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majin's review against another edition
4.0
The book focuses on how race as one categorisation of intergroup differences has been viewed by intelligentsia in the last century or so. It covers topics such as "race" being just one example of differentiating between groups of people, how intergroup differences in achievement have been observed throughout history and across nations and continents, and tries to briefly address inconsistent "cause and effect" explanations for the achievement disparities as given by thinkers in modern history.
Sowell is pretty unapologetic for his free-market, "anti-woke" views, but the economic logic used to derive them make for a good read. The book is pretty brief and doesn't go too deep into arguments made, but it does present a viewpoint of the modern sociopolitical climate that appears to have a convincing case supporting it.
I'm economically left leaning but find Sowell's commentaries clear and refreshing despite challenging my own outlook. Next on my to-read list would be his book on affirmative action around th world.
Sowell is pretty unapologetic for his free-market, "anti-woke" views, but the economic logic used to derive them make for a good read. The book is pretty brief and doesn't go too deep into arguments made, but it does present a viewpoint of the modern sociopolitical climate that appears to have a convincing case supporting it.
I'm economically left leaning but find Sowell's commentaries clear and refreshing despite challenging my own outlook. Next on my to-read list would be his book on affirmative action around th world.
thesauraz's review against another edition
2.0
Thomas Sowell instills in the reader both a healthy skepticism of academia and universally-accepted narratives; for example, he speaks in depth about the early eugenics movement and how many progressives embraced these horrendous conclusions, including prestigous intellectuals. I also appreciate his refutation of absolutes in context of cause-and-effect where empirical evidence doesn’t allow for such conclusions.
“Intellectuals and Race” also falls very flat for me in several aspects.
For one, Mr Sowell’s dismissive attitude towards academia and media manifests in a condescending manner. He continually speaks of the ‘intelligencia’ as a collective unit, and one very out of touch. Not only is his sarcasm unsubtle, but he also seems to ironically fit the mold of the very academic he chastises (someone whose primary function is ideas and not material production).
This narrative leaves several gaps. When he compares America to other nations and racial/economic disparities, it feels like the history of slavery and Jim Crow is conveniently absent. I don’t disagree with all his conclusions; however, I think America’s social environment cannot be adequately explained without a considerable indictment of racist laws and practices that cultivated present issues. His response is typically to deflect to other nations and cultures with similar disparities. They’re fine examples, but just because the UK and Nigeria have similar domestic issues, it doesn’t absolve the United States from reckoning with its own past.
Additionally, I think Sowell paints with such a broad brush. The problem here is that the counterarguments he makes are all manufactured by vague “academic” statements. He’ll take words like “racism” or “inequality” and basically accuse the opposition of scapegoating using these ill-defined terms. I’ve read plenty in the anti-racist collections and arguments are so much more nuanced than what he portrays them to be. He also subtly fingers early 20th century progressives who advanced eugenics as ‘progressives’ who supported labour movements but without painting an entire landscape for the time. His work is well-researched, but he doesn’t offer much data to back his own claims. Rather, he refutes strawman arguments by asserting that we can’t be certain the conclusions drawn are correct. I would find it more convincing were he to provide solutions and bring more evidence instead of some of the reductive half-rebuttals.
All in all, I think Mr Sowell swings the pendulum so far the other direction, it becomes difficult to warm to his arguments. While he’s right that some academic conclusions are overzealous in assigning causes to issues or in speaking in absolutes, he offers little in rebuttal. He also reduces other arguments to buzzwords and singular quotes and frames them as the singular argument of the opposition.
I expected not to like this book — and I will maintain that it’s important to challenge confirmation biases, which this achieved for me. But even though I brought bias in, I believe the two-star rating is an objective and appropriate rating.
“Intellectuals and Race” also falls very flat for me in several aspects.
For one, Mr Sowell’s dismissive attitude towards academia and media manifests in a condescending manner. He continually speaks of the ‘intelligencia’ as a collective unit, and one very out of touch. Not only is his sarcasm unsubtle, but he also seems to ironically fit the mold of the very academic he chastises (someone whose primary function is ideas and not material production).
This narrative leaves several gaps. When he compares America to other nations and racial/economic disparities, it feels like the history of slavery and Jim Crow is conveniently absent. I don’t disagree with all his conclusions; however, I think America’s social environment cannot be adequately explained without a considerable indictment of racist laws and practices that cultivated present issues. His response is typically to deflect to other nations and cultures with similar disparities. They’re fine examples, but just because the UK and Nigeria have similar domestic issues, it doesn’t absolve the United States from reckoning with its own past.
