Speaker 2: welfare states is only one example. It's interesting when you
11:19
Speaker 2: really realize that the principles espoused by Thomas Sowell are
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Speaker 2: for the growth and the success of the individual. Meanwhile,
11:27
Speaker 2: the liberals and the left pride themselves in grouping people
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Speaker 2: as a whole into groups so that they can avoid
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Speaker 2: every form of individual or personal accountability. It's easy for
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Speaker 2: a lazy black person to say, well, blacks as a
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Speaker 2: whole are being discriminated, But if you ask them what
11:45
Speaker 2: has been your personal experience of discrimination that has kept
11:49
Speaker 2: you where you are, then it gets a little bit
11:51
Speaker 2: more complicated. But you let me know what you think
11:54
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