Intellectuals and Race

Let me start with a quick word of warning: "Most, but not all, of these chapters first appeared in a special section on race that was added to the revised edition of a much larger and more sweeping study, Intellectuals and Society: Revised and Expanded Edition. Here I have belatedly taken the advice of my research assistant Na Liu, and published these chapters in a separate book for those who wish to focus on racial issues, rather than take on the larger and more time-consuming task of traveling on a more sweeping journey across the landscape of intellectuals' influences on issues ranging from economics to law to war and peace." So, if you have bought, or plan to read, the revised edition of I&S, then you may not feel the need to purchase this book separately, although there are some chapters in this book which are not in I&S.

That said, I have only read one other book by Thomas Sowell - Dismantling America: and other controversial essays. Overall, I was not too terribly impressed or swayed by much of what I read there. I did find myself however in agreement with the things Mr. Sowell had to say here in this book, Intellectuals and Race. I have read quite a bit in regards to race and all that goes with that. Some of the books which go into a great deal more detail, but also coincide with the general gist of this book, are: Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others,Beyond Human Nature: How Culture and Experience Shape the Human Mind,Us and Them: The Science of Identity,Culture Matters: How Values Shape Human Progress,The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It from Itself, and Cultural Differences in a Globalizing World.

In essence, you may agree or disagree with Sowell's premise, but I believe the general sweep of history supports his contentions, which this excerpt from Chapter 4 roughly conveys: "Although economic and social inequalities among racial and ethnic groups have attracted much attention from intellectuals, seldom today has this attention been directed primarily toward how the less economically successful and less socially prestigious groups might improve themselves by availing themselves of the culture of others around them, so as to become more productive and compete more effectively with other groups in the economy. When David Hume urged his fellow eighteenth-century Scots to master the English language, as they did, both he and they were following a pattern very different from the pattern of most minority intellectuals and their respective groups in other countries around the world. The spectacular rise of the Scots in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - eventually surpassing the English in engineering and medicine, for example - was also an exception, rather than the rule. A much more common pattern has been one in which the intelligentsia have demanded an equality of economic outcomes and of social recognition, irrespective of the skills, behavior or performance of the group to which they belong or on whose behalf they spoke. In some countries today, any claim that intergroup differences in outcomes are dismissed by the intelligentsia as false "perceptions," "prejudices," or "stereotypes," or else are condemned as "blaming the victim." Seldom are any of these assertions backed up by empirical evidence or logical analysis that would make them anything more than arbitrary assertions that happen to be in vogue among contemporary intellectual elites." In sum, I think that both the historical analysis and global perspective which Sowell uses work together to support the idea that indigenous cultural differences (as opposed to genetic or discriminatory explanations) go further in explicating why certain minority groups excel, or flounder, in the presence of majority cultures. I would certainly recommend this book as worthy for anyone to read.

I liked this book although it presents bad arguments and reaches wrong conclusions.

There are any number of anti-racists writing books today. But three of them are real scholars as well as best selling authors:
* Steven Jay Gould
* Jared Diamond
* Thomas Sowell

Gould is dead now but he still has many books in print. Diamond is very popular and honored. He not only has won a Pulitzer Prize but his books have been the basis of TV shows. Thomas Sowell is the darling of conservatives and is black.

I have read the last three big best sellers by Diamond. I can't remember how many books by Sowell and Gould I've read but quite a few. I read these guys because they are all excellent writers and their books tend to be packed with facts.

Gould was a paleontologist specializing in snails. He was a self proclaimed Marxist. He wrote a popular science column for years. His main topics were evolution - a field in which he made major contributions - and race issues - a field in which he lied and deceived. Unlike the other two, Gould can not be trusted.

Diamond is an academic geographer, a cultural anthropologist and a bird watcher. He is a good honest academic scholar and a reliable witness although most of his major conclusions are IMHO wrong.

Sowell is a semi-retired and politically active economist. He is attacked because he is a black conservative but in general is well respected and his work is trustworthy albeit wrong on racial issues.

