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The Origins of Economic Disparities...Thomas Sowell · Gil I Am

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Speaker 1: Welcome to uncommon knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson. Thomas Soul has
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Speaker 1: taught and studied economics, intellectual history, and social policy at
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Speaker 1: institutions that include Cornell, UCLA, and Amherst. Now a senior
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Speaker 1: Fellow with the Hoover Institution, Doctor Soul has published more
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Speaker 1: than a dozen books, including his most recent volume, a
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Speaker 1: revised and enlarged edition of Discrimination and Disparities. Tom Sowell, welcome,
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Speaker 1: Thank you. Let me quote Discrimination and Disparities this edition.
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Speaker 1: This new edition takes on the non sequitur underlying the
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Speaker 1: prevailing social vision of our time, namely that if individual
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Speaker 1: economic benefits are not due solely to individual merit, there
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Speaker 1: is justification for having politicians redistribute those benefits. Close quote now, Tom,
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Speaker 1: we want to be a country based on individual merit.
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Speaker 1: So if some people are rich through no merit of theirs,
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Speaker 1: and other people are poor through no fault of theirs,
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Speaker 1: isn't it clear that the government ought to play robin
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Speaker 1: hood and take from the rich and give to the poor.
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Speaker 1: Why is that a nice sector instead of an obvious good?
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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I don't know where to begin.
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Speaker 1: Take your time, what.
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Speaker 2: You can imagine? Now, I'll take the extreme case where
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Speaker 2: someone is literally no merit. He knows he inherits some
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Speaker 2: empire I don't know the grocery stores or whatever. He
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Speaker 2: knows nothing about it, cares nothing about it, hasn't a
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Speaker 2: clue how to run it. And some on said, well,
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Speaker 2: clearly you turn it over to the politicians. Well, what's
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Speaker 2: he going to do with that? Empire will be worth
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Speaker 2: for more to almost anybody else than it would be
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Speaker 2: to him. Now, when things have radically different values to
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Speaker 2: different people, what usually happens in a marketplace is it
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Speaker 2: transfers to somebody else. If it's worth two billion dollars
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Speaker 2: to him, somebody knows what he's doing, it may be
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Speaker 2: worth five billion to him, and he will pay the
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Speaker 2: five billion to get it, and he will run it
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Speaker 2: better than a politician is going to run it. All right.
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Speaker 1: See this is the trouble taping the shows with you.
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Speaker 1: You just talk sense, and you talk it so concisely
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Speaker 1: that we may as well go have lunch right now,
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Speaker 1: all right? The argument the basic argument. Let's lay out
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Speaker 1: the argument here. In discrimination of disparities during the early
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Speaker 1: twentieth century, the key factor behind socioeconomic disparities, as seen
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Speaker 1: by leading progressive intellectuals of that era was genetics. In
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Speaker 1: other words, some people got ahead and some people stayed
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Speaker 1: behind for reasons of race, the racist argument. By the
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Speaker 1: late twentieth century, continue their quotation, discrimination insidious unfair discrimination
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Speaker 1: had become the prevailing explanation. All right, So let's take
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Speaker 1: each of those in turn, the genetic or racist explanation.
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Speaker 1: You write that by the middle of the twentieth century,
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Speaker 1: even a leading proponent of the influence of genetic factors,
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Speaker 1: such as the famous infamous I supposed to many people,
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Speaker 1: Arthur Jensen of the University of California, Berkeley up the
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Speaker 1: road here, rejected the idea of an IQ ceiling for
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Speaker 1: some groups. Would you explain what that means?
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Speaker 2: Well? As Johnson said, why are you surprised that there
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Speaker 2: are black children with IQs at one hundred and fifteen
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Speaker 2: and above. In the earlier time, in the early twentieth century,
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Speaker 2: it was thought that there was a ceiling so low
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Speaker 2: that you had to make sure that certain people simply
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Speaker 2: did not reproduce. That's the whole eugenics movement, which was
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Speaker 2: very big, and there were eugenics courses by the hundreds
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Speaker 2: in colleges and universities across the kind, and so Jensen
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Speaker 2: rejects that rendition of it. Well, once you rejected that,
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Speaker 2: really the rest of it becomes a matter of much
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Speaker 2: smaller consequence.
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Speaker 1: All right, So the racist argument is rejected on scientific grounds.
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Speaker 2: Yes, right, rather than by rhetoric.
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Speaker 1: All right, all right. So this brings us, of course
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Speaker 1: to the other explanation for disparate outcomes. Once again, at
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Speaker 1: the heart of the prevailing social vision of our times
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Speaker 1: is the seemingly invincible fallacy that group outcomes in human
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Speaker 1: endeavors would tend to be equal or at least comparable
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Speaker 1: or random if there were no biased interventions.
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Speaker 2: And explain that for us well, empirically it is the
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Speaker 2: easiest way to explain it. Almost Nowhere anywhere in the
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Speaker 2: world or any period of history do you find any
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Speaker 2: society and which roops that compete openly end up with
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Speaker 2: the same results us on the on the on the
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Speaker 2: genetic side. By the way, uh, there's there's a study
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Speaker 2: of families where someone one of the kids becomes a
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Speaker 2: National Merit Scholarship final finalist. In five child families, the
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Speaker 2: first born becomes the finalists more times than the other
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Speaker 2: four siblings combined now that's not genetic. Uh, there are
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Speaker 2: other there are actuals in.
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Speaker 1: Not discrimination, it's just luck, birth order, the luck of
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Speaker 1: the draw.
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Speaker 2: Well, but what's more than that. It tells us something
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Speaker 2: about the importance of parental attention in the development of
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Speaker 2: a child. H And that's also reinforced by the fact
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Speaker 2: that twins tend to average several points lower IQ than
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Speaker 2: people born sanely because obviously no neither twin it ever
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Speaker 2: gets the full attention of the pair of the pair.
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Speaker 2: And also backing that up is that where one of
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Speaker 2: the twins is either still born or dies shortly after birth,
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Speaker 2: the other twin twin has an average IQU much closer
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Speaker 2: to the norm I see.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so this the point here is we eliminate the
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Speaker 1: argument from racism, which leaves us the argument from discrimination.
