Suddenly Sowell (plus a ruling in the Virginia school rape case)
Thomas Sowell is 91 years old, with a long record of accomplishment that includes the publication of many books that demonstrate an unusually brilliant clarity of thought and graceful yet economical expression of that thought.
A few years ago he announced his retirement. But for Sowell, retirement apparently isn’t what it is for the rest of us. At the ago of 90 he put out a book called Charter Schools and Their Enemies, and did quite a few interviews as well to promote the book.
Now the issues involving education and the left and how they are playing out in Virginia have brought him out of retirement again to write this essay. This quote tells you why:
This is one battle in a much bigger war, and the stakes are far higher than the governorship of Virginia or the Democrats and Republicans. The stakes are the future of this nation.
I assume everyone here is familiar with Sowell. But just in case not everyone is, I’ll add that he’s a black man who was raised partly in the South of the 1930s and partly in Harlem of the 1940s, became an economist who graduated from and taught at several elite institutions, and was a left-to-right political “changer” from way back.
I will add a personal note, which is that for me Sowell was highly influential in the development of my own thinking. By the time I encountered his books I had already undergone my own personal political change and had formulated my own ideas on these matters, but Sowell gave far more organization and logic to these ideas, as well as adding many of his own, all the while citing an enormous amount of research to back it up.
More from Sowell on the present situation:
When school propaganda teaches black kids to hate white people, that is a danger to all Americans of every race. Anyone at all familiar with the history of group-identity politics in other countries knows that it has often ended up producing sickening atrocities that have torn whole societies apart…
There is a point of no return in America…And we may be nearing it, or perhaps past it.
Low-income minority students, especially, cannot afford the luxury of having their time wasted on ideological propaganda in the schools, when they are not getting a decent education in mathematics or the English language.
When they graduate, and go on to higher education that could prepare them for professional careers, hating white people is not likely to do them nearly as much good as knowing math and English.
This may be a new issue to some people, but such irresponsible indoctrination has been going on for decades. Back in 1993, my book “Inside American Education” had a long chapter titled “Classroom Brainwashing.”
Anyone who reads the school propagandists’ own words quoted there can find that a sickening experience as well.
Parents who protest the arrogant abuse of a captive audience of children are performing an important public service. They deserve something better than having the Biden administration’s Attorney General threatening them.
Sowell probably wrote the article before Obama got into the act with his own remarks on the subject, or Sowell might have added that the parents who protest also deserve something better than having ex-president Obama insulting them.
In related news, I wouldn’t sit on a hot stove till Obama retracts his statements about “phony trumped-up culture wars” and “fake outrage” on the right against school boards, but he really ought to in the light of yesterday’s judicial ruling:
Ruling on a the case that has seized national attention and reinvigorated debate over parental rights in public education, a Virginia juvenile court judge concluded Monday that a transgender teenager sexually assaulted a female student in a Loudoun County high school in May.
Chief Judge Pamela L. Brooks found there was sufficient evidence to determine the individual guilty of sexual assault.
The decision comes after the Daily Wire spoke to the victim’s father, who said the male student forcibly sodomized his ninth-grade daughter in a school bathroom while wearing a skirt. When the father attempted to describe and protest the incident at a local school-board meeting, he was arrested for disorderly conduct, allowing the sexual abuse to stay underground for months.
After the assault, the perpetrator was transferred to another school where he allegedly assaulted a second female student in early October.
In the interim, the Loudoun County School Board passed a sweeping gender-inclusivity policy allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms, as well as compete in sports, according to their gender identity rather than biological sex.
The alleged gender fluidity of the perpetrator was not raised during the hearing, according to the New York Times, although court documents confirm the offender was wearing a skirt when the assault took place. In court, the 15-year-old girl testified that she engaged in consensual sexual activity with the defendant two different times in a girls’ bathroom at Stone Bridge High School but on a subsequent occasion was violently coerced into performing sexual acts.
In this case it’s the crime and the coverup, and part of the attempted coverup – the arrest of the protesting father – ended up exposing the extent of the rot.
[NOTE: I have no idea how the Virginia election will go. But one thing I can say is that, if I were a Democrat running for office, I’d think twice before asking Obama to speak on my behalf.]
“Suddenly Sowell
Love the sound and meaning of that. Clever!
BLM/CRT/1619 propaganda does indeed indoctrinate black children into hatred and suspicion of whites and white children into guilt over events of the past for which no rational person could claim they are, in any way, responsible (the idea of collective guilt being one of the very worst in human history, and individual accountability a hallmark of the conservative temperament); Sowell, one of our most brilliant public intellectuals (yet, without question, sadly under-appreciated by other blacks), is brave indeed to declare how dangerous is this toxic ideology to children of all races and to society as a whole.
