Thomas Sowell interview

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite writers. He was trained as an economist, but he also has written books about anthroplogy. An example of how smart he is: when one of his children was a late talker, he wanted to read more about it. Since there was so little research done at the time, he wrote a book about it himself.

He also still writes a syndicated column that can be found in many places on the web.

I've only read a few of his books overall (and I'd love to one day just buy them all and read them), but my favorite of those is Black Rednecks and White Liberals. I realize it's a provocative title, but it blew me away with stuff I've never read or heard before.

He's got a new book out, and John Hawkins over at Right Wing News interviewed him about it. Here's an exceprt of the interview:

One profound thing you said in the book, when talking about disparities between the wages earned by white workers and minority workers in this country was that there are differences between groups all over the world, so why should we expect different groups to make the same amount of money in the first place? Can you tell us a little bit more about those differences...

I think most people have heard that there are these differences, but I think that what most of them have not heard is that there are the same differences between Asian-Americans and whites as there are between whites and blacks. Asian-American families have higher incomes than white families; during downturns in the economy, whites get laid off moreso than Asian-Americans. Among people who apply for mortgage loans, whites get turned down more often than Asian-Americans. Whites have to resort to sub-prime loans more often than Asian-Americans.

But, most of the people who talk about these things leave out Asian-Americans because it really kills their whole story. Their whole story is that non-whites do poorly because of white racism. Well then, if you find that there is the same disparity between Asian-Americans and whites as there is between whites and other non-whites, that whole argument falls down.