I bring these other writers up because Sowell seems to adopt some of the stratagems and methods of Gould and Diamond.

Why did I read so many of Gould's books? Because he is a very entertaining writer. His principal stylistic ploy is to write extended historical anecdotes. He often recounts how some Victorian had such and such to say about Darwin. Only after he has hooked the reader with his colorful history lesson does he relate it to the actual subject at hand and give you his take on the issue.

Sowell applies a similar method when he describes the careers of eminent but nowadays obscure intellectuals. For example he tells us about the race opinions of Osborn (of the Osborn-Cope Dinosaur Wars). He tells us the politics of a number of nineteenth and early twentieth century writers and scientists. It seems that a century ago everyone had ideas on race and were as yet unguarded in their expression. They were almost all what we would call today racists.

Sowell's intention seems to be to discredit intellectuals, but he succeeds more in discrediting modern racial attitudes. Gould used to describe some early scientist's ideas and include their personal adherence to some now obsolete ideas in order to discredit the person in question. For example he might tell how a prominent 19th century anti-Darwinist was also a believer in spiritualism. Sowell does something like this but less personally.

Sowell gives many examples of people like H. L. Mencken saying blacks are inferior in very candid language. He documents that a century ago at the height of the Progressive and the Eugenics movement every intellectual believed blacks to be inferior. Sowell seems to think this is an indictment against intellectuals but it's just as easy to interpret these quotations as indictment of blacks. Every intellectual was a racist back then. Sowell interprets this fact as proof that intellectuals can be wrong and we should not be too eager to trust them. He comes down hard on sociologists but seems to be rather kinder to economists. I share Sowell's contempt for sociology, but maybe the universal racism then means that the best minds had long ago figured out the correct take on race issues and that the new liberalism that swept in in the sixties just suppressed ancient truths.

Another example is his treatment of anti-Semitism and anti-Irish attitudes of long ago. He presents anecdotes as to how intellectuals of the past fought against the immigration of Jews because they were so stupid and the Irish because they were so ill behaved. That was certainly true, but the remarkable fact for most modern readers is that Jews are certainly not stupid today nor are the Irish all out of control drunks and violent criminals as they once were. If the Jews were ever really stupid - a doubtful notion - they certainly have made progress. The Irish were undoubtedly disagreeable and undesirable but are also not so now. The real race question today is why are blacks so stupid and criminal. Why if every other group has improved, have blacks not also done so?

Diamond's method is to explain away modern day national and racial disparities as being merely the result of random geographical and ecological conditions. Sowell does much the same thing for much the same reason.

Jared Diamond is famous for his assertion that white Westerners are no better inherently than the darker equatorial people. They were just lucky to get guns, survive germs and use steel first. Much of that head start he attributes to the simple geographical fact that Asia is a wide continent and Africa and the Americas are more tall narrow continents. There is something to this idea but it is never presented in a quantitative fashion. So it is impossible to say how relevant it is.

I first read this idea in one of Sowell's books but Diamond now is identified with the argument. The idea is that innovations like domesticated animals and plants spread easily across the same latitude but only with difficulty from north to south. So plants that first were cultivated in Mesopotamia spread rapidly to the east and the west. But not so quickly up and down the Americas or Africa. Innovations from the Fertile Crescent were soon in China and Europe but it took much longer for them to spread to the Cape of Good Hope.
Both Sowell and Diamond argue that Africa doesn't have many good harbors of navigable rivers. Sowell mentions the Tsetse Fly. All this is true of course but was it decisive or merely contributory? As an economist and an economic historian Sowell knows the history of the Industrial Revolution. England had iron, coal, and harbors. So it soon got steam power and railroads too. These factors gave it its head start - no question. But other nations have subsequently caught up. The relevant revolution for the race question would be at least the Neolithic revolution and probably earlier. Iraq was the site where the Neolithic Revolution began. They had a tremendous head start at one point but have not kept it. Early initial advantages of geography and water transport are also likely to fade with time. The same is true for domesticated animals. Horses were introduced to the rest of the world from the Ukraine or Southern Russia. They had a big impact like the Hyksos invasion of Egypt but that advantage faded when the Egyptians also learned how to make chariots and breed horses. Almost all technological innovations only impart advantages in the short run so it's hard to believe in many explanations that rely on long standing differences.

