Thomas
Sowell - Charlatans and Sheep: Part III
townhall.com
by Thomas Sowell [/] http://j.mp/0CultureVsRace
or
http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2015/10/08/charlatans-and-sheep-part-iii-n2061514/page/full
The
prevailing social dogma of our time -- that economic and other
disparities among groups are strange, if not sinister -- has set off
bitter disputes between those who blame genetic differences and those
who blame discrimination.
Both
sides ignore the possibility that groups themselves may differ in
their orientations, their priorities and in what they are prepared to
sacrifice for the sake of other things.
Back
in the early 19th century, an official of the Russian Empire reported
that even the poorest Jews saw to it that their daughters could
read, and their homes had at least ten books. This was at a time when
the vast majority of the population of the Russian Empire were
illiterate.
During
that same era, Thomas Jefferson complained that there was not a
single bookstore where he lived. In Frederick Law Olmsted's travels
through the antebellum South, he noted that even plantation
owners seldom had many books.
But
in mid-18th century Scotland, even people of modest means had books,
and those too poor to buy them could rent books from lending
libraries, which were common throughout Scottish towns.
There
is no economic determinism. People choose what to spend their
money on, and what to spend their time on. Cultures differ.
On
a personal note, as a child nearly nine years old, I was one of the
many blacks who migrated from the South to Harlem in the 1930s.
Although
New York had public libraries, elite public high schools and free
colleges of high quality, I had no idea what a public library was, or
what an elite high school was, and the thought of going to college
never crossed my mind.
Jewish
immigrants who arrived in New York, generations before me, seized
upon the opportunities provided by public libraries and later their
children flooded into the elite public high schools and free city
colleges. This was consistent with the values of their centuries-old
culture.
For
most of the black kids of my generation, those things might as well
not have existed, because nothing in their culture would have pointed
them toward such things.
There
was no reason to believe that I would have been any different from
the rest, except for the fact that members of my family, who had very
little education themselves, wanted me to get the education that they
never had a chance to get.
They
had no more idea of the role of public libraries and elite quality
high schools and colleges than I did. But they knew a boy a little
older than I was, who came from a better educated family, and they
decided that he was somebody I should meet and who could serve as a
guide to me on things they knew nothing about.
His
name was Eddie Mapp, and I can still recall how he took me to a
public library, and how patiently he tried to explain to me what a
public library was, and why I should get a library card. He opened a
door for me into a wider world. But most other black kids in Harlem
at that time had no one to do that for them.
Nor
did kids from various other ethnic groups in New York have someone to
open doors to a wider world for them. It didn't matter how
smart they were or whether opportunities were available for them, if
they knew nothing about them.
An
internationally renowned scholar of Irish American ancestry once said
in a social gathering that, when he was a young man of college age,
he had no plans to go to college, until someone else who recognized
his ability urged him to do so. There was no reason to expect all
groups to follow in the footsteps of the Jews.
In
my later years, two middle-class couples I knew took it upon
themselves to each take a young relative from the ghetto into their
home and, at considerable cost in time and money, try to provide them
with a good education.
One
of these youngsters had an IQ two standard deviations above the mean.
But both of them eventually returned to the ghetto life from which
they came. It wasn't genetics and it wasn't discrimination.
The
youngster with an IQ two standard deviations above the mean will
probably never achieve what a Jewish or Asian youngster with an IQ
only one standard deviation above the mean achieves.
Those
who are celebrating the ghetto culture might consider what the cost
is to those being raised in that culture. And they might reconsider
what they are hearing from charlatans parading statistical
disparities.
[My emphasis.]
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