REVIEWS

...As we don't have the figures, it is not clear to me and should not be clear to Sowell...

...Data aside, common sense suggests that skills, values, and discrimination will affect economic success...

...The critical question for all but ideologues is: Which redistributions are most likely to increase and least likely to reduce wealth...

...This is the classic case for laissez-faire...

...Sowell might reply that the U.S...

...It has the same strengths and weaknesses as the other three of his books I have read (Essays and Data on American Ethnic Groups, 1978...

...It might be that in the absence of discrimination all three groups would do much better than they are doing now—in which case discrimination would be important...

...The political system always seems to tend toward the intolerant...

...I think the empirical evidence supports the proposition that, on balance, blacks are helped rather than hurt by unions, while the effect of the minimum wage on black income is ambiguous...

...Politics is bad...

...HI WE NOW COME TO Sowell's second major argument, that it is in the long-run interest of ethnic minorities to devote their efforts to the pursuit of profit in the private sector rather than the pursuit of power in the public one...

...125 Not quite...

...Once we've eliminated the general rule, the work gets harder...

...In discussing the effects and limits of politics and economics, Sowell always assumes the worst about the political system and the best about the economic one...

...Is Sowell completely unfamiliar with Martin Luther King's career or is he again blocking because of ideological blinders...

...The idea that a judicious mixture of capitalism and socialism might be the best of all * Quoted in Stephen B. Oates, Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King Jr...

...Transfers from those with selfsupporting levels of human capital tend to reduce the number of self-supporting members of the next generation...

...3) leaders get the economic rewards, while the masses get nothing...

...His version is that discrimination didn't prevent those groups with strong cultures from succeeding...

...For Sowell, civil rights leaders are demagogues who profit financially—"often earning annual incomes running in hundreds of thousands of dollars, even if their programs and approaches prove futile for the larger purpose of lifting other blacks out of poverty...

...And last, the blacks brought a low level of culture, suffered from extremely high discrimination, and continue to do poorly, catching up very slowly...

...Insofar as a given sum transferred will generally support more ill-raised children than well-raised children, it tends also to increase the total number of people, while inhibiting the production of the means to support them...

...But The Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective is a poor book...

...I have no quarrel with his argument that both human capital and values will be important determinants of success in a predominantly free-market economy...

...According to Sowell, the disadvantages of the political route are: (1) heightened group identity evokes counterchauvinism from other groups...

...That's a good story, the Horatio Alger story of American ethnic groups—a true one...

...The Irish did the latter...

...They are now much more likely than the average to contribute money and to vote (and I would bet that was true from the outset), and they have run for and won elective office out of proportion to their numbers...

...and (4) "political approaches suffer from the sheer volatility of politics, in general, and democratic politics in particular...

...And, just as he gives no measures of culture, he presents no measures of discrimination...

...This piece of evidence hurts the don't-takethepolitical-route argument in two ways: by an across-groups and a within-group comparison...

...He may mischaracterize Chinese, German, and Italian experience as well, but I know too little about these subjects to comment...

...But if I were to grant Professor Sowell the argument that the United States labor market has hurt blacks recently—that is, for about the last 50 years— because of unions and the minimum wage, then we would agree that the labor market has been neither so perfect nor so tolerant as Sowell argues it will be in the "long run...

...If it falls to your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, like Shakespeare wrote poetry, like Beethoven composed music...

...In other words, discrimination is more important when it's turned on than when it's turned off...

...They tell provocative and lively stories about minority immigrant groups and pull together an array of knowledge...

...labor market is noncompetitive because of unions and the minimum wage, and thus, as a result, blacks suffer in the labor market...

...Booker T. Washington, one of the greatest of American black leaders, whom Sowell quotes so approvingly, did a superb job of that...

...sweep streets so well that all the host of heaven and earth will have to pause and say, "Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well...

...The Irish were the slowest rising and still remain the least wealthy of all these groups...

...The combinations of Sowell's stories are capable of various interpretations...

...And, stated this strongly, it is poppycock...

...the economic one toward the tolerant...

...All great leaders do the same with their people...

...markets to be fairly competitive...

...The latter is guaranteed—of course—by perfect competition in the long run...

...Without more information I can infer nothing from these relationships...

...To quote from one of King's speeches: Whatever your life's work is, do it well...

...All these books indeed have made me angry, made me think, and taught me something...

...Iv SOWELL'S GRATUITOUS INSULTS to American civil rights leaders first angered and now sadden me...

...More important, indeed fatal to Sowell's argument, is the story he himself tells of the Irish—a sad history of the costs to both Irish and British, but especially the Irish, of the British subjugation of the Irish...