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Speaker 1: And what you're saying is no, no, no, no. Look
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Speaker 1: at example after example after example, where we know, in
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Speaker 1: more or less controlled experiments families with five kids, twins,
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Speaker 1: and so forth, that there are factors that have nothing
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Speaker 1: to do with justice or injustice, but that are simply happenstances.
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Speaker 2: That's the argument. Yes, Also it's true, it's also true
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Speaker 2: in four child families three child families, two child families.
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Speaker 2: It is true in Britain and Norway and any other
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Speaker 2: a number of other countries where it been huge test done.
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Speaker 2: All right, so.
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Speaker 1: Again I'm going to take discrimination and disparities to bring
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Speaker 1: it to American society. It seems stranger right that during
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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century of mass immigration from Europe to the
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Speaker 1: United States, it was not uncommon to find Jewish and
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Speaker 1: Italian neighborhoods in New York represented by Irish politicians, a
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Speaker 1: situation that did not change until well into the twentieth century.
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Speaker 1: How could this have been.
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Speaker 2: Because if you look at the history of the three groups,
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Speaker 2: it's clear that the Irish had a lot more political
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Speaker 2: experience in Europe before any of them. It was set
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Speaker 2: foot on American soil. I mean, it's really when you
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Speaker 2: think of how many factors there are at work, it's
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Speaker 2: incredible to think that they're going to work out the
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Speaker 2: same for almost any group defined anyway. God, the other
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Speaker 2: thing was so frustrating. I can come up with umpteen
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Speaker 2: different examples of this disparities in various situations, including situations
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Speaker 2: where there's not possible for it to be either discrimination
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Speaker 2: or genetics. People on the other side cannot give you
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Speaker 2: one example. You can read reams of paper by advocates
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Speaker 2: of social justice and not find one example. Anywhere in
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Speaker 2: the world. There are people who've done international studies broadale.
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Speaker 2: I quote the French history in no society that was
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Speaker 2: all parts of the population had the same outcomes. All right.
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Speaker 1: You note also, by the way that even within this
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Speaker 1: I've found striking even within socio economic bands are strata,
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Speaker 1: that is, people who are ethnic groups that are actually
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Speaker 1: doing pretty well. There are differences that can be striking.
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Speaker 1: And to quote you again, Jews have been especially well
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Speaker 1: represented in retailing, finance and garment production, but by no
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Speaker 1: means equally well represented in heavy industries such as the
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Speaker 1: production of steel or automobiles. Yes, and it has nothing
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Speaker 1: to do We're not talking about relative disadvantage here. They
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Speaker 1: rose to success in different fields from I don't know
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Speaker 1: Andrew Carnegie. I guess as a Scott who's doing steel,
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Speaker 1: and Ford is the Ford and the Dodge brothers are
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Speaker 1: what Northern European stock who have automobiles. And it just
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Speaker 1: worked out that way for no invidious reason.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 1: You see, if you just say yes, well, of course,
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Speaker 1: if I just quote the book to you, You're going
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Speaker 1: to say yes, which is.
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Speaker 2: What you should do all the time.
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Speaker 1: All right, to continue here to lay out your argument again,
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Speaker 1: I'm going to quote you, but I'm going to get
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Speaker 1: more than a yes out of you, Tom on this one.
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Speaker 1: Statistical underrepresentation or over representation of various groups is not
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Speaker 1: peculiar to the United States or two hour times. For centuries,
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Speaker 1: there have been countries where most members of various professions
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Speaker 1: and most business owners and whole industries have been members
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Speaker 1: of some subordinate minority. All right, you present a couple
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Speaker 1: of examples. Let's take a couple of examples, the overseas
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Speaker 1: Chinese and Southeast Asia. Oh yes, tell us about them.
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Speaker 2: Oh my gosh that some people call them the Jews
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Speaker 2: of Southeast Asia. Considering the numbers involved, you might call
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Speaker 2: the Jews the Chinese of Eastern Europe. But there are
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Speaker 2: country after country where over half of the retail outlets
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Speaker 2: by people who are Chinese, I mean Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand,
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Speaker 2: and whatnot. There are country after countries where most of
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Speaker 2: the billionaires are Chinese outside China, oh, outside China. And
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Speaker 2: one of the other things, too, is this ties in
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Speaker 2: to some extent with a genetic thing. As of nineteen
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Speaker 2: ninety four, there were fifty seven million overseas Chinese and
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Speaker 2: one billion people in China. The oldest the fifty seven million,
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Speaker 2: produced as much wealth as the billion people in China.
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Speaker 1: All right, Jews in Eastern Europe as another example. Yes,
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Speaker 1: subordinate group, Yes, tell us about them.
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Speaker 2: It's very very common from for retailing and many parts
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Speaker 2: of Eastern Europe to be largely in the hands of Jews,
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Speaker 2: greatly overrepresented in universities. By the late nineteenth century, one
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Speaker 2: third the people at the University of Vienna with Jews,
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Speaker 2: and they were usually more successful students.
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Speaker 1: Indians and East Africa, Oh my gosh.
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Speaker 2: And here here you see something that ties in with
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Speaker 2: a desire to confiscate the wealth of the wealthy. They
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Speaker 2: did that in New Ganda. The people from India and
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Speaker 2: Pakistan dominated modern industry that in that country. Eventually, of course,
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Speaker 2: the politicians decided that they should be expropriated. They were expropriated.
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Speaker 2: They were sent out, not allowed to take any wealth
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Speaker 2: with them of any significance, and all the stuff that
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Speaker 2: was left there, their businesses and so forth, went went
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Speaker 2: to the The Ugandan economy collapsed, these people arrived destitute,
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Speaker 2: mostly in England, and within a decade they were on
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Speaker 2: their way to prosperity. Again, the same thing with the Cubans.
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Speaker 2: Here that when Castro took over.
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Speaker 1: Castro takes over nineteen fifty nine, a million Cubans leave
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Speaker 1: with almost nothing.