Additionally, I think Sowell paints with such a broad brush. The problem here is that the counterarguments he makes are all manufactured by vague “academic” statements. He’ll take words like “racism” or “inequality” and basically accuse the opposition of scapegoating using these ill-defined terms. I’ve read plenty in the anti-racist collections and arguments are so much more nuanced than what he portrays them to be. He also subtly fingers early 20th century progressives who advanced eugenics as ‘progressives’ who supported labour movements but without painting an entire landscape for the time. His work is well-researched, but he doesn’t offer much data to back his own claims. Rather, he refutes strawman arguments by asserting that we can’t be certain the conclusions drawn are correct. I would find it more convincing were he to provide solutions and bring more evidence instead of some of the reductive half-rebuttals.
All in all, I think Mr Sowell swings the pendulum so far the other direction, it becomes difficult to warm to his arguments. While he’s right that some academic conclusions are overzealous in assigning causes to issues or in speaking in absolutes, he offers little in rebuttal. He also reduces other arguments to buzzwords and singular quotes and frames them as the singular argument of the opposition.
I expected not to like this book — and I will maintain that it’s important to challenge confirmation biases, which this achieved for me. But even though I brought bias in, I believe the two-star rating is an objective and appropriate rating.
byrenical's review against another edition
1.0
Right after starting this book I began making notes on the problematic framing of the points he was making, these notes quickly built up until not long into it I realised what this book was. To properly explain all the faults of this book would require writing a book bigger than the book itself. I had no idea of who the author was before starting this so gave him the benefit of the doubt. I had however unknowingly seen and heard his 'ideas' before.
He seems to fall victim to the 'intellectual' problems I assumed this book was to address. While I think this book is very slightly informative in ways I find his lack of context highly problematic, misleading and much more damaging to discourse. With a tiny bit of research on the author (it's been a few days since I read it) it's plain to see that his work is predictably weaponised by those with the more extreme conservative and/or racist agenda's. Before you cry at me using the word 'racist' hear me out.
An example; the very beginning of the book he mentions those ("liberals") pointing out the disparity between white and black people in regards to their acceptance for loans, he points out that Asians are more likely than both to get those loans so we can't say there are racist business practices by white owned banks, and that black owned banks are worse for allowing black loans to go through. There is no context afterwards, no possible explanations, no claim that misconceptions about race could still play a strong factor in these cases, no references to countless studies on similar subjects, no insights, why elaborate when you have your 'gotcha' facts for fighting the ignorant liberals who know nothing on the subject, then he moves on. At the time of writing, there is currently a conservative narrative in the media heavily pushing the idea that black people are committing much more crime against Asians because of covid too. They want to put that idea out there, no explanations or reliable statistics to follow through with. This is the 'facts don't care about your feelings' crowd. The irony being that it's usually the lack of further known facts and the lack of context that is annoying to many. While I agree that some 'liberal' takes are uninformed that doesn't mean that taking one further step beyond that justifies their views of the truth when the reality is many steps ahead.
Another early point he makes, slavery isn't just a white against black thing, before being able to transport countless numbers across oceans people would enslave their own countrymen or neighbouring countries. It moves on. I thought it was going to explain some of these things at least slightly in depth and how to better address some issues in regards to the misconceptions but he stops after calling them wrong, the thing is I already know they're wrong and the reason I know that is because all these talking points are brought up in racist conservative and white supremacist dialogues everywhere and they have all been thoroughly explained by people much more informed on every subject he mentions. After this I watched a compilation of his talking points in the form of 'DESTROYED THE LEFT' video that you could assume was out of context but this book shows this is Sowell's main point. Started to realise that's just his grift.
I don't want to go back through this book in depth but I'll vaguely highlight one more big aspect of this book, why it isn't helpful, the effects it has outside of this book and how it is used. The IQ section. So the popular idea is that IQ cannot be talked about seriously because it is deemed 'racist' by the liberal illuminati that runs all intellectual discourse. This is a false narrative, pushback comes back in this regard when conservatives with questionable views want to talk about it to push a false narrative. Everything mentioned in regards to race and IQ in this book is not informative in anyway shape or form. There is a wide range of literature regarding this subject that does a very thorough job in explaining any causes, correlations and explanations. And it may come as a shock to conservatives but it's generally lefties that do the more informed research on the subject, the thing conservatives fail to mention is the context. I mention this because when this author is discussed there are people who praise that he is talking about race and IQ, "can't get that in lefty controlled discourse". I definitely didn't learn about it from conservatives.
