0:00

His fans include millions of viewers

0:02

on YouTube and at least one

0:04

justice of the United States Supreme

0:06

Court. Thomas Sowell on

0:09

Uncommon Knowledge now.

0:21

Welcome to Uncommon Knowledge. I'm Peter Robinson.

0:24

After growing up in Harlem, Thomas Sowell served

0:26

in the United States Marine Corps, then

0:28

earned an undergraduate degree from Harvard,

0:31

a master's degree from Columbia, and a doctorate

0:33

from the University of Chicago.

0:36

Now a fellow at the Hoover Institution, Thomas

0:38

Sowell has written some 40 books, including

0:41

his most recent book,

0:43

Social Justice Fallacies, and

0:46

lived 93 years. On

0:49

the last episode of Uncommon Knowledge, Dr.

0:51

Sowell and I discussed this book, Social

0:53

Justice Fallacies. Today

0:55

we'll be discussing a few of Dr. Sowell's admirers

0:59

and an issue that is very much in the news.

1:02

Tom, welcome back. Good to be back.

1:05

Affirmative action. This past July,

1:08

the Supreme Court handed down a decision in

1:10

students for fair admissions versus

1:13

Harvard. Although the

1:15

court had permitted race-based

1:18

university admissions ever since

1:21

the 1978 Bakke case, now, this past July, the

1:25

court called such affirmative action unconstitutional.

1:30

Chief Justice John Roberts, the

1:32

Harvard and University of North Carolina

1:34

admissions programs

1:36

cannot be reconciled with

1:38

the guarantees of the Equal Protection

1:40

Clause, close quote. And

1:43

Tom Sowell responded, how? When

1:45

you read that news. I was glad

1:47

that they said what they did. I will

1:50

wait and see how it will be applied.

1:53

I was glad when I read the original

1:55

Bakke decision because it said that

1:58

we can't have quotas.

1:59

and so forth. But in there somewhere

2:02

there was a little opening

2:05

and it said that, you know, well, you can

2:08

do this and you can do that, which turns

2:10

out to mean you can't have quotas

2:12

if you call them quotas. But

2:15

if you call them something else, you can. And in

2:17

Justice, Chief Justice Roberts'

2:20

opinion, he's telling Harvard that,

2:23

well, you can take that race and

2:26

you can have people write essays

2:29

and mention race and so forth. Well,

2:31

then what you're saying is you're all offering

2:34

them another escape hatch. And

2:36

so only time will tell how big

2:38

that escape hatch will be. For

2:40

myself, I think that Harvard

2:42

with tens of billions

2:45

of dollars in endowments can afford

2:47

to hire their own attorney rather

2:50

than have the Chief Justice of the United States

2:52

offer them advice on how to evade

2:55

the decisions

2:57

that's been made.

2:59

All right. Your oldest,

3:01

one of your oldest friends, Justice Thomas,

3:04

wrote a concurring decision in which he quoted

3:06

you extensively. And I want to come to that. But

3:09

first, if I may, affirmative action itself

3:12

as an issue. I just took the Wikipedia

3:14

article on affirmative action.

3:16

And I'm quoting from Wikipedia, affirmative

3:19

action is intended to alleviate

3:22

underrepresentation and to

3:24

promote the opportunities of defined

3:26

minority groups within a society to

3:29

give them access equal to

3:32

that of the majority population. Alleviate

3:36

opportunities, equal access.

3:38

What could be wrong with such things? Well,

3:41

there are always wonderful words to describe

3:43

things that are not very wonderful.

3:46

Tom,

3:48

again, on affirmative action as an issue in

3:51

itself. I've

3:54

read up a little bit on the history of this. The

3:56

first use of the term of affirmative action takes

3:58

place in an executive

3:59

Order,

4:01

John Kennedy, 1961, he's telling

4:04

government contractors to take affirmative

4:06

action to make sure that none of their employees

4:08

is discriminated against on

4:11

the basis of race. Johnson,

4:13

President Johnson, issues an Executive

4:15

Order in 65 with almost the same

4:18

wording. And in between

4:20

these two, this Executive Order in 61

4:23

and the Executive Order in 65, we get the Civil

4:25

Rights Act of 1964,

4:28

which prohibits discrimination on the basis of

4:30

race, and Senator

4:33

Hubert Humphrey was the floor

4:35

manager of the Civil

4:37

Rights Act of 1964, and he said the act

4:41

would prohibit

4:43

preferential treatment for any group. Humphrey

4:46

added, I will eat my hat

4:49

if this leads to racial quotas. Close

4:52

quote. And

4:56

so this is the mid-60s. By the mid-70s,

4:58

racial quotas

5:00

are the stuff and substance of affirmative action.