Africa is relatively isolated from the Middle East by the Sahara desert as Sowell writes - but so is Japan. If Japan is only half as far from the cradle of civilization as South Africa all things considered, we would still expect less of a civilizational difference. Japan had a complex stone architecture a thousand years ago. No African group ever managed to build so much as a square cut rock wall before Western contact. The difference in cultural level is just too large for the kind of weak geographical effects that Sowell and Diamond offer up as an explanation.

Races are known to have split off from the African root stock more than 100,000 years ago. This is plenty long enough for environmental differences to be reflected in genetic differences. It is true that if you cast your grain on good land you will get more grain than if you cast it on poor soil. But if the soil is too dry after awhile you will get grain adapted to dry conditions. Similarly those peoples who happened by chance to land in a favorable region eventually evolved to maximize their advantage. After a few thousand years the qualities of the environment become reflected in the genes of the inhabitants.

So time is a factor. If Africa is inimical to human development that can explain why Africans lag other races who happened to have been luckier. But over a longer period bad conditions must lead to bad or inferior people. The poor conditions and geography argument can excuse or explain African primitiveness in the short run but from a longer perspective they prove just the opposite. Poor conditions leads to poor people.

Human development history isn't really all that mysterious anymore. Sowell seems to deliberately trying to obfuscate many of the issues. For example he cites early Muslims who commented that the further north one went the lighter the skin and the more primitive the people. Sowell makes it sound as if the most advanced peoples were randomly found over time and space. But that's not true.

Australian Aborigines have never had a high civilization. At one time Italy was more advanced than Sweden or Germany. Today that's reversed. True, but not a mystery. The explanation is simple. Northern races are more intelligent but civilization began in the south - specifically the Middle East. The Neolithic Revolution advances proceeded across Europe at about a mile a year. It went through Greece. Then Rome and then France, Holland, Germany, Britain, and Scandinavia. When Greece was at its height Rome was a village. When Rome was at it's height France was primitive and Germany more so. But Rome rose higher than Greece just as France rose higher than Rome once they had assimilated the new cultural innovations. Japan before Perry was a backward nation but caught up very quickly. Japan has a very intelligent population and a very advanced industrial infrastructure. They have surpassed Britain but they hadn't in 1840. Once all these technology trends have finished and everyone has absorbed modern technology, we still have differences but now those differences are now mostly racial.

Over time, intellectuals have advanced theories about discrepancies between racial, ethnic, linguistic, and religious groups. The explanations included elaborate theories of biological and mental deficiencies, as well as more modern views that all differences in group performance are the result of discrimination. Sowell dispels both sets of notions.

Sowell convincingly argues that cultural and subcultural norm determine group behavior. Those groups who tend to value and pursue learning, for example, typically do better in modern capitalist societies. Sometimes ethnic groups engage in widespread behaviors that are dysfunctional, but other groups seemed well-prepared to do well. Discrimination does not explain the discrepancies any more than theories of racial inferiority.

Sowell provides impressive evidence to substantiate his case. Some readers, no doubt, will say that Sowell, as a conservative, is too anxious to blame the victims of discrimination. I disagree and believe that Sowell sincerely wants to understand racial discrepancies in earnings, education, incarceration and other areas. He succeeds in asking some important questions.

And that is the major problem with his book. He provides enough evidence to stimulate reasonable doubt about the theory that discrimination explains everything. Then he more or less stops. The cultural and subcultural norms that Sowell believes provide the foundations for group behaviors were, in themselves, responses to past discriminatory conditions. It is one thing to say that a sort of cultural inertia has produced human inequalities that are manifest in ethnicity or race, but, as always, difficult to formulate any means of halting that inertia.