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Speaker 2: Yes, and he left behind all the wealth they had
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Speaker 2: in Cuba. You fast forward a half a century, and
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Speaker 2: the Cuban American businesses in the United States had a
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Speaker 2: revenue that was larger than the revenue of the entire
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Speaker 2: nation of Cuba, even though and they weren't in the
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Speaker 2: United States. They weren't driving nineteen fifties cars in the
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Speaker 2: twenty first century. All right.
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Speaker 1: So the underlying assumption, just to close up the argument here,
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Speaker 1: the underlying assumption of the social vision, the vision of
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Speaker 1: social justice, that absent discrimination, roughly equal outcomes will prevail,
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Speaker 1: is refuted by every page of recorded history. All right.
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Speaker 1: Jews in Eastern Europe, over these Chinese and Southeast Asia,
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Speaker 1: they rise in spite of discrimination, all right, Okay.
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Speaker 2: And they rise better than the people who are discriminating
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Speaker 2: against them. All right.
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Speaker 1: We tend to think, I believe of this new social vision.
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Speaker 1: Social justice is something completely contemporary, but you write that
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Speaker 1: it has been prevalent for half a century. You also
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Speaker 1: argue not merely that it is mistaken, but that it
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Speaker 1: has done positive harm discrimination and disparities. With the prevailing
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Speaker 1: social vision came a more non judgmental approach to behavior,
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Speaker 1: as well as multiculturalism, a de emphasis on policing and punishments,
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Speaker 1: and an emphasis on demographically based fair shares for all.
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Speaker 1: So what you're talking about here is not explicitly governmental
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Speaker 1: action or government programs, but the way people begin thinking
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Speaker 1: about society in the United States. You continue, murder rates,
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Speaker 1: rates of infection with venereal diseases, and rates of teenage
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Speaker 1: pregnancies were among the social pathologies whose steep declines in
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Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties reverse and begin to get worse than
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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. Okay, ideas alone, it's what people carrying
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Speaker 1: their heads.
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Speaker 2: But the ideas were carried out in policies, and the
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Speaker 2: classic place were in public housing projects. People today think
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Speaker 2: of the public housing projects is really just a bedlam
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Speaker 2: and a violence and so forth. Drug den Yeah, I
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Speaker 2: remember in the nineteen forties one of our relatives was
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Speaker 2: admitted to a public housing project in New York, and
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Speaker 2: we were so proud because back in those days, you
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Speaker 2: got admitted because even though you were just a working person,
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Speaker 2: you had a good record, you had a steady job.
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Speaker 2: Women with faudless children would not admit it, and so on,
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Speaker 2: and so it was not just that the place was good,
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Speaker 2: it was that it was an honor that he'd passed
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Speaker 2: these tests to get to get into these places.
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Speaker 1: You tell a tale of two blackouts that illustrate what's
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Speaker 1: taking place here. The first blackout takes place in November
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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five. I can actually remember that we lived
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Speaker 1: in upstate New York.
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Speaker 2: I lived in upstate New York, and there.
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Speaker 1: Was a moment that I can remember when we were
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Speaker 1: having dinner and the lights in the house went dark
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Speaker 1: and then came back up. For a moment, we all
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Speaker 1: looked at each other and thought, what what just happened there? Well,
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Speaker 1: of course, when we turned on the television we found
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Speaker 1: out what happened. Huge power outage in New York City.
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Speaker 1: Whereas upstate the lights just went down and came back on.
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Speaker 1: In New York City the city went black the whole night.
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Speaker 1: And you write that that night the crime rate was
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Speaker 1: lower than usual nineteen sixty five. Second blackout, very similar
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Speaker 1: event takes place in July nineteen seventy seven, and you
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Speaker 1: right again. New York City was again dark throughout the night,
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Speaker 1: but now there was widespread looting and arson. Yes, sixty
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Speaker 1: five people behave themselves in New York City in the dark, Yes,
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Speaker 1: and in seventy So what what happens in those twelve years?
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Speaker 2: This was This was one of the many things that
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Speaker 2: turned up, turn turned to the worst in the nineteen sixties.
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Speaker 2: There's a whole slew of them. Stephen Pinker has a
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Speaker 2: book about international murder rates, and he said, the general
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Speaker 2: trend over the centuries, it's for the murder rate to
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Speaker 2: go down. But in the nineteen sixties the rate did
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Speaker 2: a U turn, as he put it, it went it turned,
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Speaker 2: went right right up. And this was common across Western societies.
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Speaker 1: And it is because of the same vision out there
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Speaker 1: and the vision so I'm trying to I guess one
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Speaker 1: thing I'm trying to get at here is the extent
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Speaker 1: to which how does it work itself out? Are the
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Speaker 1: cops because of this new social vision between nineteen sixty five,
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Speaker 1: people know that if they miss me, if they try
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Speaker 1: looting or arson, the cops will come right at them.
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Speaker 2: No, no, nopened. There's only so much difference can do.
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Speaker 2: The first line of defense is morality and the law
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Speaker 2: as a statement of what the principles are. You delegitimize that,
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Speaker 2: and all you've got other police. There aren't that many
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Speaker 2: police that you could double the number of policemen. And
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Speaker 2: if you destroy the morality, you're not getting anywhere.
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Speaker 1: So in nineteen sixty five, people who'd grown up with
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Speaker 1: see sixty five, that's going to be dominated by people
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Speaker 1: who'd been through the adults in sixty five remember the depression,
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Speaker 1: they remember the Second World War, they've had the experience
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Speaker 1: of rebuilding the country in the nineteen fifties, and they
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Speaker 1: take for granted what we would now term traditional morality.
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Speaker 1: Isn't that correct? Yes, you just don't steal things, you
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Speaker 1: don't destroy. Yeah, so what No?
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Speaker 2: Another another example there was exchange buffet restaurants that I mentioned, Yes, yes, yes,
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Speaker 2: and I actually remember going to those.
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Speaker 1: Explain what's going on.
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Speaker 2: Change. You go in and you pick up you go
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Speaker 2: through the line and pick up your own food, and
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Speaker 2: then you break bring your dishes that would be there,
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Speaker 2: and then you come to the cash here and you
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Speaker 2: tell the case here with what how much you owe? Uh?