5:02

Bakke comes along and says, you're not allowed to have quotas,

5:04

but you're allowed to take race into effect, into

5:07

account in admissions decisions. So

5:10

quotas get dropped

5:12

out of the picture, but still it's preferential

5:14

treatment. It

5:16

begins with the notion of neutral treatment,

5:20

just enforcing equality before the law, but

5:22

quickly becomes preferential. Why?

5:25

How did that happen?

5:27

Well, I guess there are people who wanted to

5:30

push this as far as they could. But

5:32

it's also true that in other

5:34

countries where they've had to sense similar

5:37

things, because these programs are not unique to

5:39

the United States. In India, for

5:41

example, the courts said

5:43

you can't have these kinds of preferences. You

5:47

have to give everybody an equal chance

5:49

individually. But

5:52

they allowed them to take into account very

5:55

subjective things. And of course in

5:57

India, what they would do, they would have a five-minute

5:59

interview. interview with each student.

6:02

And the students whose scores were

6:05

not high enough, they gave them high marks

6:07

on the interview, and the others who were off at

6:09

the top, they gave them low marks on the interview. And

6:12

apparently, I gather from

6:14

some things that I've heard that

6:17

the Asian students always get low

6:21

ratings on these subjective things, which

6:23

can't be checked. And others

6:25

get high ratings. So you

6:27

can play these word games. And

6:30

I just fear that this

6:33

decision, which seems good and certainly

6:36

overdue, will not

6:38

lead to that kind of thing. When people back

6:40

in the 50s in the northern states were

6:43

trying to get rid of racial discrimination,

6:46

one of the things they did was say you cannot

6:49

submit a photo, require applicants

6:51

to submit photographs. When

6:53

Woodrow Wilson first introduced

6:57

this thing into the federal system,

7:00

he wanted photographs. So

7:02

if what you're saying is you can't explicitly

7:05

give preferences, but if you can find

7:08

out the race of the people, then you

7:10

can subjectively take that into account, and

7:12

the whole thing will be a farce. We

7:14

will find out whether they were serious or not.

7:19

There's a wonderful book called Mismatch about the

7:21

bad effects of affirmative action on college

7:24

students. And

7:26

the authors, I agree with them, everything until

7:28

they say that the Supreme Court should take into

7:30

account this and that and the other thing. And my

7:33

response is the last thing

7:35

we need is nine more politicians

7:37

in Washington.

7:39

So, Tom, what are,

7:43

why

7:44

is it best? Let me quote

7:46

to you. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor,

7:49

this is the Grutter decision

7:52

in 2003. So there's Bakke

7:54

in 78, there are various minor adjustments,

7:56

and then there's another, it comes up to the court again,

7:59

and the court says, Well, all right, you're

8:01

allowed to continue considering

8:03

race as a factor in admissions. Although,

8:07

Justice O'Connor writes in the majority

8:09

opinion, race-conscious admissions

8:11

policies must be limited in time.

8:14

The court expects that 25 years from

8:16

now, the use of racial preferences

8:19

will no longer be necessary. Okay.

8:23

So the court doesn't like racial preferences.

8:26

And you could even say, wait a minute, why

8:29

is it that something that would be unconstitutional

8:31

25 years from now isn't unconstitutional

8:34

today? But

8:36

Sandra Day-O'Connor, these are decent, well-meaning

8:39

people. Weren't they onto something? Didn't

8:41

it do some good even if it was

8:43

in tension with the Constitution? Yes, and it

8:45

did a whole lot of bad.

8:48

And what was the bad that it did, Tom? Well,

8:54

it put many black students with

8:57

all the prerequisites for success into

8:59

places where they were almost guaranteed to fail.

9:04

Let me go all the way back to 1965

9:07

when I was teaching at Cornell.

9:10

They suddenly brought in large

9:13

numbers of black students under special programs.

9:16

And in all through short

9:18

times, half of them were on academic

9:22

probation for academic

9:24

deficiencies.