In Intellectuals and Race, Dr. Sowell covers two broad themes. First, within racial or ethnic groups, whether in a given society or in a wide variety of societies in different countries around the world, there exists large and numerous disparities in income, education, income, crime rates, IQs, et cetera.
Sowell examines the data and shows a multiplicity of factors that act and interact and result in differences. Those factors include different geographic settings, intergroup differences in occupational skills, differences in median age, and historical happenstances such as decisive military battles.
But disparities and their causes is not his focus. Sowell explains the phenomena as a rebuttal against the shifting arguments that intellectuals have used dating from the mid-nineteenth century until today; their arguments and the role that race plays, constitute his second theme.
Sowell contends that the prevailing over-arching vision among intellectuals throughout the centuries influenced members of society to perceive race as the predominant factor in statistical discrepancies within various ethnic groups. Changing racial beliefs among the intelligentsia resulted in changing racial beliefs in society at large. Whatever preference the intellectuals had for society at a given time regarding race, that vision was prevailing view that should not be questioned. All opposing views were ignored or censored.
The Progressive Era was perhaps the high-water mark of “scientific” theories of racial differences. The shift in European immigration patterns from Northern and Western Europe to Eastern and Southern Europe, and the mass migrations of American blacks from the South to Northern cities, raised questions about their racial quality. Sowell has no qualms about naming intellectuals, no matter how much they may be revered. Many played prominent roles and were part of the Eugenics movement. He lists leaders on the left such as John Maynard Keynes, H.G. Wells, and Bernard Shaw, and on the right, such as Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill; others include Richard T. Ely and H.L. Mencken.
Sowell ends by tracing how the Progressives became Liberals and the vision (Multiculturalism) that they subscribe to today. The focus of intellectuals shifted from heredity (genetic determinism) or racial inferiority as the predominant factor of discrepancies to racism, defined as a racial problem inside the minds of white people. In other words, differences didn’t arise from any peculiarities of blacks or any other race, but rather from contradictory attitudes in the minds of white people. This vision essentially makes blacks and other races victims of conflicting attitudes of white people.
Multiculturalism essentially ignores destructive behavior found within the subculture of less fortunate groups that results in disparities. Multiculturalists decry educators who seek to teach the less fortunate the basic skills that others in society at large have used in their advancement. Trying to get minority groups to learn English and to acculturate to other norms has been viewed negatively by multiculturalists as a form of cultural imperialism.
In sum, Dr. Sowell does an excellent job exposing the fallacies of the intelligentsia and bringing sanity into the discussion about race and differences in socioeconomic outcomes.

The three main reasons given for racial and ethnic differences are heredity, culture, and environment. Sowell believes that culture is the overriding factor and this seems to be probably true.

Certain groups such the Chinese, Japanese, Germans, and Jews always do well wherever they live and certain groups such as blacks do not do as well whether they live in America, Africa, or anywhere else. Sowell ascribes this negative tendency in the United States to a counterproductive black underclass culture of crime, welfare, and hostility to education.

What Sowell misses is that this is basically a continuation of pre-industrial African culture. When the slave trade started Africa was a tribal society stuck in the early agricultural era which meant a high rate of violence, a lot of leisure time, and little incentive to learn anything new. After emancipation blacks began to develop skills for a modern economy and by around 1960 had lower crime rates, lower unemployment rates, and greater family stability than today. What changed was the modern welfare state which started in the 1960s and enabled the black underclass to revert back towards the conditions of African tribal society.

