From the WSJ Opinion Archives
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Shattering the Clichés of Race
Reading this book review changed Clarence Thomas's life.
This review of Thomas Sowell and David McKay's "Race and Economics" was first published in the pages of The Wall Street Journal on Sept. 4, 1975. On Tuesday, Justice Thomas accepted the Francis Boyer Award from the American Enterprise Institute citing this review.
Honesty on questions of race is rare in the United States. So many and unrecognized have been the injustices committed against blacks that no one wishes to be unkind, or to subject himself to intimidating charges. Hence, even simple truths are commonly evaded.
Economics, however, is not a field in which illusions can long be sustained. A great many matters are subject to empirical and market tests: "Colored minorities are discriminated against economically in the U.S." True or false? Actually, the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans--and those older ethnic groups once thought to be persons of color, or at least not "Nordic'": the Greeks, Armenians, Jews, and Syrian-Lebanese--rank among the groups with the highest per capita income in the U.S. "But by colored one means black." Well, how can one account for the extraordinary economic success of West Indian blacks in the U.S.?
"Higher prices in ghetto areas are forms of exploitation." But what are the actual economic costs of doing business in the ghetto--in insurance, higher salaries to attract good managers, and losses suffered through less experienced managers, etc.? How to account for the flight of major chains from the ghettoes? Surely, higher profits would not drive them away. Quite the contrary.
"Race makes a difference," Mr. Sowell begins, "in economic transactions as in other areas of life." The subject is usually approached morally, he notes, hardly ever empirically. Discussion is tangled, in emotions of guilt and condescension. What if much that passes as wisdom is actually false and harmful? What if economics is more basic than politics? What if slogans useful in politics weaken economic success?
Mr. Sowell's basic steps are three. First, he examines the economic impact of slavery, not only in the U.S. but in the West Indies and elsewhere. He distinguishes rural from urban slavery, and circumstances in which blacks so predominated that many economic tasks fell to them of necessity from circumstances in which blacks were punished for initiative and the development of skills. And so on.
Next, he compares the economic skills, circumstances, and successes of American blacks, other blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, the Jews, the Irish, the Italians, the Scots, and some others. He notices statistical quirks, e.g., comparisons of per capita income need to be checked against the median age of the groups concerned. The median-age of Russians in the U.S. is 47, of the Irish 36, of blacks 23, of Puerto Ricans, 18. Income tends to be higher in higher age cohorts; and unemployment tends to be higher in lower cohorts. If one matches age cohort to age cohort--those in their twenties, in their thirties, in their forties, etc.--comparisons are considerably more just. Mr. Sowell also takes into account urban and regional differences. Thus: "Negro families outside the South had a median income of $7,769 in the 25--44 year-old age bracket in 1969, less than $400 behind that of the Irish who preceded them in Northern urban communities by about two generations. "
Mr. Sowell. notes how both the Jews and the Italians leapfrogged over the Irish economically, though arriving in the Northern cities later. He finds many fascinating parallels between Irish and black experience in Northern cities in their relative dependence for social advancement on politics rather than on business; in their early problems with one-parent families, in their early suffering from internal group violence, etc.
In other ways, he shows that stark comparisons between "whites" and "blacks" are misleading. Which whites? Which blacks? Mr. Sowell is well on his way to a far more sophisticated and modulated use of statistics than the white black model so heavily enforced by officialdom. He gives many reasons for black pride and sense of accomplishment; he is not one of those who boast of pathologies in order to win pity. His aim is accurate understanding. He desires the swiftest possible progress, made as efficiently as possible from a given starting point. Each group may need a slightly different strategy.
Mr. Sowell sees clearly what is wrong with the imperative, "Don't blame the victim." It's foolish, of course, to blame a victim. It is also foolish to allow others to think of oneself as a victim. For that is a sure way to incapacitate oneself and to stimulate contempt in others. In Mr. Sowell's view, some would-be helpers have placed blacks in a position of self-corruption.
Economic success in a market system depends on what you have to market. It isn't true, especially in a service economy, that great or recondite skills are always necessary. In many places, attitude is a precious asset, employees who are efficient and high-spirited are exceedingly profitable to employers. Mr. Sowell's concluding paragraph deserves exact quotation, both because it is the heart of the capitalist ethic, and because it's true, mutatis mittandis, even, in disciplined revolutionary cadres:
"Perhaps the greatest dilemma in attempts to raise ethnic minority income is that those methods which have historically proved successful--self-reliance, work skills, education, business experience--are all slow developing, while those methods which are more direct and immediate--job quotas, charity, subsidies, preferential treatment--tend to undermine self-reliance and pride of achievement in the long run. If the history of American ethnic groups shows anything, it is how large a role has been played by attitudes--and particularly attitudes of self-reliance. The success, of the antebellum 'free persons of color' compared to the later black migrants to the North, the advancement of the Italian-Americans beyond the Irish-Americans who had many other advantages, the resilience of the Japanese-Americans despite numerous campaigns of persecution, all. emphasize the importance of this factor, however mundane and unfashionable it may be."
For Mr. Sowell, these are not counsels to do nothing, but counsels about a problem to be faced. Jobs are a first and indispensable necessity. For some groups the habit of taking jobs, and doing them well, begins in the home at a very early age; by 15 work experience, paid or not, is already quite extensive. Such experience teaches what nothing else can.
To win success, Mr. Sowell argues, you do not try, to end discrimination, hatred and persecution. You achieve economic success and then notice that the sins of others either stop or do not matter.
Mr. Novak now holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