9:25

And so I went over to the administration

9:28

building and looked up their SAT scores.

9:31

The average black student at Cornell at that time

9:33

was about the 75th percentile. Which

9:36

is good. Yes. It's

9:38

better than three-quarters of the other

9:40

American students who took the SAT.

9:44

The average student in the Cornell

9:46

Liberal Arts College was at the 99th percentile. And

9:53

so, one, you have the students who

9:55

simply do not graduate. And

9:58

so there's no great gain. flunking

10:00

out of an elite institution.

10:03

So Cornell

10:05

University took

10:07

really gifted black kids and

10:10

spent four years making failures

10:12

out of them. Making failures out of them.

10:15

This is not unique to Cornell. Back

10:18

when we had in the later

10:20

on in the 20th century at Berkeley, they

10:23

had black and Hispanic kids who

10:25

got who were admitted there. They had

10:28

test scores just slightly above the national

10:30

average. The

10:32

white students had test

10:35

scores far above that and

10:37

the Asian students had it above the white students.

10:41

And the great bulk of those black students, an

10:43

absolute majority, failed to graduate.

10:45

So they came on campus, wasted

10:48

some years of their lives, some opportunities

10:51

they may have had somewhere else. And they were talented

10:53

people. Yeah and

10:55

they were people who could have in any

10:57

place else. The

11:00

other fallacy is the notion you're getting a better

11:02

education than a higher rated institution.

11:05

Universities are rated

11:07

according to the research output of their faculties.

11:10

They are not rated according to the teaching quality.

11:14

Berkeley is one of the great universities

11:17

of the world.

11:18

In research,

11:19

no one in his right mind thinks that the

11:21

education offered to undergraduates at Berkeley

11:24

is anything to

11:27

look up to. And so

11:29

you send them not only to places where they

11:32

cannot compete with the other

11:34

students, but where the faculty really don't

11:36

give much attention to that. The

11:38

California voters voted

11:41

to end preferential admission

11:43

to the university system. There were dire

11:47

complaints that this would be no black students would

11:49

be able to get this and that and so forth. The

11:52

actual data shows that the number

11:54

of black students in the UC system barely

11:57

changed at all. What happened?

12:00

happened was that they stopped going to Berkeley

12:02

and UCLA. They went to the other

12:04

campuses where their proficiency

12:07

was like that of the other students. In

12:09

the wake of that, over

12:11

a four-year period, there were

12:13

a thousand more minority students graduating

12:16

from the system than there were under

12:18

affirmative action. Moreover,

12:20

that's what the other thing that happened. So even the ones

12:23

who stay there and

12:25

graduate, they may

12:27

come in wanting to become engineers,

12:30

mathematicians, scientists. They

12:33

find they cannot possibly make it in that

12:35

institution. So they come out taking sociology,

12:38

ethnic studies. They go from the hard material to

12:40

the soft stuff. Yeah, and from material

12:43

that will provide you with a well-paying

12:45

career to an outcome that

12:51

will provide you with nothing. All

12:54

right.

12:55

By the way, this brings us to the concurring opinion,

12:58

Justice Clarence Thomas writes in Students

13:01

for Fair Admission versus Harvard.

13:02

Affirmative action, he writes, fails to increase

13:05

the overall number of Blacks and Hispanics in universities,

13:08

quote,

13:09

rather those racial policies simply redistribute

13:11

individuals, placing some into more competitive

13:13

institutions than they would otherwise

13:16

have attended. Studies suggest that

13:18

large racial preferences for Black and Hispanic

13:20

applicants have led to a disproportionately

13:22

large share of those students receiving mediocre

13:25

or poor grades. See T.

13:28

Soul,

13:29

affirmative action around the world.

13:32

I couldn't help thinking, you told me at one point,

13:35

I think your first paying job was as

13:37

a Western Union telegram delivery

13:39

boy. Yes. Tom, you're now being quoted

13:41

in Supreme Court decisions. Well, I'm

13:43

not sure. I'm not. That's

13:46

not a promotion.

13:50

There was in

13:52

these decisions, Chief

13:55

Justice Roberts wrote the majority

13:57

decision. Justice wrote

14:00

a concurring decision,

14:02

Justice Jackson

14:04

wrote a dissent. And

14:07

Justice Jackson and Justice Thomas

14:10

had at each other in their

14:12

decisions. I thought it was a fascinating

14:15

exchange. These are the two African...he

14:18

went to Yale Law School, she went to Harvard

14:20

Law School, these are both very bright people.