Another cultural aspect is that European culture is obsessed with guilt and its modern descendants in the United States have found a new version of original sin, this time in being white, thereby continuing Christian doctrine under another name. The concept of original sin developed in Christianity meant the innate tendency of promoting one's self-interest at the expense of society by behaviors such as lying, stealing, and killing. Christianity offered redemption for these behaviors by allowing penance for practicing them. But now our modern multicultural culture has created the original sin of being white for which there is no redemption. A black baby today is born with a set of pre-packaged grievances and a lifetime of preferential treatment while a white baby must face a lifetime of legal racial discrimination called affirmative action because of its original sin of being white.

Sowell focuses on one of the main forces behind this race industry which consists of mostly academic intellectuals from the most prestigious universities. These people live in a system where they get big salaries while never having to put in grinding work days for fifty or more weeks a year like the rest of society. They have cleverly deflected any criticism of this lifestyle by designing a system which shifts society's focus to perpetuating a black underclass and blaming present-day white society which conveniently fits into the white predilection for guilt.

One reason most academic intellectuals despise Christianity is that they are in competition with it in the guilt-mongering business. Moreover they have designed a much more effective system where there is basically no hope of redemption so the system can theoretically continue indefinitely. But this has created the paradoxical situation where blacks must claim more and more victimization to get more and more preferential treatment and there may be some limit to how long this can work.

This whole system continues as the United States declines in power economically, militarily, and politically. Part of this is due to the disparate impact rule which states that if any minority does not pass some occupational or other test, then the test must be changed so that they can pass it. This is something the mostly unicultural nation of China does not have to face and is one reason why it is starting to surpass the United States in various areas.

This book was my first introduction to Dr. Sowell's writings and theories, and will not be my last. I found this book to be difficult to finish, as it is redundant both in ideology and terminology (certain phrases are used over and over again), as well as purposefully inflammatory. However, the ideas within are too important to not continue personal exploration.

Sowell's central theory is that the true cause of inequality among different races are due to cultural differences among groups of people, not societal predispositions and/or structures that favor one race over another. This theory is valid, deserves discussion and has failed to be given serious consideration by intellectuals (or academics) over the past century. Despite the merit of his argument, Sowell's presentation of these ideas lacking.

While some of the evidence supporting Sowell's central theory is discussed (eg historical examinations of cultural differences between southern and northern blacks after the civil war, differences between eastern and western white Europeans, both used to explain differences in educational or economic success), this book failed to look at these relationships with enough depth or in sufficient quantity to justify Sowell's conclusions. For instance, he uses the ubiquity of slavery and the fact that many different races have been subject to slavery over time, to find fault with the intellectuals assumption that slavery is the root of inequality among blacks in modern America. The fact that there were enslaved peoples of all races is important, yes, but Sowell fails to highlight the distinctions between slavery in early America (which largely enslaved blacks and was paralleled by the overwhelming social view that blacks were of less value), and slavery that occurred during other times on other continents (which was driven mostly by imperial conquests or as a means of debt repayment).

Furthermore, underlying this book is a feeling of contempt for progressive thought, a feeling that overpowers Sowell's academic message. His use of the term "intellectual" at times far overreaches its stated definition to encompass the entirety of progressive thought. Sowell misses the opportunity to present a compelling argument, an argument that deserves integration into our academic discussions on race. Instead, this book feels more like a platform to denigrate the "liberal lefties", and as such, will be taken less seriously among those who see merit in both sides of the argument.

Bottom line: There are tremendously important ideas in this book that are useful to our understanding of race in society. The delivery of these ideas is imperfect and at times grating, with certain conclusions not standing more rigorous investigation. Nonetheless, this book is still worth a read for serious thinkers on any place of the political spectrum.

By “intellectuals”, Sowell means people whose work begins and ends by creating or disseminating ideas that are not supported by factual evidence. They judge their ideas by whether they “sound good to other intellectuals or resonate with the public”. Intellectuals therefore differ from scientists, whose work often also begins and ends by creating or disseminating ideas, but these have to be supported by factual evidences on which their peers will base their judgment.