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Speaker 1: And there was seventy some of the seventy some of
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Speaker 1: these restaurants, or there were a lot of them in
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Speaker 1: New York, dozens dozens, all.
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Speaker 2: Right, all right, and and and they lasted for seventy
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Speaker 2: eight years. In the nineteen sixties, they collapsed because people
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Speaker 2: no longer were honest, all right. In England, it was
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Speaker 2: even more dramatic because they really sort of set the
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Speaker 2: standard for self control societies. And of course, if you
18:54
Speaker 2: have a lot of self control, you don't need a
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Speaker 2: lot of government control, right, But if you don't have it,
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Speaker 2: the government is not gonna be enough by itself, and
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Speaker 2: the government itself is often tainted, as it were, by
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Speaker 2: these same ideas that you For example, in London in
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Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty four, there were a grand total of
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Speaker 2: twelve armed robberies in the city of London that year,
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Speaker 2: at a time when anybody could buy a shotgun with
19:22
Speaker 2: no questions asked. Fast forward a couple of decades and
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Speaker 2: they're at fourteen hundred armed robberies in London, despite some
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Speaker 2: of the most strict gun control laws in the world.
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Speaker 1: Got it. I'm still struck. What do we make about
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Speaker 1: the speed with which society changes? Again, You've got what
19:44
Speaker 1: I love about the two blackouts there is because they're
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Speaker 1: two snaps. They're almost literally what do people get up
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Speaker 1: to when they think nobody's looking? The lights go out?
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Speaker 1: And it's just a dozen years between good behavior people
19:57
Speaker 1: helping each other out in this difficulty, and terrible behavior
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Speaker 1: where they're looting and setting fire to property. And how
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Speaker 1: is it that ideas, the wrong ideas can percolate through
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Speaker 1: this can so change behavior in such a brief period
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Speaker 1: of time.
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Speaker 2: Well, it was going. I mean, these ideas weren't invented
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Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties, but the number of people who
20:21
Speaker 2: progressively moved towards those ideas greatly increased, and the whole
20:26
Speaker 2: political and intellectual scene was very different. All right.
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Speaker 1: You spend a good deal of time in discrimination and
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Speaker 1: disparities on the African American experience in this country, and
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Speaker 1: in particular, you spend time presenting what might almost be
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Speaker 1: termed a century of hidden history, hidden outside but displayed
20:52
Speaker 1: in this book. I'm going to quote you. The plain
20:57
Speaker 1: fact is that the black poverty rate declined. Excuse me,
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Speaker 1: I should say the hidden century from the end of
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Speaker 1: the Civil War to the enactment of the Great Society,
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Speaker 1: which is pretty much in even one hundred years, And
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Speaker 1: on one measure after another, you argue, African Americans make progress,
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Speaker 1: their incomes rise, educational attainment begins to take off. Family
21:24
Speaker 1: structure remains intact, more intact by some measures than that
21:29
Speaker 1: of White Americans. And now, to quote you, the plain
21:32
Speaker 1: fact is that the black poverty rate declined from eighty
21:35
Speaker 1: seven percent in nineteen forty to forty seven percent in
21:39
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty prior to the great expansion of the welfare
21:43
Speaker 1: state that began in the nineteen sixties under the Johnson administration,
21:47
Speaker 1: and as late as nineteen sixty nine, two thirds of
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Speaker 1: all Black children were living with black parents. And then
21:56
Speaker 1: we get the Great Society enacted again, I quote you,
21:59
Speaker 1: there was a far more modest decline and poverty rate
22:02
Speaker 1: among Blacks after the Johnson Administration's massive war on Poverty,
22:07
Speaker 1: and by nineteen ninety five, only one third of black
22:11
Speaker 1: children were living with both parents, and among black families
22:14
Speaker 1: in poverty, eighty five percent of the children had no
22:17
Speaker 1: father presence. Yes, a century of intact African American families
22:24
Speaker 1: and economic and educational progress and then it all goes
22:28
Speaker 1: begins to slide away, things start to get worse.
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Speaker 2: What happened, well, the welfare state itself happened, but more
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Speaker 2: than that is the welfare state vision, the idea that
22:41
Speaker 2: the world owes you something takes off and its It
22:46
Speaker 2: happened in Britain where the underclass is white. Is amazing
22:49
Speaker 2: that the parallels, and similarly the nation. Schools in Britain,
22:58
Speaker 2: kids and low end come neighborhoods who want to learn
23:03
Speaker 2: get beaten up by by by by their classmates, because
23:07
Speaker 2: that's regarded as class treachery. Over there, it's class that's
23:10
Speaker 2: the big deal. Here it's race. But the result is
23:14
Speaker 2: the same.
23:15
Speaker 1: Tom you had to have been a good student when
23:17
Speaker 1: you were a little kid growing up in Harlem. What
23:19
Speaker 1: what reaction did do you remember anybody saying, no, no, no,
23:23
Speaker 1: don't don't don't be too don't be too don't be
23:26
Speaker 1: too good a student, You'll make everybody else look bad
23:29
Speaker 1: in the family. Or what what was it like in
23:31
Speaker 1: your generation when people were beginning to discover that little
23:34
Speaker 1: Tommy Soul was a pretty smart kid.
23:36
Speaker 2: Well, actually, when I first got the Hall of I
23:39
Speaker 2: was not regarded as a pretty swat kid, because I'd
23:42
Speaker 2: come out of the South, and back in those days,
23:44
Speaker 2: the Southern education was so inferior in no other education
23:49
Speaker 2: that you were behind when you were Oh my gosh.
23:51
Speaker 2: I was in North Carolina, I was among the top
23:55
Speaker 2: students in the class, and in my first year in
23:58
Speaker 2: New York, I was trailing whoever was the second work
24:00
Speaker 2: student in the class.
24:02
Speaker 1: How old were you when you moved from North Carolina
24:04
Speaker 1: up to Herman nine nine? Okay, so, but somewhere in
24:08
Speaker 1: there you get a library card and you start reading,
24:12
Speaker 1: and oh, yeah, you become a good student. And what
24:14
Speaker 1: is the reaction of your your family and your neighbors
24:17
Speaker 1: and so forth as you begin to become a good student.
