There are real group differences

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views July 1, 2002]

Is it just a stereotype that some groups do better at some things than other groups do? Do blacks not really play basketball any better than whites? Do our eyes deceive us when we notice the racial make-up of the NBA?

Is it just a coincidence that people of German ancestry produce the leading brands of beer in the United States--and the leading brand of beer in China, not to mention Germany's position as the leading beer producer in Europe? Can anyone deny that people of Italian ancestry have long been over-represented among the world's leading figures in music--classical and popular, vocal and instrumental?

It is one thing to say that everyone should be equal before the law or is entitled to equal opportunity. It is something else to deny the most blatant facts before our eyes, and insist on a dogma of equality of performance, when virtually every individual or group is better at some things than at others.

More is involved than incidental pious nonsense. Such ideological make-believe has come to dominate public policy and even judicial decisions in the highest courts in the land. Statistical disparities among groups are routinely equated with discrimination, as if there could not possibly be any differences in behavior or performance among the groups themselves.

It gets worse. Whole nations and civilizations are equated, despite enormous disparities between them. People may be living in air-conditioned homes with all the modern amenities in one culture and in huts and shacks without running water or adequate sewage disposal in another. People in one culture may have better health, longer life, more advanced technology, more stable government, and greater personal freedom and safety than others. Moreover, people from other cultures are constantly migrating to these cultures, which fashionable dogmas say are no better than the cultures they are leaving.

Those people who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal. Anything that goes against the prevailing social dogma is virtually certain to be dismissed as a stereotype.

Institutions that force-feed students the new trinity of race, class, and gender victimhood throughout the academic year are often unwilling to risk allowing even one lecture by a visiting spokesman for an opposing viewpoint. Like the Communist regimes which electronically jammed broadcasts from the Voice of America during the Cold War, the new academic totalitarians apparently fear lest their years-long propaganda efforts be knocked over like a house of cards by one brief exposure to a few facts and a different vision.

-- Thomas Sowell is an economist and author of many books, including Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (Morrow), Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (Free Press/Macmillan) and Migrations and Cultures: A World View (Basic Books).

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