His main thesis is that, although African-Americans have clearly been subject to intense “racial discrimination” in the past and are still now subjected to both positive and, to a far lesser extent, negative discrimination, “racial discrimination” is NOT the main cause of the current differences in performance between blacks and other ethnic groups – contrary to what most intellectuals claim “without a spec of evidence”.

He furthermore shows that these differences are largely due to other causes, the main one being cultural differences, especially the current culture of victimhood, resentment and grievance that intellectual’s ideologies of “racial discrimination” have promoted inside black communities.

Sowell provides many factual evidences supporting his thesis, such as many cases worldwide where subgroups have underperformed in the clear absence of “racial discrimination”, or where subgroups clearly subjected to “racial discrimination” have outperformed the ruling group.

He shows how African-Americans’ performance has overall deteriorated since the advent of the civil right movements and the outlawing of “racial discrimination” against them, and how affirmative action has globally been detrimental to African-Americans achievements.

Throughout his book, his arguments are well supported by numerous references to reputable sources, although many of them are rather old. My only two criticisms are:
(a) At a few places, some facts are not sufficiently developed to fully support his arguments.
(b) In chapter 5 “Race and Intelligence”, he develops at length some convincing arguments against the heredity hypothesis, but fails to even mention any of the arguments supporting it. However, he courageously takes the defense of the book “The Bell Curve” against “the firestorm among the intelligentsia” that it ignited for suggesting a genetic origin to some of the interracial IQ differences.

Therefore I rate four stars this otherwise invaluable book.

It is so refreshing to read any intellectual talk about race in a rational and empirical way, but when it is a black intellectual it is so much more effective. Thomas Sowell is obviously a brilliant man and his shredding of race politics by liberal elites is amazing.

If everyone would read and take seriously this book I believe we would live in an entirely different world. This short book is amazing and you will not regret reading it.

Very highly recommended.

It would be great if this were required reading in our high schools.

One topic Sowell doesn't address is whether the race hustlers even believe what they say, or whether their politics is purely mercenary. I suspect the latter.

Thomas Sowell's book is very well-written and easy to understand, even without much background knowledge on the topic. This book is very well researched. Although I am a liberal, I have to admit that Sowell makes a good argument for the role that culture plays in the adverse outcomes of African Americans.

Anyone who has ever studied race relations, black history or any other sociological theories knows that this book is highly lacking in its research or intellectual content. In his claimed research he cherry picks data and ascribes it without any further depth of what the data entails. His sole argument is that the plight of blacks is based upon black failures, poor character, and inferior intelligence. (Unironically, the author touts that he is a mentor to Justice Clarence Thomas and only listens to Rush Limbaugh).

In fact, this author denies that racism even exists, in the book he uses Asians as the scapegoat, suggesting that if blacks are being discriminated against then Asians would be too. Conveniently forgetting that in the past Asians also were discriminated against but as they developed stronger intra-racial alliances and gained economic power, they became the model minority. (there are numerous books on the subject). He refuses to acknowledge data which states that blacks who are provided the exact same educational opportunities from childhood do considerably better than their white counterparts.

He also refuses to acknowledge the significant amount of data which shows that blacks who attained higher education than white counterparts are denied jobs or that companies which received the exact same resume but with different names (one black sounding/one white sounding) overwhelmingly chose the white applicant. Numerous other studies also provide this data, but he doesn't use this because it doesn't fit his agenda.

If that is not an illogical enough argument, he denies that there is a reason for the vast amount of inequality that blacks endure on a regular basis and assigns all inequality to internal issues in the black community. Of course every community has its issues, and clearly there are issues that one must take responsibility for but to even deny that there has ever been racism is beyond the desire to pander to a white conservative audience, its just illogical. Although the author himself is black, the content of this book is overwhelmingly anti-black and anti-liberal.

Anyone who wants to understand the subject of race and intellectualism should consider more reliable, ethical, and more properly researched sources information (I have read nearly a hundred but there are thousands more I have not read) that tell the entire story (both the good and the bad) without the hostile anti-black bias provided here.