24:19
Speaker 2: Well, the nighbors didn't didn't really know that. Oh the
24:21
Speaker 2: family was there. They were so pleased, and I still
24:25
Speaker 2: remember what to do they made. When I was promoted
24:27
Speaker 2: to the seventh grade, I wondered why, and someone said
24:30
Speaker 2: to me, you've now gone further than any of us.
24:33
Speaker 1: Wow, wow, you've just explained. We get a century progress
24:43
Speaker 1: and a retrogression, as you call us.
24:46
Speaker 2: And the economics there was not was not the reason.
24:49
Speaker 2: I mean, there's no question that blacks in the nineteen
24:52
Speaker 2: sixties at a highest standard of living in blacks in
24:54
Speaker 2: nineteen forty.
24:55
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right, right? So what how? Why is it?
25:03
Speaker 1: I have to say, I have to I get to
25:04
Speaker 1: the passages about African American progress, that century of progress,
25:08
Speaker 1: and I have to reread them because they run so
25:11
Speaker 1: counter to what I believe I understand, which is that
25:15
Speaker 1: the legacy of slavery is so deeply impressed on African
25:19
Speaker 1: Americans and it's the great society that begins to make
25:22
Speaker 1: some progress. How is it that a whole century of
25:28
Speaker 1: American history is simply gone? It doesn't get talked about. Well,
25:32
Speaker 1: it's heaven. That's not the only thing.
25:37
Speaker 2: You know from one of the other chapters there that
25:40
Speaker 2: people who talk about the nineteen twenties, the history of
25:44
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties, that is taught, including in a history
25:46
Speaker 2: book written by a Stanford professor that sells for one
25:49
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty dollars I bought recently. And you know,
25:53
Speaker 2: he tells, he tells what happened, what Andrew Mellon said,
25:55
Speaker 2: and how this was tax cuts for the ridge. And
25:59
Speaker 2: all you have to do is pick up Melon's book
26:01
Speaker 2: and you'll find out what Andrew Mellons said. And all
26:04
Speaker 2: you have to do is go on the internet and
26:05
Speaker 2: get the IRS data of the IT twenties. You find
26:09
Speaker 2: that it bears no resemblance to what is said in
26:12
Speaker 2: this history book. It costs one hundred and sixty dollars
26:15
Speaker 2: so ideology Trump's historical understanding. I mean, I have the
26:20
Speaker 2: IRS data for every year of the nineteen twenties in
26:23
Speaker 2: by file, and it's just farcical. And these are not
26:28
Speaker 2: stupid people, and I don't believe it. All of them
26:30
Speaker 2: are lying. I believe that they've heard what other people
26:33
Speaker 2: have said and they've repeated it, and they haven't boughted
26:36
Speaker 2: to checked the facts.
26:39
Speaker 1: Back to the African American experience, the biggest internal migration
26:43
Speaker 1: in American history takes place as African Americans move from
26:48
Speaker 1: the South up to northern cities and there are it's
26:53
Speaker 1: almost again a kind of two snapshots. Again, I'm quoting
26:57
Speaker 1: discrimination and disparities as blacks in northern cities. This is
27:01
Speaker 1: the first arrivals to northern cities become more acculturated to
27:04
Speaker 1: the norms of the larger society. Racial barriers begin to erode.
27:09
Speaker 2: This is in the nineteenth century right.
27:12
Speaker 1: In Illinois, restrictions on access to public accommodations for blacks
27:16
Speaker 1: are removed. In Detroit, blacks had been denied the right
27:20
Speaker 1: to vote in eighteen fifty, but they were voting by
27:23
Speaker 1: the eighteen eighties, and then the eighteen nineties blacks were
27:26
Speaker 1: being elected to state wide offices in Michigan. The eighteen
27:31
Speaker 1: eighty census showed that in Detroit it was not uncommon
27:34
Speaker 1: for blacks and whites to live next door to each other. Okay,
27:39
Speaker 1: African Americans move north, and all kinds of racial progress
27:44
Speaker 1: takes place. But then, and again I quote you, however,
27:49
Speaker 1: a major retrogression set in later in northern cities with
27:53
Speaker 1: the arrival of large masses of black migrants from the
27:56
Speaker 1: South in the early twentieth century. So describe that retrogression.
28:01
Speaker 1: What begins to go wrong?
28:03
Speaker 2: Well, in Washington, d c. For example, blacks had been
28:06
Speaker 2: able to go to raish restaurants, theaters, and so on
28:12
Speaker 2: prior to the mass migrations that began in the early
28:15
Speaker 2: twentieth century. When I first arrived in Washington, blacks could
28:19
Speaker 2: not go to those things. In the nineteen fifty so
28:22
Speaker 2: things had gotten worse. Oh yes, yes, and it's not
28:25
Speaker 2: so much the movement of blocks to the north in
28:28
Speaker 2: the nineteenth centuries. It was blacks who were in the North,
28:31
Speaker 2: which are very small populations and they're surrounded by a
28:35
Speaker 2: vastly larger white populations. And with other groups in similar situations,
28:41
Speaker 2: you get a culturation by the smaller group to the
28:46
Speaker 2: norms of the larger group over a period of time.
28:49
Speaker 2: So it wasn't a big big migrations, but the blacks,
28:54
Speaker 2: for example, at the end of the nineteenth century in
28:56
Speaker 2: New York, most blocks in New York had been born
28:58
Speaker 2: in New York by the at the end of the
29:00
Speaker 2: nineteenth centy, Yes, and so you had a very different
29:03
Speaker 2: population than you had when you have massive numbers of people.
29:07
Speaker 1: All right, And you write neither the era of progress
29:10
Speaker 1: in race relations nor the era of retrogression were simply
29:15
Speaker 1: inexplicable mood swings among whites, the behavior of blacks themselves
29:20
Speaker 1: had changed, and explain that, well.
29:23
Speaker 2: The South is a different culture. And again to some extent,
29:27
Speaker 2: it was an example of that that that my education
29:30
Speaker 2: was just not the same as the education of kids
29:32
Speaker 2: who've been in Harlem all along. So it took me,
29:35
Speaker 2: you know, a year or two to catch up.