14:23

Let me read a few quotations from

14:26

Justice Jackson, then we'll go to Justice Thomas.

14:29

This is Justice Jackson. Gulf-sized

14:33

race-based gaps exist

14:35

with respect to health, wealth, and the well-being

14:37

of American citizens. They were created

14:40

in the distant past but

14:42

have indisputably been passed

14:45

down to the present day. Yet

14:47

today this court determines that

14:49

holistic admissions programs,

14:53

by which she means programs that take race into account,

14:55

are a problem rather

14:57

than a viable solution as

14:59

has long been evident to historians, sociologists,

15:03

and policymakers alike.

15:07

What do you mean by that?

15:08

Well, if what

15:11

she said was true, it would have

15:13

implications. None of it's true. None

15:16

of it's true. None of it's true. Or

15:18

it does have the support of the academic

15:20

elite. It

15:23

does have that. And some people regard

15:25

that as the same as a documented fact.

15:28

I'm not one of those people.

15:29

All right.

15:31

Justice Jackson continues to be sure

15:33

black people incidentally she capitalizes

15:35

black. Oh good. Which you don't do.

15:38

Yes, yeah. All right. Black

15:40

people and other minorities have generally

15:42

been doing better in recent years. But

15:45

those improvements have only

15:48

been made possible. Not helped, not

15:50

enhanced, but only been

15:52

made possible because institutions

15:55

like the University of North Carolina have

15:57

been willing to grapple forthrightly with

16:00

the burdens of history," close quote.

16:03

Dr. Soule?

16:03

Well, I wasn't aware that the University

16:06

of North Carolina qualified

16:09

to grasp the words of history. Yes,

16:13

I would like to see some facts about this. The

16:16

same thing, similar pattern

16:19

of the UC system, you see in a place

16:21

like MIT, one study

16:23

showed that the average black student at

16:26

MIT scored

16:28

in the top 10% on the

16:30

math portion of the SAT, and

16:33

in the bottom 10% at MIT. I

16:37

mean, at MIT, it's

16:39

only a question of which part of

16:41

the 99th percentile you're in. Again,

16:47

there have been actually empirical studies

16:49

done with medical schools, law schools, and

16:52

in every single case where the black

16:54

students are put in, places

16:56

where the other students have similar

16:59

SAT scores of their own, they learn

17:01

more. And in professions

17:04

like law and medicine, there is an independent

17:07

test, independently of the institution that

17:09

you was tested in, see whether you

17:11

can pass the outside

17:13

test to get life. Our

17:15

exam and so on. That's right. And

17:18

in this case, in one case in the back

17:20

east, there

17:24

was a high test, high

17:27

ranked law school and a lower ranked law

17:29

school. The black students in both places

17:32

had very similar SAT scores. When

17:35

they came to the bar exam, the

17:37

black students in the lower ranked institution

17:40

passed the bar exam on

17:43

the first try 57% of the time. And

17:46

the ones in the high ranked one passed

17:49

at 30% of the time. You

17:52

learn more in a place where the professors

17:54

teach the level

17:57

of students that they have. And

17:59

that's their challenge. after all. Yeah, and

18:01

when I was teaching, you know, when

18:03

I taught at Howard University, which is a

18:06

black institution, most of the kids have not had

18:08

the top education up to that

18:10

point, and I'd come to the concept

18:13

of marginal cost in economics, I'd

18:15

have some arithmetic examples to explain what

18:18

marginal cost meant. When I taught

18:20

at Cornell, I taught a class to engineers,

18:22

all of whom had calculus, and I would say,

18:25

marginal cost is the first derivative of total

18:27

cost, and go on. Now,

18:29

you know, there's no point in my,

18:32

you know, but so the guy who's

18:35

not had that, these guys at

18:37

Cornell had probably had calculus in high school,

18:40

and the kid who's come out of the ghetto

18:42

school doesn't have that. He doesn't know what the hell I'm

18:44

talking about. Right, right.