If you want to see the result of trash like this book then check out the intellectual discourse surrounding the author, you will get people crying about the left silencing these views, people getting red-pilled, and honestly the very same kinds of people and points you will see in the more extremist sects of the internet. I'm in no way saying all fans of Sowell will fall into this catagory but it's more than a fringe amount and more than enough to say that this book does more damage to the discourse than help. Also, his framing of 'liberals' seems to be conflated with the whole 'left' who, like to the Ben Shapiro types, apparently don't exist outside of this naive college campus kid strawman. He has fans like people such as Dave Rubin and is used on conservatism propaganda channels like pragerU, while guilt by association isn't the best argument it just goes to show his 'info' isn't lauded by intellectuals of any value. Funny he names a few liberal intellectuals to make his point and ignore pretty much everything else regarding the discourse of the subjects, imagine doing that. Look into any of these subjects mentioned in this book in depth and you'll see the author as either the idiot or grifter that he is.
If you like little bits of research you should check out the study that shows conservative values are linked to low cognitive abilities. Is it causality or correlation? Does conservative values lead to proneness to fear (and conspiracies) and lack of understanding or is it the other way around? I'm going to do a Sowell and leave that up in the air and offer no further analysis. Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day.
He seems to fall victim to the 'intellectual' problems I assumed this book was to address. While I think this book is very slightly informative in ways I find his lack of context highly problematic, misleading and much more damaging to discourse. With a tiny bit of research on the author (it's been a few days since I read it) it's plain to see that his work is predictably weaponised by those with the more extreme conservative and/or racist agenda's. Before you cry at me using the word 'racist' hear me out.
An example; the very beginning of the book he mentions those ("liberals") pointing out the disparity between white and black people in regards to their acceptance for loans, he points out that Asians are more likely than both to get those loans so we can't say there are racist business practices by white owned banks, and that black owned banks are worse for allowing black loans to go through. There is no context afterwards, no possible explanations, no claim that misconceptions about race could still play a strong factor in these cases, no references to countless studies on similar subjects, no insights, why elaborate when you have your 'gotcha' facts for fighting the ignorant liberals who know nothing on the subject, then he moves on. At the time of writing, there is currently a conservative narrative in the media heavily pushing the idea that black people are committing much more crime against Asians because of covid too. They want to put that idea out there, no explanations or reliable statistics to follow through with. This is the 'facts don't care about your feelings' crowd. The irony being that it's usually the lack of further known facts and the lack of context that is annoying to many. While I agree that some 'liberal' takes are uninformed that doesn't mean that taking one further step beyond that justifies their views of the truth when the reality is many steps ahead.
Another early point he makes, slavery isn't just a white against black thing, before being able to transport countless numbers across oceans people would enslave their own countrymen or neighbouring countries. It moves on. I thought it was going to explain some of these things at least slightly in depth and how to better address some issues in regards to the misconceptions but he stops after calling them wrong, the thing is I already know they're wrong and the reason I know that is because all these talking points are brought up in racist conservative and white supremacist dialogues everywhere and they have all been thoroughly explained by people much more informed on every subject he mentions. After this I watched a compilation of his talking points in the form of 'DESTROYED THE LEFT' video that you could assume was out of context but this book shows this is Sowell's main point. Started to realise that's just his grift.
I don't want to go back through this book in depth but I'll vaguely highlight one more big aspect of this book, why it isn't helpful, the effects it has outside of this book and how it is used. The IQ section. So the popular idea is that IQ cannot be talked about seriously because it is deemed 'racist' by the liberal illuminati that runs all intellectual discourse. This is a false narrative, pushback comes back in this regard when conservatives with questionable views want to talk about it to push a false narrative. Everything mentioned in regards to race and IQ in this book is not informative in anyway shape or form. There is a wide range of literature regarding this subject that does a very thorough job in explaining any causes, correlations and explanations. And it may come as a shock to conservatives but it's generally lefties that do the more informed research on the subject, the thing conservatives fail to mention is the context. I mention this because when this author is discussed there are people who praise that he is talking about race and IQ, "can't get that in lefty controlled discourse". I definitely didn't learn about it from conservatives.