29:37
Speaker 1: I see, I see, okay, So all right, I'm trying
29:43
Speaker 1: to think this through that.
29:44
Speaker 2: If the I mean, for example, story that I've told
29:47
Speaker 2: so many times that that my family found the kid,
29:52
Speaker 2: a black kid in Harlem who was very well educated
29:56
Speaker 2: and so forth, and they made it a point that
29:58
Speaker 2: he should he should meet me, show me the rogues,
30:02
Speaker 2: and he took me to a public library. At the
30:04
Speaker 2: age of nine, I had no idea what a public
30:07
Speaker 2: library was, and it was only with great reluctance that
30:11
Speaker 2: was I persuaded to take out a library card and
30:14
Speaker 2: borrow a couple of books. But because that was a
30:16
Speaker 2: turning point, got it? Got it?
30:20
Speaker 1: Social justice today? Social justice the idea of correcting for
30:26
Speaker 1: unequal outcomes, in particular redistributing wealth from the rich to
30:31
Speaker 1: the poor. So you've already argued, we've already discussed this,
30:35
Speaker 1: that the very notion is ahistorical and misguided. But you
30:40
Speaker 1: argue something more. There is a crucial question as to
30:44
Speaker 1: whether the redistribution of income of wealth can actually be
30:48
Speaker 1: done in any comprehensive and sustainable sense.
30:51
Speaker 2: Close quote, what do you mean. Well, I've used the
30:55
Speaker 2: example before of the unit to say.
30:57
Speaker 1: That we need to send a telegram to Alexandria Oka.
31:00
Speaker 2: Well, I think there would be a vast waste of money.
31:04
Speaker 2: But I've used then example so far of the of
31:08
Speaker 2: the Cubans, you know, of the East Asians, but they're
31:12
Speaker 2: all over the places. And in the fifteenth century, the
31:14
Speaker 2: end of the fifteenth century, Spain decided to expel all Jews,
31:18
Speaker 2: and it often happens in the change. They're not allowed
31:20
Speaker 2: to take any wealth with them, and so they go
31:23
Speaker 2: to various places, including the Netherlands, and over time they
31:29
Speaker 2: again rise to prosperity in the Netherlands, helping to increase
31:34
Speaker 2: the Netherlands economy. The Huguenots in France were being persecuted.
31:40
Speaker 2: They flee to England and Switzerland and they take their
31:44
Speaker 2: skills with them. Now, prior to that time France was big.
31:47
Speaker 2: There was no watch industry in England prior to the
31:52
Speaker 2: arrival of the Huguenots. So now the British could buy
31:55
Speaker 2: their watches from London instead of from France. And moreover,
31:59
Speaker 2: the London watchmakers could compete in the international market with
32:03
Speaker 2: the French watchmakers and in Switzerland. This is what helped
32:07
Speaker 2: Switzerland to become and remain to this day with the
32:10
Speaker 2: dominant watchmaking country in the world. I mean, you can't
32:14
Speaker 2: confiscate the source of the of their wealth. You can
32:18
Speaker 2: confiscate state, and I did, although I didn't go into
32:21
Speaker 2: it in this book. This is true of people who
32:24
Speaker 2: want want to do this on a local community level.
32:27
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, Detroit was once a prosperous place.
32:30
Speaker 2: They followed policies, they drove the prosperous people out, and
32:35
Speaker 2: and then of course they had they had to leave
32:37
Speaker 2: all their businesses and so forth in Detroit that was
32:39
Speaker 2: of no use without the people who knew how to
32:42
Speaker 2: operate it. Those people, I'm sure have done much better.
32:46
Speaker 2: Detroit has never fully recovered from that.
32:49
Speaker 1: So the idea here is you can you can confiscate welts.
32:52
Speaker 2: It's already existing.
32:53
Speaker 1: You can confis yes, yes, but what point is it?
32:58
Speaker 1: All right? So again, I'm cool. I'm going to quote
33:00
Speaker 1: the book once again. Physical wealth is a product of
33:04
Speaker 1: human capital, the knowledge, skills, talents, and other qualities that
33:10
Speaker 1: exist inside the heads of people, where it cannot be confiscated.
33:17
Speaker 1: Closed quote. So the central question you're going to correct
33:23
Speaker 1: me if I get this wrong, because I have a
33:25
Speaker 1: feeling you're going to slap me around with what I'm
33:27
Speaker 1: about to say. The central question, not just of economic growth,
33:30
Speaker 1: but of social justice is not the distribution of wealth.
33:35
Speaker 1: It's access to human It's access to education is really
33:40
Speaker 1: what it comes down to.
33:43
Speaker 2: Encompasses education, but it's not limited to.
33:46
Speaker 1: That, so because it's also the store. So where you
33:50
Speaker 1: have where you have social pathologies. It's very hard. I'm
33:54
Speaker 1: just making this up to see how you respond to it.
33:56
Speaker 1: It's very hard. For example, figure that I quoted earlier,
34:01
Speaker 1: where UH, African American kids living in poverty, eighty five
34:06
Speaker 1: percent of them grow up with only one parent present.
34:09
Speaker 1: That makes it harder for those not two ways about it,
34:12
Speaker 1: to acquire human capital. So so access to education, I'm
34:18
Speaker 1: fumbling here. Access to education somehow?
34:21
Speaker 2: Is it?
34:22
Speaker 1: Is it the role of government to foster certain kinds
34:25
Speaker 1: of social stability or social skills?
34:28
Speaker 2: You all you can do. You can't give anybody an education.
34:32
Speaker 2: You can offer them an education.
34:34
Speaker 1: You can show them where the public library is.
