Using that Socratic Method, that professor walked Sowell into an intellectual corner of Sowell's own making.
He didn't preach to him about where his beliefs led. He didn't tell him what was in that corner. He simply let Sowell's own mind take him, of its own accord, into that intellectual corner.
Dr. Sowell even has a name for that process of actively asking "What happens next?": it is called "Stage Two Thinking". (Stage One Thinking is what puts people into those corners.)
Thomas Sowell didn't change from a Marxist into a Capitalist overnight. But he was too smart to not recognize the inescapable corner that something like Marxism led people into, and over a period of time, came to recognize capitalism as a far more potent force for good than Marxism could ever dream of being.
This young man in the video went through that same kind of transition. He didn't just go unthinkingly into that intellectual corner. As time passed, he began to ask himself the kinds of questions the Left doesn't want black people to ask, and most certainly, not young black men.
I applaud and admire this man.
It is one thing for me as a white male to understand and accept that the narrative pushed by BLM, that, as Colin Flaherty accurately summarized, "Black people are relentless victims of relentless white violence, often at the end of a badge -- for No Reason What So Ever." is complete hogwash.
This man in the Prager video was able to take a clear view, and understood the actual percentage of black men shot by the police for no reason at all is vanishingly small, and that there were a lot of lies built off of that single lie.
That is no mean feat. As Upton Sinclair famously said: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
This man's whole identity as a black man, pushed on him by relentless leftists and racists who claim to be concerned with his welfare, his "salary" so to speak, his membership in that "club", depended on him not understanding that.
He understood it, and rejected the false premise, even when his whole "identity" and social framework depended on him not rejecting it. Most people, regardless of their color, cannot do that.
Another great life story is that of David Horowitz.
He was raised in a Communist New York City family—and believed every word of it for years:
https://www.amazon.com/Radical-Son-Generational-David-Horowitz/dp/0684840057
He knows every dirty leftist trick out there—and knows all of their weaknesses.
Well said!
I do feel for young black men in this country...in that they grow up surrounded by people pumping them full of lies, also often without a father around to teach otherwise.
It’s a bad combination.
This process also applies if you think through ‘transitioning’. Ok, so you think you’re ‘trans’, what then? You take puberty blockers. What then? You take hormones. What then? You have surgery. What then? You want the life of a woman now. What then? Who will date you? Almost nobody. What then? You gave up on having a family, you’re sterile. What then? Now you’re 50, alone, no kids, probably no partner. What then?
The whole ‘trans’ thing is growing YoY. What happens to the birth rate? It goes down. What then? A declining population? What then? How do you pay for Social Security? What then? Women no longer win anything in sports. Women lose college scholarships to men. What then?
....on and on...the left never thinks anything through. They’re only about their feelings in the moment - but they’re willing to screw everything up for everyone anyway, in the name of ‘compassion’. It drives me nuts.