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Пишет Journal de Chaource (![[info]](http://lj.rossia.org/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small} lj_chaource)@ 2018-04-16 00:03:00 |
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Latest book by Thomas Sowell
I'm about to buy this:
Thomas Sowell. Discrimination and disparities (2018)
https://amazon.com/Discrimination-Dispar
But one thing stops me from ordering the book: I'm not sure if there is going to be anything new I haven't already seen in Sowell's argumentation. In his earlier books such as "Markets and Minorities", "Race and Economics", "Preferential Policies: An International Perspective", "Knowledge and decisions", and most recently in "Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective", he already expounded at length on his views and empirical data on what causes disparities and what role discrimination plays in society. Sowell has gotten old, and most of his later books rehash his earlier arguments with just a bit of more empirical evidence.
To complement Sowell's data, -- last I checked, social disparities such as the gender wage gap and the black-white income gap disappear to within 2% once the statistics are detailed enough to account for hours worked, experience and education. The remaining 2% may be due to group discrimination or to other factors. Even if we magically brainwash everyone to eliminate all group discrimination from people's minds, the social disparities will be reduced by at most 2% (or might not be reduced at all). My conclusion is that combating "unconscious bias" or other group discrimination is an ineffective and counter-productive measure that draws attention and resources away from actually urgent problems of today's society.
These urgent problems are not problems of group discrimination - not racism, not sexism, not islamophobia, and not the "toxicity" of cis-gender heterosexual white males. One of the really urgent problems of the African-American community is the 70% rate of single-parent families for black American kids, together with 70% welfare rate for African Americans. (There are 37 million non-Hispanic blacks, and 27 million among them are on welfare.) https://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-s
There are voices in the black community that call to action within the black community itself - such as, supporting police and introducing more effective crime deterrents, and explaining that the current policies are not working.
https://smile.amazon.com/Enough-Dead-End-M
https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helpi
However, anyone who puts responsibility for black murders on the blacks seems to be unwelcome on mainstream media. Instead, the media as well as President Obama keep saying that racism is an important problem that has to do with black murders, and that black people's feeling that they are treated unfairly are justified. President Obama talked about this even during a memorial service for white police officers killed by black criminals. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201
This brings us to another problem - the political divisiveness that prevents productive dialogue between opposing viewpoints: this is the real crisis of democracy today.
Half of millennials would limit free speech if it meant guarding against offensive material, say University of Chicago researchers. I think that in many cases, given a choice, people will refuse to hear the opposite point of view, especially when presented in a neutral and well-articulated fashion. It has become too disturbing to have a political controversy in one's mind. Most young people today - especially public school students and college students - will never hear a well-articulated, neutral, and authoritative exposition of, say, a socially conservative point of view, a libertarian point of view, or a fundamentalist religious point of view. All they hear is radical-left populism that claims to be "mainstream" and "at the political center", while all other points of view are labeled as "far right".
The intolerance to foreign views is akin to a phobia, and the cure is just like any phobia cure - people should be forcibly exposed to other viewpoints, while being placed in a physically and psychologically safe environment (such as a discussion club or lecture).
The argument that inequality and disparity is due to discrimination or "biases" is an easy way out for everyone - from schoolchildren who do not want to study ("the teachers are unfair to me!") to activists who stand to gain easy, populist political points by drawing the victimhood card. Most people, however, will not doubt this narrative because it is so plausible and emotionally appealing. Just like the pipe dream of achieving social harmony by expropriating money from "the rich", the demand to stop "unfair discrimination" in order to help "oppressed minorities" is a go-to argument of today's radical-left populism. The simple "unfairness" arguments and feelings of victimhood will always remain with us - they are as old as humanity itself - and so they need to be countered every day with empirical evidence.
Another important piece of evidence is this Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_et
It shows unequivocally that the United States today gives people the best chances and opportunities in the world, quite regardless of their skin color. (Warning: The precise figures in that Wikipedia page are unreliable and have changed recently for unknown reasons. The qualitative results remain mostly the same as I remember them from a couple of years ago - the Indians, Philipinos, and Taiwanese are the top household earners. The raw data is here, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tabl
I might still buy Sowell's book, on the chance that there is something new in it -- perhaps his younger assistants gathered more data.
It is important to hear all voices, and Sowell's is doubtlessly a unique voice. On the strength of his earlier work, I'm not surprized that the book is already a "#1 bestseller" in its category.
