Logic Takes its Revenge

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The following is from Thomas Sowell. Barbarians inside the Gates. pp. 123 - 125

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Logic Takes its Revenge

IF "FACTS ARE STUBBORN THINGS," logic is absolutely vengeful against those who ignore it. Many of today's festering racial problems are the logical consequences of notions accepted casually in the past, with little attempt to trace out their implications. For example, many who are pained by the growth of antisemitism among blacks have promoted ideas whose logical consequence is antisemitism, even though they had no such consequences in mind.

For decades now, it has been a central dogma of our political and legal institutions that statistical discrepancies between the "representation" of one group and another is evidence—sometimes virtually proof—of discrimination. In other words, the absence of an even representation implies sinister goings-on, whether it is in employment, college admissions, or the jailing of criminals. If machinations explain the difference between success and failure, then Jews must have been doing more than their share of machinations.

Jews have so many achievements and so much prominence in so many fields that it is hard to believe that there are fewer Jews in the entire world than there are Kazakhs or Sri Lankans. Like most other groups in countries around the world, Jews are not randomly distributed in various fields of endeavor, but tend to be concentrated in some fields far more so than others. If fields where men usually outnumber women are called "male-dominated," why is it surprising that fields in which Jews are particularly prominent are said to be "dominated" by Jews?

These fields may in fact be wide open to any Gentiles who can cut the mustard, just as basketball is wide open to any white players with the ability to compete against Charles Barkley et al. The reality, however, is that special skills and talents are seldom randomly distributed, despite our social dogmas.

But if you buy the logic of affirmative action, you buy the logic of antisemitism. Moral aversions to antisemitism, especially in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust, prevents most people from following the inner logic of their argument. But do not be surprised that there are some who do.

At colleges all across this country, antisemitic speakers are being brought onto campus with five-figure fees that are the least of the costs of their harangues. Moreover, this is done with university funds earmarked for minority benefits, in the name of "diversity," "multiculturalism," and other buzzwords that drive out thought the way bad money drives out good.

Most college administrators are not concerned about stopping this but about stopping the alumni and the public from finding out about it. These administrators are not necessarily antisemites themselves. They are instinctively following the path of least resistance. If found out, they will take refuge in another thoughtless buzzword—"censorship"—to explain why they not only tolerate but finance such hate-mongering.

The real reason they do it is that putting a stop to this lucrative bigotry can provoke outbursts of disruption from the militant elements of minority mini-establishments on campus, while Jewish students are very unlikely to riot if the antisemites give talks.

Antisemitism is only one of many areas in which logic takes its revenge. Many people are distressed that an attitude holds sway in ghetto schools that doing well academically is "acting white"—something to be avoided like the plague. But those who are distressed often include people who have provided the logical underpinnings for these self-destructive attitudes.

If differences in achievement are due only to differences in the way "society" treats different groups, then why should black students knock themselves out on their school work, when Whitey is just waiting in ambush to keep them from getting ahead anyway? Liberals who have been pushing this line for decades should not be surprised if these assumptions are now being followed out to their logical conclusion.

Ironically, both affirmative action and the argument for genetic inferiority of blacks use the same logic. They assume that statistical results not explainable by obvious gross differences must be explainable by the underlying factor they prefer to believe in.

All this ignores the innumerable and powerful cultural influences which direct some people's efforts in some directions and other people's efforts in others. Once, while teaching an all-black class at Howard University, I asked them to imagine what would happen if a black child in the middle of the ghetto were born with brain cells identical to those with which Einstein entered the world.

There was much interesting speculation, but not one person in that room thought that this child would grow up to be another Einstein. If he were born to a teenage mother in a gang-infested area, he might be lucky to grow up at all—and he might well be one of those conditioned to believe that putting his efforts into academic work would be "acting white."

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12 June 2024