...Repeatedly Sowell asserts that values are more important...

...For Sowell the United States of America is the greatest place to live because of its tradition of laissez-faire capitalism...

...They worked in and became important figures in the two major political parties...

...Some of the strengths and nearly all of the weaknesses derive from the same source: Sowell is a free-market ideologue...

...But Sowell's implication that civil rights leaders other than Booker T. Washington have pandered to prejudices rather than stressing individual responsibility is astounding...

...Surely, he would agree that universal public elementary and secondary education increased rather than decreased the wealth of America, Western Europe, and other parts of the world...

...What is not so clear is, however, what's more important, values or skills...

...Sowell's emphasis on the importance of hard work serves a useful function...

...Sowell's assertion that redistribution necessarily impoverishes nations is an equally unsupported claim...

...2) leaders who pander to group prejudices and take a hard line are most likely to be rewarded...

...Possibly Sowell may consider the evidence faulty, but he does himself and his readers a disservice in overlooking it...

...I hope, at least, that Sowell would agree...

...It might be that the discrimination against the Jews and even the Chinese immigrants was mild compared to that suffered by blacks...

...Neither democracy nor socialism gets any credit...

...On what basis does Sowell conclude that values were more important than specific skills for the Germans...

...Sowell's stories tell us nothing about the relative importance of discrimination and culture, either at a particular time or for very long periods...

...They are well written, and parts are insightful...

...Christopher Jencks makes this and other useful points in a two-part review of some of Sowell's books in the New York Review of Books, March 3 and 17, 1983...

...q...

...Those who argue that America's economic preeminence is attributable to our freemarket heritage conveniently forget that we led the world in providing free public education...

...I look forward to the day when Sowell's faith in the market and our country is strong enough to allow him to forthrightly see the shortcomings of both...

...To begin with, Sowell mischaracterizes the Jewish experience in America...

...His argument is stated in the most general terms without reference to either the type of political system or the numerical strength of the minority group...

...The empirical evidence in support of the proposition that the best strategy for poor ethnic minorities is to pursue profit in the private sector rather than power in the public one is superficially convincing...

...Indeed, even very intense discrimination has been overcome in the long run by groups with strong cultures...

...He has no measure of the extent to which Germans worked harder than other groups, or how their skills compared with those of the Chinese, Irish, and Italians...

...With his stories Sowell illustrates and in a table documents the effects of culture and discrimination on current economic outcomes...

...Jews helped organize unions and new political parties...

...Sowell's faith in the free market makes him close his eyes to as much reality as do Communists who believe that capitalism leads to the increasing impoverishment of the working class...

...It can only mean that discrimination was more important than culture then, but isn't now...

...He writes, "A large civil rights establishment, inside and outside government, has to find work to do, and must convince itself and others that this work is vitally important...

...If the fact that the Chinese are now doing well means culture is more important than discrimination, how should we interpret the fact that the Chinese were doing worse than average when they were discriminated against...

...None of these arguments is convincing...

...Perhaps the level of discrimination against Chinese and Jews was just sufficient to spur them on to greater than average efforts, whereas the discrimination against blacks was so severe that it destroyed the spirit of many black men and women...

...The second major argument is that it's in the 1Gng-run economic interest of poor ethnic minorities to devote their efforts to the pursuit of profit in the private sector rather than power in the public one...

...More generally, isn't it wise to avoid putting all your eggs in any one basket...

...Markets and Minorities, 1981, and Ethnic America, 1981...

...Surely, even Sowell would admit there are redistributions from the haves to the have-nots that increase rather than decrease aggregate wealth...

...But Sowell's theoretical arguments are really a sideshow...

...The principal evidence for these arguments is to be found in his stories about the Chinese, German, Italian, Jewish, Irish, and black immigrants to the United States and other countries...

...But even if they all were true, it would still be true that the choice between taking the political or the economic route would often depend on the numerical strength of the minority group and the nature of the political and economic systems...

...Yet I've come away from each convinced that Tom Sowell is at best a careless scholar...

...New York: New American Library, 1982), p. 105...

...According to Sowell, the Irish had much further to go than the Chinese, Germans, Italians, and Jews...

...For then he may go beyond being a very good storyteller and produce a truly superb book...

...If the Catholic Irish of the big political machines have climbed to the heights of America's economic pyramid, how important to the ascent were the political machines...

...All successful middleand working-class parents attempt to instill the value of hard work in their children...

...Finally, Jewish institutions go out of their way to heighten group identity...

...Universal public education is so American that many of us fail to recognize it as a form of 124 socialism...

