The Public Policy

...By contrast, the Irish of the nineteenth century sought to counteract the harsh prejudice against them by political efforts, by violent protest, and by a vocal concern with their public image...

...Clearly, Sowell expects all three groups to continue developing the skills which will ensure further advances...

...Negro slavery, he points out, was accompanied by a more virulent racism in the United States than elsewhere in our hemisphere...

...The worst part about the uproar, however, was that Moynihan had been entirely right...

...ighty years after the great wave of Irish mmigration it was still common to find 'Irish Need Not Apply" signs on )usiness doors...

...I say this because in the intervening years the issue has been neither neglected nor treated benignly, and this has been to the detriment of both race relations and the commonweal...

...What Moynihan correctly pointed out was that these were problems of welfare, community, family structure, and economic institutions, not problems of race, and our obsession with race was not improving matters...

...There are countless examples, for instance, of first-generation Jews who have risen from poverty to positions of great wealth and prominence...

...Sowell shares that fascination, that delight, and that vision, and by combining them with the moral and analytical perspective of economics, he brings to his subject some sorely needed wisdom...

...Jews, Orientals, and )lacks were often singled out for brutal -acial attacks, sometimes by policemen...

...Sowell points out that West Indian immigrants have made much greater progress in America than American Negroes, even though both suffered debilitating slavery and both come from the same African heritage and geneticbase...

...Better, when it comes to purely racial questions, we had some benign neglect...

...which should be required reading 18 The Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 for all federal district court judges, because Dunbar was one of the country's finest urban high schools and Dunbar was all-black...

...Therefore he understands that denunciations of racism and "appeals to the principles of brotherhood" may be less effective in reducing racial injustices than "the unplanned effects of mutual economic advantage...

...Economic advancement in a competitive market economy depends chiefly on the ability to prepare for and adapt to economic opportunities, in other words, on work habits and skills...

...Our age is obsessed with race in part because we are obsessed with the present: when you look at neither the past nor the future, you become much more concerned about who is getting what share of the present spoils...

...1=1 'he Alternative: An American Spectator November 1975 19...

...felt obliged to "expose" a private memorandum meant only for President Nixon's eyes...

...To realize that future will require continued patience and much more hard work, and that is why "benign neglect" would be so benign...

...Certainly they would regard his skepticism about political action as ridiculous: are the virtues of political pressure not obvious• in the establishment of affirmative action programs and racial quotas...

...This, he points out, is what the Japanese have been doing...

...And it was a sad uproar, for it pointed out the unfortunate state of our polity: the New York Times, perhaps the greatest newspaper in the English language, so distrusted our elected government that it...

...Now I submit that if in 1970 the time"may have come" for some "benign neglect," in 1975 that time has certainly come...

...It was an ironic uproar, for "benign neglect" is precisely what the noblest moralists of the day would have had us practice: we were to look upon all men as brothers, regardless of their accents or skin colors...

...Moynihan inspired when these words of his were leaked to the press...

...Therefore those cultures which have stressed the virtues of self-reliance, of diligence, of education, of planning for the future, have fared better in America than those cultures which have not...

...The major effects of busing seem to be the destruction of neighborhoods, widespread popular resentment, and the ugly expression of latent racial hostilities, and yet the courts are imposing it with a vengeance...

...In all these ways, Sowell's analysis and his understanding suggest that racial and ethnic groups would be better served if the public discourse were less obsessed by race and ethnicity...

...no wonder many comThe Case for "Benign Neglect" mentators felt that this was no time for neglect...

...Quite the contrary: at the same time that most blacks were making extraordinary economic advances (between 1959 and 1972 the proportion of black families living in poverty dropped from 48% to 29%), there was an alarming growth of welfare dependency, crime, illegitimacy, and unemployment in particular black subcultures...

...Ironically, it is Sowell's appreciation of how slowly those habits develop that makes him rather optimistic about the future...

...No doubt they would dismiss Sowell's emphasis on the virtues of self-reliance as hopelessly old-fashioned...

...Therefore he understands how racial and ethnic differences are often the product of different economic environments...

...Better, I say, we focused our attentions on the frightening decline of quality in our schools, for that decline hurts all races...

...Yet today, the Irish are comfortably ensconced in the middle class...

...Civil rights leaders and the liberal press have raised no ruckus over Race and Economics comparable to the ruckus they raised over Moynihan's memorandum...

...Sowell is a historian of economic thought at UCLA, and an earlier book of his, Black Education: Myths and Tragedies (David McKay, 1972), contains a chapter on Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C...

...Therefore he understands how important it is to make comparisons over time, and how, when you do so, it turns out that almost every racial and ethnic group in America is making substantial progress...

...knd in one of the great disgraces of our listory, American citizens were rounded ip in concentration camps, their property )ften confiscated without compensation, nerely because they were of Japanese )rigin...

...Sowell is an economist in the true sense of the word, that of Adam Smith...

