A study of National Merit Scholarship finalists shows that firstborns are finalists more often than their multiple siblings combined. Data from the U.S., Germany and Britain show that the average IQ of firstborns is higher than the average IQ of their later siblings. Such outcomes challenge those who believe that heredity or one’s environment is the dominant factor in one’s academic performance.
In Chapter 2, Sowell provides evidence that people won’t take racial discrimination at any cost. The higher its cost the less it will be tolerated, and vice versa. One example is segregated seating on municipal transit in the South. Many companies were privately owned, and their decision-makers understood that they could lose profits by offending their black customers by establishing segregated seating. Transportation companies fought against laws mandating racially segregated seating, both politically and in the courts, but lost. Companies even chose to ignore the law. Faced with heavy fines, though, they began to comply with the law.
The point is that the difference between the white transportation owners and the white politicians and segregationists was the transportation company owners had to bear the cost of alienating black riders and the politicians and segregationists didn’t. Sowell broadens his analysis to show that regulated companies and organizations — such as public utilities and nonprofit entities, including colleges and government agencies — will be at the forefront when it’s politically popular to discriminate against blacks but also will be at the forefront when it’s politically popular to discriminate in favor of blacks. Why? Because in either case, they don’t bear the burden of forgone profits.
In Sowell’s chapter titled “The World of Numbers,” he points out what I’m going to call out-and-out dishonesty. In 2000, a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study pointed out that 44.6 percent of black applicants were turned down for mortgages, while only 22.3 percent of whites were turned down. These and similar statistics led to charges of lending industry discrimination and demands that government do something about it. While the loan rejection rate for whites was 22.3 percent, that for Asians and native Hawaiians was only 12.4 percent. Those statistics didn’t see the light of day. Why? They didn’t fit the racial discrimination narrative.
The general public, educators and politicians would benefit immensely from reading “Discrimination and Disparities,” if only to avoid being unknowingly duped.
Writes for Creators Syndicate
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