Scan barcode
A review by byrenical
Intellectuals and Race by Thomas Sowell
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.