For some time I, as well, have been a big fan of Thomas Sowell. His economics writings are just wonderful, because of the clarity he brings to the subject.
I recommend, “A Personal Odyssey”, his autobiography. This should give any reader a great perspective on racism, especially the kind currently being promulgated by the left, and how so many folks, Thomas et al., became what they are in spite of and somewhat because of the travails they experienced.
I rather suspected a bit more to the story. The Left will find all the nuance they can that they ignored when the topic was Moore or Kavanaugh. (Far, far more evidence here of wrongdoing even with so little known, as there was for either of those cases.)
Needless to say it is not shaping up to the kind of scenario that has been feared as the consequence of allowing transgender men into women’s bathrooms. It’s plenty bad as it stands, but not the same kind of thing.
The first Sowell book I read was “A Conflict of Visions”. It helped explain the left’s counter intuitive outlook. It comes down to how one views human existence. The left thinks humanity is perfectible while the right sees humans as flawed. The left wants to change society by using government (staffed by leftists of course) to move humanity closer to perfection. The right understands that humanity is essentially flawed and that those in charge of a leftist led society will use their power to enhance only their own lives.
The right believes it is nearly impossible to foresee the full consequences of societal change. They want these changes to happen slowly and thoughtfully thereby limiting the damage that change may bring while allowing for time reconsideration. Which is what our courts are supposed to do.
A youtube search for Sowell will give results from his many appearances on TV. Well worth the time.
Last I saw, McCauliffe had recruited not the former President, nor the current one, but the current one’s wife to speak for him on the campaign trail. It didn’t go well, and not due to Trump supporters.
I read Sowell’s The Quest for Cosmic Justice at Neo’s recommendation. The forward &/or preface was quite interesting as it discussed a long and somewhat tortured history of the book’s writing that spanned a couple decades or more with multiple versions. Part of that history involved discussions with Milton Freidman who had issues with the earlier versions. I would love to read a compendium of all of that, versions and discussions included.
Anyhow, Freidman was a big proponent of school vouchers and I wonder how much those school topics were discussed between Freidman and Sowell.
“In the interim, the Loudoun County School Board passed a sweeping gender-inclusivity policy allowing students to use restrooms and locker rooms, as well as compete in sports, according to their gender identity rather than biological sex.”
In passing that policy, the Loudoun County School Board has in principle assumed responsibility for any future harm to any female students that results from that policy.
If such occurs and proportionate consequence is not visited upon every member who voted for that policy, then consequence by ‘other’ means will be entirely appropriate.
Actions must have proportionate personal consequence. If society will not impose justice, then individuals must or tyranny will prevail and those good men who do nothing will also share responsibility for the triumph of evil.
Take note that the leftist press made much of the history of the underage girl having had consensual sex with the boy previously. So much for the protection of the victim’s sexual history. Battered wives take care.
@mike k:the leftist press made much of the history of the underage girl
Well, their rules are for other people. For the rest of us, if they had been using the women’s restroom as a place where they could hook up undisturbed, it rather changes the nature of the incident. The boy (transgender or not) could have assaulted her at any place she was in the habit of meeting him, and it’s not specifically a transgender bathroom thing.
The policy allowed them to use the restroom for a purpose for which it’s not intended, and without that policy (or if the boy had not been transgender) they’d have just met somewhere else, you see, and probably the same thing would have happened. But it would have been not-news.
The latest development in the Loudoun County case is that students at Broad Run High School (the second school where the transgender boy was sent and where he raped another girl) staged a walkout today (10/26), chanting that “Loudoun County Protects Rapists” and asking, “Why was a rapist allowed in our school?”:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/kevindowneyjr/2021/10/26/breaking-loudoun-county-students-walk-out-of-class-in-protest-n1527080
Videos at the link.
There is nothing good in that bathroom sex/rape story.
It’s perhaps a case study in how deviant Western affluent society has become.
I’d quote Kissinger…but it appears they have all already lost.
I’d like to steer any who aren’t very familiar with Sowell to a couple of his classics. First is the speech-become-essay “‘Multicultural’ Education,” https://tsowell.com/spmultic.html . It’ll take all of ~three minutes to read, and from a couple of its paragraphs, I first learned some basics about slavery’s history. The rest of it is unforgettable, too.
For sheer enjoyable reading, here’s his lengthy essay “Some Thoughts About Writing”: https://tsowell.com/About_Writing.html
Finally, Jason Riley’s recent intellectual biography of Sowell is a gem.