18:47

One more time, Justice Jackson. The majority,

18:50

that is the Chief Justice, Justice

18:52

Thomas, and the four others who joined them in

18:55

voting to find race-based admissions

18:57

unconstitutional, Justice Jackson says the

18:59

majority seems to think

19:01

that race blindness solves

19:04

the problem of race-based disadvantage,

19:08

but the irony is that requiring

19:10

colleges to ignore race and admissions

19:13

will delay the day that

19:16

every American has an equal opportunity

19:18

to thrive regardless of

19:20

race. And this is, Baham? Justice Jackson.

19:23

Not at one speck of evidence. Not

19:25

one speck of evidence.

19:29

Now we go to Justice Thomas.

19:33

Quote,

19:34

with the passage of the 14th Amendment,

19:37

the amendment that was

19:39

added to the

19:41

Constitution after the Civil War, with the passage

19:43

of the 14th Amendment, the people of our nation

19:46

proclaimed that it is the law

19:49

that the government may not sort citizens

19:51

based on race. He's

19:53

making a constitutional argument rather than an

19:55

argument on sociology. That's

19:57

one point.

19:59

that has guaranteed a nation

20:01

of equal citizens the equal protection

20:04

of the laws." Close quote. Well,

20:06

isn't that a little cold and analytical?

20:08

He's not concerned about the effects of the law.

20:10

He's just concerned with the law.

20:13

Well, I think it's wonderful when judges are concerned

20:15

with the effects of the law.

20:18

That's what they do. What

20:20

has been tragic and so much social

20:22

justice talk is people who

20:25

think that because they are very

20:28

well qualified in certain areas,

20:30

that enables them to make decisions for other

20:32

people in other areas where they may

20:35

lack and probably do lack. Minimal

20:38

confidence. I mean, the

20:40

second guessing of the police by people

20:42

with PhDs is incredible, especially

20:44

when things like how many shots

20:47

did they fire, you know? And this was

20:49

said by people who probably never had a gun in their

20:51

hands in their whole lives.

20:53

But because they may be the world's

20:55

historian on French literature or

20:57

Mayan culture, they think that they can

21:00

talk about other things that they absolutely

21:02

know nothing about.

21:04

So can I ask you, I

21:06

mean, I think I know the answer to this, but I just want

21:08

to square it up and give you the chance to address

21:10

it squarely.

21:12

It's your view certainly

21:15

that the Constitution correctly

21:17

interpreted is colorblind, correct?

21:20

Right. We make no

21:23

distinctions. Discrimination

21:25

would suggest unfair distinctions. Affirmative

21:28

action would suggest distinctions that are at least

21:31

grounded in a will to be helpful. They're

21:34

both unconstitutional. We make

21:36

no distinctions based on race. Okay,

21:38

that's one point. You've already made that point. You

21:41

want to contend that

21:44

this colorblind Constitution, if

21:47

we behave as if we're going to obey

21:49

it,

21:50

and we don't make distinctions based on race,

21:53

that that is best for African Americans. It's

21:56

not a, again, if we

21:58

turn to a hard fact.

22:00

The hard facts is that between 1940

22:04

and 1960, practically nobody was

22:06

paying any attention to black. Walter

22:09

Williams used to say that he was so lucky

22:11

to be born before white people wanted to be nice

22:13

to black. He

22:16

traced his own career to when

22:18

a white teacher in a school in the

22:20

Philadelphia ghetto chewed him out

22:22

unmercifully. And he was very

22:25

angry and so forth. But he traced

22:27

his own progress

22:30

from that point on to

22:32

that to being chewed out.

22:34

That doesn't happen anymore. Again,

22:39

the

22:39

hard facts, 1940 to 1960, there were no great riots and so

22:42

forth. There

22:48

were no great demonstrations. Most

22:52

intellectuals weren't paying much attention to blacks one way

22:54

or the other. In the places where they

22:56

were paying attention, the South, they

22:59

were paying attention to enforce discriminatory

23:01

laws. Under those conditions,

23:04

blacks advanced better than under these

23:07

new conditions beginning in the 1960s, which

23:09

were supposed

23:09

to be so favorable.

23:14

Tom, are

23:18

you aware that there are

23:20

thousands of videos on YouTube

23:23

that follow this format? It's

23:27

people, one, two, three, four,

23:30

watching a video of you and

23:33

then commenting on it. Are

23:35

you aware that you are a YouTube person? I've seen

23:38

that once. You've seen it once? I'm going to

23:40

show you a couple if you don't mind. I want

23:42

you to see what people make of you.

23:46

Let's go ahead. Here's the first one.

