Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?

This book gives a good look into the misconceptions that many people have about the Civil Rights movement. Sowell keeps his examples simple and easy to follow. Anyone who reads this book will come away with a better understanding of what the Civil Rights movement was all about. What makes this book even better is the reader will come away with a better understanding of how the topic of Civil Rights is often manipulated for political gain.

Although written 20 years ago, Thomas Sowell's book about the Civil Rights Movement reads like it was penned last month. Unlike many academics that simply take social policy at face value and support any policy that sets out to help, Economist Dr. Sowell measures the success of initiatives against their purported intentions. This is a great formula for honest education, but it doesn't win many friends in academia. Sowell demonstrates how discrimination alone does not result in poverty. He points out the success of the Chinese minority in many Asian countries where discrimination against the Chinese is written into the constitution. He also points out the many hardships put towards Jews in history and their accumulation of wealth despite the hardships. He shows some curiosity in how striving for equal opportunity in America eventually became affirmative action. He has the same curiosity about how de-segregation became busing. He then takes a hard look at the special cases of women and blacks.Since the book was set at the 30th anniversary of Brown v. The Board of Education and the 20th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sowell examines the conditions of education and economics before and after those important dates. He finds just the kinds of facts that will be detested by the Civil Rights industry.Dr. Sowell concludes that Civil Rights have become an easy way to gain favor with whatever new initiative someone might design. Now everything is a Civil Right and every new plague known to man is not usually the result of a denial of Civil Rights. The question no one but Sowell asks is how can we expect an equal outcome in the world when humans all have different experiences and abilities? His conclusion is that the Civil Rights movement was important when Jim Crow insured unfair treatment, but now the term Civil Rights has been perverted to mean anything that gains some group or another power. In essence, the current reality of Civil Rights is, in fact, rhetoric. You may not understand the full impact of what Civil Rights mean today if you don't read these 140 pages. It gave me a new outlook.

In Civil Rights, Sowell looks at the effectiveness of civil rights legislation. He looks at how ethnic minorities have been able to suceed without civil rights legislation and how civil rights legislation and other legislation designed to help minorities such as minimum wage laws have not been as helpful as the designers have planned. Also Sowell looks at how civil rights legislation has expanded beyond provided equal opportunity to such programs as affirmative action and busing which have had questionable success. He also looks at such factors as the quality of education received and cultural attributs of ethnic groups across borders to help explain differances such as how ethnic Germans have higher rates of professional jobs then Hispanics not only in the United States but Hispanic countries as well and overseas Chinese have dominated science and engineering in several countries. Probably the best part of the book is Sowell's conclusion where he tries to debuke his critis and those that misterpret his views such as those saying that eliminating differences in IQ and education between ethnic groups would automatically eliminate economic differances but factors such as quality of education and choice of careers play important roles as well.

Although a slim volume, Sowell's Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? is one of the most important books on the subject ever written. One by one, the standard platitudes about discrimination and poverty fall before Sowell's relentless statistical assault. Discrimination causes poverty? How about the Chinese minority in Southeast Asia? Discrimination against the Chinese minority is actually written into the Malaysian constitution. And yet the Chinese minority still dominates the economy. Likewise, Japanese-Americans were discriminated against so badly that 120,000 of them were forcibly relocated during World War II. Yet by 1959 they had equaled whites in income, and by 1969 were earning one third more. Politics is the only way for a minority group to advance? To the contrary: the general pattern in the United States has been for a group to become wealthy first and only then to enter politics (if at all). The Irish, on the other hand, who placed such emphasis on political action, lagged behind other ethnic groups. The book is absolutely filled with information like this. Moreover, Sowell also discusses the perils of attributing income disparities to "racism" and "discrimination." I had to laugh when I read the critical reviewer below who claimed that Sowell's book was "simplistic." Whatever criticism one might make of it, no one who actually read the book could describe it that way. In fact, I'm a college professor who assigned the book to my students, and their general complaint was actually that it was too complicated! Sowell's whole point is that it is the current "civil rights" establishment that is simplistic-all statistical disparities between groups can have only one cause: discrimination. Sowell demonstrates how utterly untenable-and, yes, simplistic-such a suggestion is. Finally, the suggestion that because Sowell holds such views he can't "really" be black: that's an accusation this brave scholar has had to endure his whole life. Apparently, all blacks are supposed to hold the same opinions. I'd say that's pretty simplistic. In short: I am not aware of any other book on this subject that is so relentless in its demolition of tired myths about affirmative action and civil rights.

Sowell, yet again, displays remarkable skill crafting what is probably the best short work on contemporary discrimination, civil rights and racial and ethnic differences. It is wonderfully rational and empirical in an age where discussion of the topic is more likely to result in irrational anger and appeals to emotional rather than logical arguments. He is a wonderful purveyor of the great maxim: "Capitalism knows only one color: that color is green; all else is necessarily subservient to it, hence, race, gender and ethnicity cannot be considered within it."Thank God we still have rational, thoughtful voices such as Sowell's in our current wilderness of political emtionalism.