Happy Birthday, Thomas Sowell

 The View from the Middle 

Thomas Sowell is a brilliant economist, social theorist and philosopher who you might not have heard of.  He has lived an extraordinary life, rich in experiences and formal education which has given him the material to write over 30 books.  He was born on June 30^th, 1930 (happy birthday, Thomas!) in Gastonia, North Carolina.  Unfortunately, his father died before his birth and because his mother already had four children, his great aunt along with her two grown daughters adopted and raised Thomas.  He was not born to privilege, but his challenging upbringing just added to the rich quiver of life trials and adventures that has formed his opinions.

At age nine they moved to Harlem, where he eventually qualified to attend the prestigious Stuyvesant High School in New York.  Unfortunately, at age 17 he was forced to withdraw from “the Stuy” for financial and family reasons.  But he didn’t turn to crime as a solution.  He got multiple jobs and even tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers before he went into the Marines as a photographer.  After leaving the Marines he took night classes at Howard University and scored high enough on College Board exams to enter Harvard.

I won’t bore you with an extensive list of his awards and accomplishments, but let me highlight just a few to give you a sense of the significance of his life’s work.  He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard after dropping out of high school at age 17.  He received his master’s degree from Columbia and his doctorate from UCLA and has served as a faculty member at Cornell and UCLA.  As if that’s not enough, he’s a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.  He dabbled in Marxism in his early years, but he abandoned that notion in 1960 and his fellowship at Stanford is named after Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winning, free market economist, whom he calls his mentor.  He has been an unapologetic capitalistic, libertarian ever since.  And, if he ran for President today, even at age 91, I would vote for him.  But sadly, he is too good for politics so we can best benefit from his wisdom by reading his books.

Thomas Sowell is not just a stone-cold genius, but he is a black man whose opinions are supported by more than his intellect and education.  He has lived through Jim Crow, discrimination, civil unrest and the civil rights movement, and those experiences along with his intelligence form his opinions.  I believe he is a “must read” when it comes to economics, of course, but also when he speaks out on race relations.  His books like “Black Rednecks and White Liberals”, “Discrimination and Disparity” and his “Controversial Essays” are plainly written, powerfully reasoned and, as always supported by mountains of documented facts.  

There are many, many areas where Dr. Sowell and I agree. For example, he is no fan of our public-school system, and of course neither am I.  When my two daughters were in school, my wife and I had the luxury of “school choice” and sent our girls to a private, Christian school.  Our girls have been long out of school, and I would not personally benefit from a voucher system today, so why am I such a rabid supporter of that concept?  It’s because I think it is the best thing for our children and our country.  It would make our public schools compete or die, and it would give millions of people more choices in the education of their children.  That’s a choice that I had and it’s a choice that I believe every family should have.

Thomas Sowell put it this way, “No group is more in favor of vouchers than blacks – and no one is more opposed to vouchers than Democrats…This doesn’t mean that Democrats are racist.  It is just that they need the support of the teachers’ unions and they are not going to get it if they vote for vouchers, whereas they can count on the votes of blacks regardless.”  It is the ugly truth of politics.  Politicians often make choices not in the best interests of their constituencies in order to get elected.

In his “Controversial Essays” he added that, “public schools are where the battle needs to be fought, but too many black leaders are too dependent on labor unions in general and teachers’ unions in particular to fight that battle.  And they are too dependent on a vision of victimhood to risk telling young blacks that they have to get their own act together too.”  I love this thought because it states the obvious to me.  While all Americans need to work together to find solutions to our national problems, young black men and women must exercise some personal responsibility to eliminate any gaps (actual or perceived) between the races. 

If you haven’t read any of his books, I encourage you to do so.  I particularly recommend one of his most recent, “Discrimination and Disparities” or his “Controversial Essays, both of which I have read.  While the latter was written back in 2002, it demonstrates how things just don’t change – the issues or the real, thoughtful solutions to those issues.  And if you have the urge to tear down some statue, somewhere, I would prefer you erect one to this exceptional man in the place of your choosing!!