Happy Belated Birthday, Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell turned 91 on June 30, and he seems sharp as a tack. I wish him many more healthy years, in part because I admire him so much and in part because we need him more than ever. As the linked article says:
Beginning in 1972 with Black Education: Myths and Tragedies, Sowell has weighed in on how to better the lives of Black Americans in a series of books that were mostly sneered at or ignored by the establishment left but are looking increasingly prescient in a new age of American race politics—this one propelled not by recidivist poor Southern whites but by power-seeking Northern white elites and their oligarchical sponsors.
Fifty years ago, Sowell was already denouncing the trends that now afflict fashionable movements like Black Lives Matter: pursuing symbolic results rather than real ones, choosing white guilt over Black advancement, and seeking special treatment instead of equal chances. Sowell knows that racism still persists, but he refuses to blame the gap between Black and white social outcomes on white supremacy, choosing instead to look to the ways that history shapes both group cultures and individual choices.
One of Sowell’s targets is equity, our current fetish—a word that now means trying to match the number of minority jobholders in every field to their proportion in the general population.
And yet most people probably have no idea who Sowell is.
Sowell was one of the very first thinkers I encountered during the course of my political change experience, and he was probably the most formative one. When I initially read his work – I think it was the book The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy – it was with a happy sigh of recognition and relief as well as admiration. Finally, here was someone who was voicing clear, intelligent, common-sense versions of thoughts, some of which were new to me but some of which I’d already had in extremely inchoate and amorphous form but had never been able to articulate or order. He made perfect sense, and I couldn’t imagine why everyone in the world didn’t agree with him.
Unfortunately, they didn’t.
Notice also that subtitle – of a book first published in 1996 – “Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.” That’s an excellent example of Sowell’s ability to distill – into a short phrase, sentence, or paragraph – a complex and highly insightful as well as illuminating idea. He’s been doing that for about fifty years, and his body of work holds up very well.
So Happy Happy Birthday, Thomas Sowell. Long may you live and grace us with your clear-headed wisdom.
It is, of course, shameful for any educated person not to have read Sowell, but one of the many “problematic” aspects of our “intelligentsia” (whether leftist professors or foolish and philistine journalists and pundits) is less that they have failed to read the best books than that they have read all the wrong ones. It is better by far to be uninformed (while perhaps possessing common sense and decency) than to be miseducated from having attended one of the Ivies and misinformed from having read all the worst books and imbibed the most egregious falsehoods from the MSM. The Vision of the Anointed is a great book, but one might well argue that his finest work is A Conflict of Visions.
The Biography of Thomas Sowell, “Maverick” by Jason Riley, is an excellent place to learn more about him. It is an intellectual biography in the main, focused on how Sowell developed his understanding of important aspects of economics, history, political science, psychology, and sociology, and then published articles and books with careful analyses in each of the areas.
I first came across Sowell in a bookstore in Palo Alto. I saw Race and Culture and bought it. Later I was looking at something on my husband’s computer (back in the good old very slow days) and saw a picture of him. I had no idea that he was black.After that, I followed him because he wasn’t in the race mongers category. I’ve learned so much.
I used to be a person who wasn’t impressed by intellectuals. My life was one of doing things. Skiing, climbing, backpacking, flying, going to war, building houses, investing, traveling etc. Books I read were mostly on those subjects. It wasn’t until after i retired (1993), got a computer, and was introduced to the internet that I became more interested in intellectuals and their thinking. Although I had done a lot of reading about politics during the Vietnam years, I dropped most of it after I left the Navy. (1975) 9/11 was really the beginning of my later attempts to educate myself about geo-politics, politics, culture, and the social sciences.
I first saw Thomas Sowell on TV. I think he did an interview with Bill O’Reilly. Wow! I knew I had to read his book, which he was interviewed about. It was “The Vision Of the Anointed.” I was hooked. My kind of intellectual. I look up to him as the primary intellectual that helped me appreciate intellectuals. So, happy birthday Thomas Sowell and best wishes for many more to come.
May God bless Thomas Sowell, a prophet in the wilderness, generally unheard and unread, especially by our elite leaders of American society. But Biden would learn nothing from him; Trump would listen and learn. He is truly one of the most remarkable men of our times.
Cicero just said everything I wanted to say.
I started on the Anointed book. But it so accurately described what I saw so frequently and what seemed so outrageous that I was getting re-annoyed reading the book and so I quit.
Might try again.
Richard Aubrey:
You might want to try The Quest For Cosmic Justice instead. It’s short, and it’s very good.
I’m reading “The Vision of the Annointed,”and it’s brilliant. The sad thing is that it is so applicable to what is going on right now, 25 years after its publication. Also, I wish it had existed in the 70’s–it might have kept me from voting for Jimmy Carter!
A second vote to recommend Riley’s new bio. As you read, reflect that today conservatives can be considered the despised minority. Reflect upon Sowell’s insights on how minorities make progress. Also, reflect on Sowell’s remarks on how to judge a minority’s leaders.
In the early 80’s I read Knowledge & Decisions and have read virtually everything he has written since, save and except for the basic economics books since I majored in economics in college. He is a national treasure and his interests as evidenced by his works are vast. Even his description of the geographical hurdles in Africa and how they affected development is most enlightening.
stu: “Even his description of the geographical hurdles in Africa and how they affected development is most enlightening.”
Yep. Helped me better understand Africa after I had been there. A magnificent place with lots of natural resources, not the least of which are the myriad animals and birds found no where else. That those animals and birds have been protected in national parks is a wonderful thing. That the governments have mostly turned out to be kleptocracies or worse is a horrible thing. One major lesson to be learned. A nation with no tradition of private property protected by courts, fair elections, and individual rights will languish in a state of poverty while resources go unused.
At the recent Western Conservative Summit in Denver, Victor David Hanson spoke on the Annus Horribalus and the six months since, on the decline of citizenship, it’s replacement by pre-modern substitutes like tribalism, and called for a renewal of patriotic citizenship in America – despite his pessimism.
He also let slip one of his unheralded private pleasures: het gets to have lunch with his Hoover Institution senior fellow, Thomas Sowell every two weeks.
Let’s all suck (enviously) on that thought.
Hanson’s talk is up on YouTube. Much of it informs his most recent contribution to AmericanGreatness.com.
…called for a renewal of patriotic citizenship in America – despite his pessimism.
–TJ
I’m in trouble now. VDH is a go-to guy when my pessimism is getting the better of me.