23:49

What advice would you give a young

23:51

Thomas Sowell? How do you make

23:53

something of yourself as

23:56

an African-American in America today?

23:59

anybody else would. You equip

24:02

yourself with skills that people are willing to pay

24:04

for.

24:07

I like how you talk. What

24:10

happens to me? I like how you talk. Tell

24:13

me, that makes me smile. I like how you

24:15

talk. Come on, I feel like you see a lot

24:17

of young kids, young

24:20

teenagers, young adults that need to be listening.

24:23

I like how he talks. And

24:26

I can think of a lot of kids that need to

24:28

be listening. How can

24:30

it be that what you

24:32

say, learn

24:35

skills that people are willing to pay for, how can

24:37

it be that that can strike people

24:41

such as so many Americans as

24:43

fresh, counter-cultural,

24:46

heretical,

24:46

something that kids

24:48

need to hear? How can it be that in this day

24:51

and age

24:52

it strikes people as...

24:53

It's common sense. And

24:57

one of the problems with many of the elites is

25:00

that the very commonness of common sense

25:03

does not serve their purposes. It's

25:06

wonderful to believe that you have some insights

25:08

that all the vast millions don't have

25:11

and that therefore you should

25:13

be making their decisions for them. I

25:15

think the minimum wage laws are a classic

25:18

example of this. That we have

25:23

people out there

25:25

who think that

25:27

when there are jobs available and

25:29

wages that the black

25:31

teenagers are willing to accept and

25:34

the employers are willing to pay, they're

25:36

third parties knowing

25:38

nothing about either the industry or

25:40

about the condition of other people themselves,

25:43

have a right to pass laws forbidding

25:45

them from having wages

25:48

that get them employed. And then

25:50

when they discover, or in most cases they don't

25:52

even check,

25:53

that the

25:55

unemployment

25:58

of the teenagers goes up as you read. raised

26:00

the minimum wage. One

26:02

of the things I mentioned in the book, in 1948, black and

26:06

white teenagers had virtually

26:09

identical unemployment rates,

26:11

and it was a fraction of what teenagers

26:14

of all sorts have today.

26:17

And the reason was quite simple. The minimum

26:19

wage law was passed in 1938, and

26:22

it hadn't been changed in 10 years. And

26:24

those were 10 years of runaway inflation.

26:26

And so

26:29

for all practical purposes, there was no minimum

26:31

wage law. And under those

26:33

conditions, you got black and white

26:35

teenagers having unemployment rates

26:38

of 10 percent and no

26:40

difference between them. Now, in comes

26:42

the wonderful people with the wonderful ideas,

26:44

and they keep raising the minimum wage to keep

26:47

ahead of inflation. And now for

26:49

a period of more than two decades, consecutive

26:52

decades, the minimum wage

26:54

rates for black teenagers never

26:56

falls below 20 percent. And in some

26:58

years, it's over 40 percent. And

27:01

unemployment rates. Unemployment rates, yes.

27:04

And in the early 20th century,

27:07

it hit 52 percent right after

27:09

Obama was elected president. So

27:11

presumably, there was less racism

27:13

in 1903, I think it was,

27:17

than there was in 1948.

27:20

And this is because I

27:23

want to understand the concept, but

27:25

I don't know how to put it other than crudely, that

27:28

the market doesn't think that

27:31

the 52 percent who are unemployed can

27:34

provide value up to the level

27:36

of the minimum wage. That's true,

27:38

yes. Yeah. But the argument

27:40

is, that's nobody's business.

27:43

Those kids need, you need to get started some place

27:45

in life, and maybe you get started with

27:48

a job that pays well below the minimum wage, but

27:50

if you're willing to take that wage and do the work,

27:52

it's a way of entering the workforce, learning

27:55

skill. Isn't that right? Oh, absolutely. They

27:57

never take into account.

27:59

loses the

28:02

jobs he could have had otherwise. He

28:04

loses the experience which is even more valuable

28:06

in the job itself. And so they

28:08

act as if you take a job at McDonald's,

28:11

you're going to be at McDonald's 20 years from now. Now

28:13

the hard data say that the people

28:16

who are working at these

28:18

hamburger stands on January 1st

28:21

are very unlikely to be working at the hamburger

28:24

stands on December 31st.

