How Economist Thomas Sowell’s Warning About Combating Racial Disparities Came True

The Daily Signal ^ | June 17, 2021 | Jason Riley

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

The economist Thomas Sowell distinguished himself in the early 1970s as a critic of the traditional civil rights leadership, but in earlier decades he had been optimistic about the direction of the civil rights movement.

Sowell was born into an extremely poor family in rural Gastonia, North Carolina, during the Great Depression and raised in a New York City ghetto in the 1940s.

Like many other blacks of that time and in those places, his family was uneducated. The men mostly worked as laborers or in the service sector, and the women typically were domestics. Racist laws had reduced opportunities for black Americans and thus limited their upward mobility.

Sowell had attended segregated schools and had lived in segregated cities. He’d been turned away from restaurants and housing because of his skin color. He’d felt the pain and humiliation of racism firsthand throughout his life. He needed no lectures from anyone on the evils of Jim Crow.

Sowell lived in Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s and worked as a government clerk. A longtime hobbyist photographer, he would sometimes wander around the city with a camera and take pictures in his spare time.

“I found it a pain that I could not simply walk into a restaurant and get something to eat when I was hungry,” he once wrote. “At a number of fast-food places downtown, whites could sit down and eat, but blacks could only eat standing up at the counter. I went hungry rather than subject myself to that.”

He sent a letter to a local newspaper, the now-defunct Washington Star, urging the city to desegregate its public schools.

[cuban leaf]

A great documentary on his political/cultural twin, Walter Williams: Suffer no fools - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZGvQcxoAPg

[ml/nj]

raised in a New York City ghetto in the 1940s. ... Racist laws had reduced opportunities for black Americans and thus limited their upward mobility.

What were these "racist" laws in New York in the 1940s? (I don't know. I'm asking.)

ML/NJ

[Nateman]

Thomas Sowell has since retired. He simply wants to enjoy the time he has left and has certainly earned that luxury many times over.

[TBP]

Sowell is brilliant and he’s usually right.

[tlozo]

"The civil rights leadership would continue down this path in the decades to come. Well into the 21st century, black leaders still often seemed far more interested in seeking slavery reparations and toppling Confederate statuary than in offering poor black families an escape from failing public schools"