Though he takes a serious attempt to tackle an important issue, his analysis is sorely lacking. The work resounds in logical fallacies. I'll only cite two here:

1. He says that intellectual theories that link racism to the abhorent situation of most blacks is belied by the fact that Asians perform well on standardized tests and elsewhere. So if I hate black people, and even use the N word all the time to disparage my black employees, I still am not racist in Sowell's view if I don't also Asians. That makes no sense. I can hate black people without hating other groups.

2. The second critique is related to the first. Sowell looks at the treatment of blacks who receive poor loan conditions or are denied loans and says that race can't be a factor because Asians get loans on favorable terms. Again, I can hate blacks without hating Asians. In fact, I'm surprised Sowell doesn't understand that, because of the long history of race relations in this country, there is an animus reserved for African Americans that is not equally applied to other races. Sowell completely fails to address this fundamental problem: a black man with the exact same credit score and history as a white man is half as likely to receive a loan on the same favorable terms as that white man. (Sowell says this can't be racism because 1. Asians; and 2. black-owned banks also discriminate. Neither of these arguments merit a response).

Unfortunately, what could have been a serious book by a relatively serious scholar (I'll ignore the fact he once compared Obama to Hitler) became a misguided attempt to understand a complex phenomenon that--apparently--was too complex for the author.

Thomas Sowell's "Intellectuals and Race" is interesting but I must disagree with the main premise. As Prof. Sowell correctly states, most intellectuals of the early 20th century considered racial inequalities to be genetically based while "thinkers" of the late 20th century tended to blame white racism for blacks' problems. Sowell sets himself above the fray by proclaiming both groups wrong because, as he has it, the facts are far more complicated than what we are being told. I am not convinced.

According to Dr. Sowell, geography, climate, accidents of history, the presence of draft animals, etc. are factors that must be considered as contributing to racial differences. He sees these factors as playing larger rolls than genes or racism. Sowell's arguments regarding racism, as perceived by liberals and multiculturalists, are impeccable. His disagreements with the early 20th century intellectuals are severely lacking, though.

Prof. Sowell tries to deemphasize the role of intelligence in accounting for black difficulties by pointing to other groups. He mentions that the Jews, Italians and Irish didn't score well on IQ tests when they first immigrated to America. But he fails to mention that American blacks have always scored a full standard deviation below whites on IQ tests over the last century and there are no signs of that changing to this day. He also fails to mention that African blacks, who are more racially pure, have always scored a full two standard deviations below whites. His arguments regarding the ceiling of black IQ scores is misleading. In each case where he shows exceptionally high scoring blacks, he uses children as his example. The problem is that blacks tend to mature earlier than whites (and apes mature earlier than humans). The only fair way to make comparisons of this nature is by studying fully mature adults.

Dr. Sowell takes great satisfaction in pointing out that the children from black soldiers and German women after WWII had IQ scores about as high as those of white GIs with German women. This is a foolish argument. The test which the military administers to prospective recruits and draftees is, in effect, an IQ test. For obvious reasons, a far higher proportion of blacks are rejected than whites. The resulting pool of soldiers is far more homogeneous than what is found in the general population.

Prof. Sowell is fond of repeating that correlation does not prove causation while arguing against a genetic influence for black failure. Well, it certainly doesn't disprove it either. He is quick to quote Charles Murray's cowardly agnostic stance to buttress his case but fails to mention subsequent work by Arthur Jensen, Phil Rushton and Richard Lynn which offer convincing proof for a genetic influence. Also left unmentioned are the famous adoption studies of black children raised by white parents and the studies of identical twins reared apart. Does Dr. Sowell know the difference between a dependent and an independent variable?

I'll go this far in agreeing with Prof. Sowell that weather had an influence on IQ: Those populations that survived two ice ages, through the ordinary process of natural selection, were left with superior intellect. That is, Europeans and East Asians have superior IQs because only the fittest or smartest could figure out how to sustain themselves through the harsh environments they were subjected to.