If you want to see the result of trash like this book then check out the intellectual discourse surrounding the author, you will get people crying about the left silencing these views, people getting red-pilled, and honestly the very same kinds of people and points you will see in the more extremist sects of the internet. I'm in no way saying all fans of Sowell will fall into this catagory but it's more than a fringe amount and more than enough to say that this book does more damage to the discourse than help. Also, his framing of 'liberals' seems to be conflated with the whole 'left' who, like to the Ben Shapiro types, apparently don't exist outside of this naive college campus kid strawman. He has fans like people such as Dave Rubin and is used on conservatism propaganda channels like pragerU, while guilt by association isn't the best argument it just goes to show his 'info' isn't lauded by intellectuals of any value. Funny he names a few liberal intellectuals to make his point and ignore pretty much everything else regarding the discourse of the subjects, imagine doing that. Look into any of these subjects mentioned in this book in depth and you'll see the author as either the idiot or grifter that he is.
If you like little bits of research you should check out the study that shows conservative values are linked to low cognitive abilities. Is it causality or correlation? Does conservative values lead to proneness to fear (and conspiracies) and lack of understanding or is it the other way around? I'm going to do a Sowell and leave that up in the air and offer no further analysis. Thanks for reading. Hope you have a great day.
cantordustbunnies's review against another edition
5.0
This book feels like breezy common sense but clearly would be regarded as being quite radical by the powers that be, both currently and throughout history. This work in particular truly has the potential to positively impact untold numbers of lives as does most of what Sowell writes and is as such an extremely important read, especially today. Such is the profound level of impact this book has on the subject of race and the ways in which intellectuals throughout time have thought of it globally. What is in this book is totally honest and real, needs to be said, and is delivered with a great deal of class and a sense of genuine benevolence in addition to being logically sound and backed up with research. I would qualify this as being necessary reading by everyone as it is so pertinent to current and culturally significant events and is such a powerful antidote to so much discord and suffering that is just waiting to be applied and more widely read.
cyranoreads's review
5.0
This is my favorite book so far of the three I've read by Sowell and I highly recommend it at this present time in which the reasoning power of modern minds is being hijacked by a moral mania over race.
---------
Some pulled quotes:
Intellectuals who made genetic determinism the overriding explanation of intergroup differences in outcomes in the early twentieth century and discrimination the overriding explanation of these differences in the latter part of the twentieth century have in both cases made the prevailing belief of the day obligatory for anyone who wanted to be taken seriously or even to avoid being stigmatized as a shallow sentimentalist in the early part of the century or a despised racist in the latter part.
In both eras, intellectuals claimed the moral high ground – as saviors of their race during the era of genetic determinism and as moral crusaders against racial injustice in the era of the prevalence of discrimination theories. Nor were the intelligentsia in either era much open to other explanations of intergroup differences which could undermine or devastate their flattering vision of themselves.
***
…intellectuals are in a remarkably different position from that of other decision makers, and this is a fact to be taken into account when trying to understand the nature of their decisions and especially the ability of their theories and visions to survive in defiance of empirical evidence. Quite simply, intellectuals pay no price for being wrong, no matter how wrong or with what catastrophic consequences for millions of other people.
***
The point here is to suggest nothing more draconian in response than a loss of the gullibility towards ideas in vogue among the intelligentsia that can make their speculations so dangerous to others. All sorts of competing notions can be free in the marketplace of ideas without becoming dogmas backed by the power of government just because these notions are currently ascendant among people with high IQs and prestigious degrees and honors. All sorts of ideas, whether on race or on war or on many other subjects have prevailed among intellectuals with results now recognized in retrospect as having been as utterly invalid intellectually as they were catastrophic in their human consequences.
***
…just because some people are justly renowned within their specialties and may regard themselves as part of some larger class of “thinking people” does not mean that the rest of us can neglect to think for ourselves or to demand hard evidence from those with soaring visions and impressive rhetoric.
***
Intellectuals have all too often played a major role in promoting a sense of grievance over [naturally-occurring] inequalities. The kind of society to which that can lead is one in which a newborn baby enters the world supplied with prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day. It is hard to imagine anything more conducive to unending eternal strife and a weakening of the bonds that hold a society together.
---------
Some pulled quotes:
Intellectuals who made genetic determinism the overriding explanation of intergroup differences in outcomes in the early twentieth century and discrimination the overriding explanation of these differences in the latter part of the twentieth century have in both cases made the prevailing belief of the day obligatory for anyone who wanted to be taken seriously or even to avoid being stigmatized as a shallow sentimentalist in the early part of the century or a despised racist in the latter part.
In both eras, intellectuals claimed the moral high ground – as saviors of their race during the era of genetic determinism and as moral crusaders against racial injustice in the era of the prevalence of discrimination theories. Nor were the intelligentsia in either era much open to other explanations of intergroup differences which could undermine or devastate their flattering vision of themselves.