I'm about to buy this:
Thomas Sowell. Discrimination and disparities (2018)
https://amazon.com/Discrimination-Dispar
But one thing stops me from ordering the book: I'm not sure if there is going to be anything new I haven't already seen in Sowell's argumentation. In his earlier books such as "Markets and Minorities", "Race and Economics", "Preferential Policies: An International Perspective", "Knowledge and decisions", and most recently in "Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective", he already expounded at length on his views and empirical data on what causes disparities and what role discrimination plays in society. Sowell has gotten old, and most of his later books rehash his earlier arguments with just a bit of more empirical evidence.
To complement Sowell's data, -- last I checked, social disparities such as the gender wage gap and the black-white income gap disappear to within 2% once the statistics are detailed enough to account for hours worked, experience and education. The remaining 2% may be due to group discrimination or to other factors. Even if we magically brainwash everyone to eliminate all group discrimination from people's minds, the social disparities will be reduced by at most 2% (or might not be reduced at all). My conclusion is that combating "unconscious bias" or other group discrimination is an ineffective and counter-productive measure that draws attention and resources away from actually urgent problems of today's society.
These urgent problems are not problems of group discrimination - not racism, not sexism, not islamophobia, and not the "toxicity" of cis-gender heterosexual white males. One of the really urgent problems of the African-American community is the 70% rate of single-parent families for black American kids, together with 70% welfare rate for African Americans. (There are 37 million non-Hispanic blacks, and 27 million among them are on welfare.) https://www.statisticbrain.com/welfare-s
There are voices in the black community that call to action within the black community itself - such as, supporting police and introducing more effective crime deterrents, and explaining that the current policies are not working.
https://smile.amazon.com/Enough-Dead-End-M
https://www.amazon.com/Please-Stop-Helpi
However, anyone who puts responsibility for black murders on the blacks seems to be unwelcome on mainstream media. Instead, the media as well as President Obama keep saying that racism is an important problem that has to do with black murders, and that black people's feeling that they are treated unfairly are justified. President Obama talked about this even during a memorial service for white police officers killed by black criminals. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201
This brings us to another problem - the political divisiveness that prevents productive dialogue between opposing viewpoints: this is the real crisis of democracy today.
Half of millennials would limit free speech if it meant guarding against offensive material, say University of Chicago researchers. I think that in many cases, given a choice, people will refuse to hear the opposite point of view, especially when presented in a neutral and well-articulated fashion. It has become too disturbing to have a political controversy in one's mind. Most young people today - especially public school students and college students - will never hear a well-articulated, neutral, and authoritative exposition of, say, a socially conservative point of view, a libertarian point of view, or a fundamentalist religious point of view. All they hear is radical-left populism that claims to be "mainstream" and "at the political center", while all other points of view are labeled as "far right".
The intolerance to foreign views is akin to a phobia, and the cure is just like any phobia cure - people should be forcibly exposed to other viewpoints, while being placed in a physically and psychologically safe environment (such as a discussion club or lecture).
The argument that inequality and disparity is due to discrimination or "biases" is an easy way out for everyone - from schoolchildren who do not want to study ("the teachers are unfair to me!") to activists who stand to gain easy, populist political points by drawing the victimhood card. Most people, however, will not doubt this narrative because it is so plausible and emotionally appealing. Just like the pipe dream of achieving social harmony by expropriating money from "the rich", the demand to stop "unfair discrimination" in order to help "oppressed minorities" is a go-to argument of today's radical-left populism. The simple "unfairness" arguments and feelings of victimhood will always remain with us - they are as old as humanity itself - and so they need to be countered every day with empirical evidence.
Another important piece of evidence is this Wikipedia page, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_et
It shows unequivocally that the United States today gives people the best chances and opportunities in the world, quite regardless of their skin color. (Warning: The precise figures in that Wikipedia page are unreliable and have changed recently for unknown reasons. The qualitative results remain mostly the same as I remember them from a couple of years ago - the Indians, Philipinos, and Taiwanese are the top household earners. The raw data is here, https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tabl
I might still buy Sowell's book, on the chance that there is something new in it -- perhaps his younger assistants gathered more data.
It is important to hear all voices, and Sowell's is doubtlessly a unique voice. On the strength of his earlier work, I'm not surprized that the book is already a "#1 bestseller" in its category.