34:36
Speaker 2: That's right, but that but that but that, that's that's it, okay,
34:44
Speaker 2: all right, and and something else. Uh. Social justice is
34:49
Speaker 2: an actually impediment to acquiring human capital because if you're
34:56
Speaker 2: what it tells you is that the reason you have
34:58
Speaker 2: less is because people have malevolently kept you from from
35:02
Speaker 2: having the access to to to to all the good
35:05
Speaker 2: things in life and that and if that's the case,
35:09
Speaker 2: why in the world should you knock yourself out, learn
35:13
Speaker 2: a whole new culture, develop wholes sets of skills, and
35:16
Speaker 2: so forth, sacrificed in the present for the future when
35:20
Speaker 2: it's gonna mean nothing. One of two of the stories
35:23
Speaker 2: I've heard that really pains me greatly, a couple of
35:26
Speaker 2: young black guys, there's two different guys and two different
35:28
Speaker 2: sets of stories, expressed the desire to become a pilot.
35:33
Speaker 2: And they say, I thought about joining the Air Force,
35:37
Speaker 2: but I realized that the white people are not gonna
35:39
Speaker 2: let me become a pilot. And they're saying this after
35:43
Speaker 2: there was a whole squadron of black fighter pilots in
35:45
Speaker 2: World War Two, and after there have been black generals
35:50
Speaker 2: in the Air Force. But this vision that they're that
35:54
Speaker 2: they're that they're bombarded with tells them that that's not possible,
35:57
Speaker 2: that something that's already happened is not pub.
36:01
Speaker 1: So so so the social for the notion that you've
36:04
Speaker 1: been wrong yes, has the effect of of what of
36:11
Speaker 1: of of encouraging, of encouraging passivity.
36:14
Speaker 2: Or resentment, but not, but not, but not, because social
36:20
Speaker 2: mobility is not some easy thing. I don't know. If
36:22
Speaker 2: you read the book about the Hillbilly elergy, Oh yes, yes, yes,
36:28
Speaker 2: and he goes, what a what a trauma it is
36:30
Speaker 2: for him, because to come out of his background and
36:34
Speaker 2: achieve something in the world, Why in the world would
36:37
Speaker 2: you put yourself through that if you thought that at
36:40
Speaker 2: the end of it all they're gonna say no, we're
36:42
Speaker 2: not going to let you flying about planes. Damn it,
36:44
Speaker 2: right right.
36:45
Speaker 1: And also if so, if you think you've been done,
36:47
Speaker 1: if you think you've been wrong, your recourse might also
36:50
Speaker 1: be more likely to politics to try to to try
36:54
Speaker 1: to regret this whole redistribution rather than hit the books,
36:59
Speaker 1: acquire the skills, get the child.
37:02
Speaker 2: And but the other thing too. One of the my
37:05
Speaker 2: favorite statistic in there is that the poverty rate among
37:12
Speaker 2: blacks as a whole is twenty two percent, among whites
37:15
Speaker 2: as a whole is eleven percent, and among black married
37:18
Speaker 2: couples is seven point five percent. So it has been
37:27
Speaker 2: and black married couples have never had a poverty rate
37:32
Speaker 2: as high as ten percent in any year since nineteen
37:35
Speaker 2: ninety four. All Right, so to the to the to
37:40
Speaker 2: the cry, what is to be done? Tom Sowell answers,
37:43
Speaker 2: it's been done. Get an education, stay married, get married,
37:47
Speaker 2: have kids after you get married.
37:50
Speaker 1: That's that's sort of the answer.
37:51
Speaker 2: Right. Well, yes, the things that worked for other people,
37:54
Speaker 2: who tend to work pretty generally.
37:57
Speaker 1: All right, all right, reparate. Oh I knew you'd like this.
38:02
Speaker 1: One New York Times column is David Brooks, in a
38:05
Speaker 1: column last month entitled the Case for Reparations. Quote, we
38:12
Speaker 1: are at a moment of make or break racial reckoning.
38:15
Speaker 1: We are a nation coming apart at the seams, a
38:18
Speaker 1: nation in which each tribe has its own narrative, and
38:21
Speaker 1: the narratives are generally resentment narratives. The need now is
38:26
Speaker 1: to consolidate all the different narratives and make them reconciliation
38:31
Speaker 1: and possibility narratives. Reparations are a drastic policy and hard
38:36
Speaker 1: to execute. But the very act of talking about and
38:41
Speaker 1: designing them reparations policies heals a wound.
38:45
Speaker 2: Oh it's one of many reasons I don't read David Brooks.
38:50
Speaker 1: Heals a wound and opens a new story. Close quote
38:54
Speaker 1: if You.
38:54
Speaker 2: Can imagine somebody whose parents, great grandparents came here at
38:59
Speaker 2: the eighteen eighteen eighties after the Civil War, being asked
39:02
Speaker 2: to give reparations to people. Yeah, even in the Antebellum South,
39:10
Speaker 2: most whites did not have slaves. The cost of one
39:14
Speaker 2: male adult slave was more than the average white person
39:18
Speaker 2: earned all year. So they weren't all living in terror
39:22
Speaker 2: with their plantations and all the rest of it. It's insane.
39:28
Speaker 2: The other thing, I have a slight sidebar, and they're
39:31
Speaker 2: on the history of slavery, the history of slavery. Slavery
39:35
Speaker 2: existed all over the world for thousands of years, among
39:39
Speaker 2: all sorts of people, as far back as the history
39:43
Speaker 2: of the human species goes. It's one of many evils
39:48
Speaker 2: that the left tries to localize when when in fact
39:52
Speaker 2: it is there's a universal evil.
39:55
Speaker 1: So is this too strong a statement that it is?
39:59
Speaker 1: What is this distinctive about the United States is not
40:03
Speaker 1: that it countenanced slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
40:09
Speaker 1: but that it has taken such efforts to overcome the
40:12
Speaker 1: legacy of slavery since is there.
40:15
Speaker 2: That's part of it. But more than that, as much
40:19
Speaker 2: as slavery is repudiated around the world today. Prior to
40:23
Speaker 2: the eighteenth century, I know of no serious effort to
40:27
Speaker 2: abolish the institution anywhere.
40:29
Speaker 1: Anywhere, anywhere, not in Africa, not in the Arabian not
40:33
Speaker 1: in Africa.
40:33
Speaker 2: In the twenty first century. Adam Smith wrote in seventeen
40:37
Speaker 2: seventy six that the only place in the world where
40:40
Speaker 2: slavery had been abolished completely was Western Europe.