***
…intellectuals are in a remarkably different position from that of other decision makers, and this is a fact to be taken into account when trying to understand the nature of their decisions and especially the ability of their theories and visions to survive in defiance of empirical evidence. Quite simply, intellectuals pay no price for being wrong, no matter how wrong or with what catastrophic consequences for millions of other people.
***
The point here is to suggest nothing more draconian in response than a loss of the gullibility towards ideas in vogue among the intelligentsia that can make their speculations so dangerous to others. All sorts of competing notions can be free in the marketplace of ideas without becoming dogmas backed by the power of government just because these notions are currently ascendant among people with high IQs and prestigious degrees and honors. All sorts of ideas, whether on race or on war or on many other subjects have prevailed among intellectuals with results now recognized in retrospect as having been as utterly invalid intellectually as they were catastrophic in their human consequences.
***
…just because some people are justly renowned within their specialties and may regard themselves as part of some larger class of “thinking people” does not mean that the rest of us can neglect to think for ourselves or to demand hard evidence from those with soaring visions and impressive rhetoric.
***
Intellectuals have all too often played a major role in promoting a sense of grievance over [naturally-occurring] inequalities. The kind of society to which that can lead is one in which a newborn baby enters the world supplied with prepackaged grievances against other babies born the same day. It is hard to imagine anything more conducive to unending eternal strife and a weakening of the bonds that hold a society together.
kahawa's review against another edition
4.0
Lots of good things in there. He makes a lot of good points about there being more to it than just race.
That said, it feels to me like he hasn't fully read and engaged with the Intellectuals whom he is criticising. He often implies that 'they' must see 'malice' in white people, but Critical Race Theory isn't about malice, it's about structures that favour or disfavour people of different 'races', regardless of intent. Sowell doesn't do enough to engage with the impacts of racism and slavery, rather he deconstructs the sloppy argument that it's ALL because of racism.
He made an interesting point that when affirmative action is removed, minorities get into college slightly less, but their overall graduation rate goes up. There's something to be said of being placed in the appropriate learning level. That said, were those 'non graduating' minorities given enough support in their programs? If someone with a whole lot of life-barriers gets into college, what is that college doing to support them? Do people really just drop out of programs because they're, like, not smart enough for it and probably didn't really want to be there in the first place? That seems to be what Sowell is implying.
Another interesting point is that when everything is about structural justice, there doesn't need to be (according to the Intellectuals) any victim or benefactor in a given case. Social justice mostly considers abstracts - structures, policies, laws, ideologies. It's true that these are important and ultimately affect people, but it is a bit odd how it resembles religious doctrine, demanding overt loyalty, not needing empirical verification, and immune (and aggressive) to all challenges.
I'd be curious to read some criticisms of Sowell, but so far all I've found is dismissive, rather than engaging with the points he makes. I'm open to suggestions....
That said, it feels to me like he hasn't fully read and engaged with the Intellectuals whom he is criticising. He often implies that 'they' must see 'malice' in white people, but Critical Race Theory isn't about malice, it's about structures that favour or disfavour people of different 'races', regardless of intent. Sowell doesn't do enough to engage with the impacts of racism and slavery, rather he deconstructs the sloppy argument that it's ALL because of racism.
He made an interesting point that when affirmative action is removed, minorities get into college slightly less, but their overall graduation rate goes up. There's something to be said of being placed in the appropriate learning level. That said, were those 'non graduating' minorities given enough support in their programs? If someone with a whole lot of life-barriers gets into college, what is that college doing to support them? Do people really just drop out of programs because they're, like, not smart enough for it and probably didn't really want to be there in the first place? That seems to be what Sowell is implying.
Another interesting point is that when everything is about structural justice, there doesn't need to be (according to the Intellectuals) any victim or benefactor in a given case. Social justice mostly considers abstracts - structures, policies, laws, ideologies. It's true that these are important and ultimately affect people, but it is a bit odd how it resembles religious doctrine, demanding overt loyalty, not needing empirical verification, and immune (and aggressive) to all challenges.
I'd be curious to read some criticisms of Sowell, but so far all I've found is dismissive, rather than engaging with the points he makes. I'm open to suggestions....
jemmania's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
5.0
A stunning depiction of how the good intentions of well meaning intellects lead to detrimental results.
ozgipsy's review against another edition
5.0
Thomas Sowell is the best President America never had. His views are well researched, well written, and span centuries.
This long term view allows him to highlight trends and causalities that most of us cannot see because we are too close to the issues at hand.
A really worthwhile audiobook.
This long term view allows him to highlight trends and causalities that most of us cannot see because we are too close to the issues at hand.
A really worthwhile audiobook.