...BY CULTURE SOWELL MEANS, clearly, both human capital and values...

...They pander, he tells us, to the resentments of blacks instead of telling them the truth that success under capitalism requires hard work, frugality, and all-around discipline...

...But it hardly proves that in the long run culture is a more important factor than discrimination...

...In such a case, isn't it possible that the political route in a democratic polity such as the United States would be at least as good for blacks as the economic route...

...His major approach is to argue by example...

...In this book, Sowell's first major argument is that because culture rather than discrimination is the critical determinant of economic success or failure, societies are not responsible for economic differences among cultural groups...

...QED...

...Nor does Sowell present the evidence that the Irish have come even further than his data suggest...

...Each case must be examined on its merits...

...Though his books have more footnotes than manuscripts written by lawyers— this one has 1,565—he often neglects references to evidence well known to scholars in his field that contradict his arguments...

...Virtually every economist I ever read, including his mentor Milton Friedman, admits that a country that provides public subsidies for at least the elementary education of the poor will be wealthier for it in the long run...

...Some of the world's foremost economists have spent a long time trying to explain how economic discrimination persisted so long in the United States labor market, despite the fact that most economists consider most U.S...

...When Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote their Communist Manifesto in 1848, which called for free public education, most American states outside the South already had it at elementary grades...

...It is not clear how this is either humane or just to anyone...

...And is Sowell completely unaware of the "drop drugs, study hard, and work hard" message Jesse Jackson has been preaching to black youth in the Chicago ghettos for the last decade...

...For example, I suppose the Chinese in the United States were a bit poorer than the average poor during the era when they faced intense discrimination, exemplified by the phrase "Not a Chinaman's chance...

...Does anyone doubt that the incomes of black professional baseball players were lower than the incomes of white professional baseball players in the first half of the 20th century because of discrimination...

...Transfers to non-self-supporting people tend to increase the proportion of the next generation unable to support themselves...

...The Irish brought a low level of culture, suffered from high levels of discrimination, and did poorly for a long time, though finally they are doing 123 well...

...Chinese and Jews brought high levels of culture, suffered from high levels of discrimination, and did very well...

...Who can disagree with that...

...126 possible worlds is as noxious to him as religious tolerance must be to the Ayatollah Khomeni...

...Economics is good...

...Though Sowell repeatedly asserts that values are more important than skills and both are more important than discrimination, his stories contribute nothing to resolving the relative importance of each...

...But it's not the only true story...

...The story of the effect of discrimination on black baseball players is like Sowell's stories—interesting and true, but not the only interesting and true story...

...Andrew Greeley, in his book Ethnicity, Denomination and Inequality (1976), shows that when you distinguish between the Catholic and Protestant Irish, you find that the Catholic Irish, who took the political route, have the second highest incomes, just behind the Jews, of all white American ethnic groups, while the Protestant Irish, who took the free-enterprise, nonpolitical route, have nearly the lowest...

...To cite just one example, he says that what the Germans had "more than specific skills, were a set of attitudes—toward work, thrift, and education—that sustained and advanced them economically...

...His major points are at best misleading and often wrong...

...No matter how measured, American Jews have been very active politically from the outset...

...If Chinese and Jewish Americans are now doing better than average despite past discrimination, while blacks are doing worse than average, that does not prove, as Sowell would have his readers believe, that culture is very important and discrimination unimportant in explaining income differences among people...

...The argument is that the Chinese, Germans, Italians, and Jews did the former...

...Sowell's stories boil down to the following: that Germans and Italians brought high levels of culture, suffered little discrimination, and did well...

...Peter Eisinger (in The Politics of Displacement, 1980, and his 1983 book Black Employment in City Government: 1973-1980) presents evidence that the Irish capture of political power in many big cities played a critical role in the group's economic advancement, and that blacks are just beginning to follow the same path...

...Societies that attempt to reduce economic inequality by redistributing resources from the haves to the have-nots end up impoverishing themselves...

...To quote from his conclusion: The crucial question is whether society as a whole— or mankind as a whole—gains when the output of both the fortunate and unfortunate is discouraged by disincentives, and when there are transfers that reduce the extent to which those with human capital can afford to have offspring and increase the extent to which those lacking human capital can afford to have offspring...

...II WHAT, THEN, DO THESE STORIES tell us about the relative importance of discrimination and culture...

...Thus it is possible that if they had not chosen the political route, the Irish would not have come so far...

...In contrast, on the basis of an ideological preference for the market, Sowell recommends that blacks turn their backs on the political route and thereby perhaps throw away what may at last be a golden opportunity...

...A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better...