40:45
Speaker 1: And so this was as late as as late as
40:48
Speaker 1: the as late as the year this country was founded.
40:50
Speaker 2: Yes, and so the idea that this is something that
40:53
Speaker 2: the United States had, nobody else had, or other other
40:57
Speaker 2: countries that didn't have. It's been estimated that there are
41:01
Speaker 2: more slaves in India than in the entire Western hemisphere.
41:05
Speaker 2: And that's quite and that's before and after Columbus.
41:08
Speaker 1: I gout here right last questions tom a statistic in
41:13
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen. This is the most recent year I could find.
41:16
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, black households at the twentieth and fortieth
41:20
Speaker 1: percentiles of household income earned an average of fifty five
41:24
Speaker 1: percent as much as white households at those same percentiles
41:28
Speaker 1: twentieth and fortieth. And that figure from nineteen I beg
41:32
Speaker 1: your pardon. That figure from twenty fifteen is exactly the
41:35
Speaker 1: same as the figure in nineteen sixty seven. So you
41:41
Speaker 1: can imagine people of goodwill looking at that and saying,
41:45
Speaker 1: only fifty five percent as much as white households, and
41:49
Speaker 1: it hasn't changed since nineteen sixty seven, Doctor Soul, I
41:53
Speaker 1: grant all of these arguments, but even at that, something
41:57
Speaker 1: must be done. And Tom's soul replies, how.
42:03
Speaker 2: One way would be to get rid of the welfare estate,
42:07
Speaker 2: but also those kind of numbers of but they have
42:10
Speaker 2: in mind, I don't think perhaps not. One of the
42:15
Speaker 2: problems with those kind of numbers, which I go into
42:17
Speaker 2: in a different chapter on numbers, is that household and
42:22
Speaker 2: family income statistics have a lot of problems with them,
42:26
Speaker 2: and they don't reflect, for example, in kind transfers, and
42:31
Speaker 2: the incine transfer.
42:32
Speaker 1: Is not from government welfare payments.
42:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's sort of thing, But more than that, the
42:37
Speaker 2: incine transfers are among the reasons that people don't have
42:40
Speaker 2: to earn more money.
42:43
Speaker 1: Right, okay, once again, discrimination and disparities. The most spectacularly
42:49
Speaker 1: successful political doctrine in the twentieth century was Marxism. Yet
42:53
Speaker 1: if the wealth of rich capitalists came from the exploitation
42:56
Speaker 1: of poor workers. Then we might expect to find that
42:59
Speaker 1: where there are large concentrations of rich capitalists, we would
43:02
Speaker 1: find correspondingly larger concentrations of poverty. The facts point in
43:08
Speaker 1: the opposite direction. Explain what you mean by.
43:13
Speaker 2: This, Well, the United States has five times as many
43:17
Speaker 2: billionaires as there are in all of the Middle East
43:20
Speaker 2: and Africa put together. And so according to the logic
43:24
Speaker 2: of Marxism, Americans should have a ordinary American should have
43:27
Speaker 2: a lower standard of living than the standard of living
43:30
Speaker 2: of people in in the Middle East and Africa. It
43:33
Speaker 2: is just the opposite. I mean, Americans on welfare have
43:36
Speaker 2: a higher standard of living than the average person in
43:39
Speaker 2: Africa and the Middle East.
43:41
Speaker 1: So Marxism is simply wrong, wrong, demonstrably wrong, obviously wrong, well,
43:47
Speaker 1: obvious to some people, all right, obvious to you. Now
43:53
Speaker 1: I lured you into a trap. A recent Ugov poll
43:57
Speaker 1: found that nineteen percent of millennia one in five young
44:02
Speaker 1: Americans holds a favorable view of communism. Now let me
44:08
Speaker 1: quote one of these young millennials, a new member of Congress,
44:11
Speaker 1: Alexandria Okazia Cortez, who represents the Bronx not all that
44:15
Speaker 1: far from where you grew up. Quote to me, capitalism
44:21
Speaker 1: is irredeemable. Close quote. Tom Sowell replies to.
44:27
Speaker 2: Me, she's irredeemable.
44:32
Speaker 1: But to the Okay, so let's set Alexandria Ocazio Cortez
44:35
Speaker 1: to one side, to the one in five young Americans
44:38
Speaker 1: who holds a favorable view of communism. How can this be?
44:41
Speaker 1: What's going on?
44:43
Speaker 2: I think that the education system has a lot to
44:45
Speaker 2: do with that. Back when I was quite young, twenty
44:50
Speaker 2: years old, I read a book called China Shakes the
44:52
Speaker 2: World about how the Communists took over in China, and
44:55
Speaker 2: the last chapter he tries to explain it, he says,
44:58
Speaker 2: it's the education system had a lot to do with it. Now,
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Speaker 2: at the time, it struck me as a very odd explanation.
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Speaker 2: Now that I've had half a century or so in
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Speaker 2: the American education system, it doesn't strike me as odd
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Speaker 2: at all.
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Speaker 1: All right, Tom, would you close by reading a passage
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Speaker 1: from your book from this new edition of Discrimination and Disparities.
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Speaker 2: Ah The last Western nation to end slavery, Brazil did
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Speaker 2: so in eighteen eighty eight, and the first totalitarian dictatorship
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Speaker 2: arose in Russia in nineteen seventeen. There was barely a
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Speaker 2: generation between the suppression of one form of monumentally brutal
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Speaker 2: subjugation of human beings and the creation of another. Yet
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Speaker 2: these dehumanizing dictatorships were often founded on stirring rhetoric and
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Speaker 2: loft divisions that resonated with many leading intellectuals in countries
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Speaker 2: around the world. There could hardly be a clearer example
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Speaker 2: of the need for the historic warning Eternal vigilance is
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Speaker 2: the price of liberty.
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Speaker 1: Tom Sowall, author of this new edition of Discrimination and Disparities,
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Speaker 1: thank you, Thank you for uncommon knowledge, the Hoover Institution
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Speaker 1: and Fox Nation. I'm Peter Robinson,