...And he has studied the progress—slow, tortuous, and not without its problems, but progress nevertheless—that men have made in improving their condition, all over the world but especially in America...

...Blacks have a higher level of prosperity than Mexicans or Puerto Ricans, largely because these latter groups arrived more recently...

...In the process, they have quickly earned one of the highest per capita incomes of any ethnic group, as well as the general respect of the population...

...It was an uncalled-for uproar, for Moynihan had urged benign rather than malignant neglect, and even if one disagreed with his suggestions it was unfair to excoriate his sentiments...

...Thus, in 1971, the income of black families outside the South, with the head of the household under 35, and with both a husband and wife present, was 93% that of their white counterparts, suggesting that the importance of race had been greatly exaggerated...

...Nearly every immigrant group in the nineteenth and :wentieth centuries encountered discrimnation in housing and employment...

...But civil rights leaders and the liberal press fail to understand something much more important, and that is the idea of progress which informs the thought of men like Moynihan and Sowell...

...Race and Economics should be required reading for anyone who is fascinated by race and ethnicity, who delights in the cultural richness which ethnic and racial diversity has contributed to American culture, and who is inspired by a vision of multiracial and multinational harmony...

...It simply is not fair, Sowell asserts, to measure the progress of individuals whose grandparents were peasants in Poland, southern Italy, or the American South—where there was virtually no opportunity to develop self-reliance, and where people were often kept purposefully illiterate—by the progress, say, of Jews whose grandparents, even if they arrived in America penniless, came from a culture which had stressed the importance of learning and self-reliance for centuries...

...What, for example, is the purpose of busing for school desegregation, now that most evidence casts doubts on its usefulness in promoting educational opportunity and racial concord...

...They would fail to understand when Sowell replied that quotas are precisely what minority groups do not need now, for quotas discourage the kind of work habits that in the long run will prove most helpful...

...In 1970 the median income for black households was only 64% that of white households...

...Sowell's response is that these groups are making it, though more slowly, and they are making it more slowly because the emphasis on education, the self-reliance, and the work habits which lead to advancement do not spring up automatically, but take generations to develop...

...Consider our obsession with broadcasting and making restitution for our racial and ethnic injustices...

...Although blacks have been free for over a century, they really did not emigrate to the urban market economy in large numbers until the 1920s...

...American history has been a history of racism and prejudice, and Sowell in no way glosses this history over...

...This is not to say that there were no problems in black or other minority communities...

...Instead they have ignored the book and will probably continue to do so...

...As an explanation, he suggests that the demography of the West Indies (90% black, 10% white) gave blacks there the opportunity to fill many positions unavailable to American Negroes, and thereby gave them greater opportunity and more time to develop responsible work habits and a sense of self-reliance...

...Rather than expending their energies in protesting a shameful recent injustice, they have quietly worked to advance themselves, to make the most of whatever economic and intellectual opportunities are available...

...He has studied the history of men and thinks it wisest not to place much trust in their benevolence, yet he appreciates how in the marketplace the public good can often emerge as an unintended consequence of self-interested pursuits...

...At the turn of the century, the Irish were plagued by crime, alcoholism, and broken homes, not to mention a low standard of living, and nary a soul expected them to amount to anything...

...Or consider the invidious comparisons between racial and ethnic groups that are sometimes made in the public discourse...

...if the Jews could make it in America, some people ask, why can't the Poles, the Negroes, or the Puerto Ricans...

...and some observers are tempted by such cultural differences to infer the superiority (or inferiority) of particular racial and ethnic groups...

...Toleration, Sowell notes, usually follows rather than precedes economic advancement...

...Sowell suggests that the condition of American Negroes is in many ways comparable to that of the Irish seventy-five years ago...

...I am fortified in these views by my reading of a remarkable book published this year, Thomas Sowell's Race and Economics (David McKay, $9.95...

...It makes much better sense, he suggests, to set about acquiring skills and education which will make it in the self-interest of others not to discriminate against you...

...But, Sowell asks, what good does it do racial or ethnic group to dwell on prior injustices...

...It was not until the twentieth century, however, when the Irish ceased their own violence and slowly but surely pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps, that the enormous prejudice against them finally subsided...

...If, however, you reflect on how people of all races and nationalities have been slowly and patiently improving their lot, then you recognize the promise of the future...

...And Sowell asserts that for relatively recent immigrants, the Negroes are doing quite well—especially when you isolate the proper variables...

...He has studied economic institutions and the extent to which they both reflect and shape cultural values...

...But Moynihan and a few other social scientists had probed behind the statistics and isolated the proper variables—age, geography, family characteristics—and it had become clear to them that in most parts of the United States the problem of race was no longer a problem...

...Daniel Patrick Moynihan, "Memorandum for the President," January 1970 Do you remember the uproar Mr...

...The mass of men, in every race and ethnic group, have so much important work to do, they shouldn't be disturbed...