“There is a point of no return in America…And we may be nearing it, or perhaps past it.”
I fear the worst. But I am old and (feel) feeble so maybe I discourage too easily. The parents who are belatedly challenging the school boards offer a glimmer of hope.
But, it is just a glimmer because the forces of evil (I use the term intentionally) control the levers of power at nearly every level. If someone had told me just a decade ago that Virginia as a whole, and especially counties such as Loudon, would go bat**** crazy I would have scoffed.
The path away from the abyss portends to be a difficult one, perhaps even a bloody one. The question is, “how many are prepared to tread it?”.
remember that Sowell is an authentic African American, while Obama is a white born and white raised non-African American biracial whose family were slaveowning WASPs
Pardon me for being unwoke-ly insensitive, but it occurs to me that this young lad doesn’t seem to be particularly confused or, erm, tenderly fragile about his trans-sexuality, with the newly emerged information about the past consensual sexual encounters culminating in rape and sodomy. It sounds more like a predator deciding upon a strategy that he thinks will be successful……much like the recent incident in a California Lady’s spa, which I recall was also a repeat offense by the psuedo-trans perp.
My views on Sowell Idolatry are well-known. I mostly agree with what he says except regarding Black Population IQ distribution parameters and genetic propensities. I find it problematic (hah) that a lot of what he says can only be said by pigmented people. That’s more than half the problem right there.
To his eternal credit, he’s a scrupulously honest man who didn’t stab his benefactors in the back. The system spotted talent and nurtured it. Once his brilliance had been determined, nobody and nothing stood in his way. There are plenty of other Black Intellectuals and public figures who have had the same magic carpet ride who have used their resulting fame to traduce the society which gave them everything (and in some cases more than they deserved).
Frankly I don’t care whether or not CRT is misleading Blacks. Blacks are more than happy to be misled and have been since like forever in living memory. As long as there are Whites to provide them willingly or otherwise with largesse, they will abide. All I or anyone present here should be concerned with at 3am is that CRT is anti-White and designed to further the demoralisation and destruction of the White lower middle and working classes. Without those Deplorables, no America.
On the chance anyone missed Peter Robinson’s interview with Jason Riley about his book on Sowell, here it is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dut5tHQZBQQ
It gives a condensed version of Sowell’s life and work, worth watching.
In a better world, Thomas Sowell would have been the first Black President of the United States instead of the empty suit from Chicago.
“ In a better world, Thomas Sowell would have been the first Black President of the United States instead of the empty suit from Chicago.”
Considering he was born and raised in a white slaveowning family and his father that he never knew was from East Africa genetically completely unrelated to the West Africans who were shipped here on the middle passage and his bloodline is closer to George Wallace that Martin Luther King, how will say that we still have not had a black president
“ In a better world, Thomas Sowell would have been the first Black President of the United States instead of the empty suit from Chicago.”
Considering he was born and raised in a white slaveowning family and his father that he never knew was from East Africa genetically completely unrelated to the West Africans who were shipped here on the middle passage and his bloodline is closer to George Wallace that Martin Luther King, I will say that we still have not had a black president
avi writes “ remember that Sowell is an authentic African American, while Obama is a white born and white raised non-African American biracial whose family were slaveowning WASPs.” Whose family were Marxists committed to anti-Western, and anti-America, downfall and hate. For the cause.
Obama continued this with his racist can’t towards police and policing and through the Marxists his Sword and “wingman” AG Eric Holder, who purposefully filled his staff with Marxists to carry our this counter-revolutionary agenda. Which Xi-den has reinstated.
Dinesh D’Souza convincingly argues this case in his later writings on the Barack Hussein Obama reign of error.
The Clinton Presidency laid the racist groundwork in government mandated equality outcomes for housing and mortgag3 financing that created the Great Recession.
But the coming out party for Marxists was announced with Michael Moore’s Big Lie propaganda film “Fahrenheit 911,” to turn Rs into devious enemies of the people.
Obama built on the media buy-in to advocating for their Anti-American cause and thus Omertà, a sacred oath of silence, about Obama’s “Hate America First” value system and agenda from the people.
The natural consequence was Trump’s MAGA agenda, borrowing directly from Reagan’s first successful campaign for president in 1980.
Truth is never a Leftist’s value. Unless it serves their Big Lie or their power.
}}} Truth is never a Leftist’s value.
To be accurate:
Truth is never a POSTMODERN Leftist’s value.
Classical Liberals, otoh, are truth oriented.
Mind you, >95% of all current self-identifying leftist/liberals are now PostModern Liberals.
But the distinction is important. The problem is not liberalism, per se.
It’s the PostModern variant of it which is so toxic.