28:27

That they have high turnovers and

28:29

so forth. But again, you have to get

28:31

better jobs. Yeah, but the big

28:34

institutional problem is the people

28:36

who make these kinds of decisions with

28:39

great confidence pay no price for

28:41

being wrong no matter how wrong

28:43

or how harmful that is to other people. Did

28:46

you get paid minimum wage when you were delivering telegrams

28:49

for Western Union? Yes, no, no,

28:51

I got more than that. The minimum

28:54

wage was 40 cents an hour in 1938. I

28:56

was paid 65 cents

28:59

an hour. But of course, 65 cents an hour

29:01

in 1946, which is when I went to work, was

29:05

less in value than

29:07

the 40 cents in 1938. You were

29:09

like Walter Williams. You got the benefit of entering the

29:12

market when there was effectively no minimum

29:14

wage. Oh, that's right. That's right. All right.

29:16

Tom, let me show you another video if I may.

29:19

Where does the press fall into this as

29:21

the anointed group? Are they part of the- Oh, absolutely. They're

29:23

a major part of it because one of the reasons

29:26

that people don't get many of the facts that

29:28

go against what's believed is that the press

29:30

doesn't choose to publicize those facts. So

29:34

who are the anointed? You

29:36

use this term and you wrote a book called The Vision of

29:38

the Anointed. Who are the anointed?

29:40

These are the people who are crusading

29:42

for all kinds of things like social

29:44

justice and other areas as well,

29:47

who are trying to preempt

29:51

the decisions of individuals and

29:53

substitute what they think of as their higher

29:56

understanding, when in fact the people

29:58

who are making their know

30:01

a lot more about their circumstances than

30:04

these third parties can possibly know.

30:06

Alright.

30:07

One more video, one final video if

30:09

I may tell you. We've seen, they're

30:11

looking at something we've already seen, but this is

30:14

a somewhat different context.

30:16

Somewhere, watching this interview, there's

30:18

a young Thomas Sowell. There's

30:20

an African American who's smart

30:23

and wants to do something with his

30:25

life.

30:27

What seems to me, we've

30:29

already got one piece of advice you'd offer to him

30:32

is stay away from the

30:34

racist industry. Stay away

30:36

from the racist. What

30:39

advice would you give

30:41

a young Thomas Sowell? How

30:43

do you make something of yourself as

30:46

an African American in America today? The

30:50

way anybody else would.

30:51

You equip yourself with skills that people

30:53

are willing to pay for.

30:57

I like that. I like that. Alright,

30:59

so yeah. I

31:02

like Tom. Now,

31:04

you're a professional academic, and

31:09

yet all your, well I've

31:11

known you a good long time now, but I didn't

31:14

know you when you were teaching at Cornell. But

31:16

ever since I've known you and ever since I started

31:19

reading your work, you had a column in Forbes

31:21

magazine, you wrote Basic Economics,

31:24

which is clearly intended for a general

31:26

audience. You have taken

31:30

seriously. I'm

31:34

just, I'm wondering how you think about

31:36

your work on the one hand as an academic,

31:38

on the other hand, as someone who takes seriously.

31:43

This may be a high-flown way of putting it, but takes seriously

31:45

the notion that we live in a democracy, that

31:47

you need to bring people with

31:49

you. Why have you, apart

31:53

from anything else, why are you still at it, Tom? You

31:55

haven't had anything to prove to anybody in about three

31:58

decades, maybe half a century.

31:59

Well,

32:00

I think that if you see

32:03

the auto disasters around

32:05

you, if not surprising that you

32:07

might think that there could be some improvement

32:09

made.

32:12

All right.

32:14

Tom, could you, back

32:17

to Clarence Thomas, who's a friend

32:19

of yours and I think would have no hesitation in

32:21

describing himself as a disciple of yours

32:23

really, would you close this

32:26

conversation by reading an excerpt from

32:28

Justice Thomas's

32:30

concurrence?

32:31

He was not a disciple

32:34

of mine. We met

32:36

as a result of his own change in

32:39

his own mind. So someone once

32:41

gave him a book of mine when he was in

32:43

his more radical phase. And as he

32:46

told me, he simply threw it in the wastebasket.

32:48

Well,

32:50

as long as they paid full retail for it. As

32:53

long as he got you real. So

32:56

when did you meet him? Oh, heavens,

32:58

I met him in 1978.

33:00

There was a symposium

33:02

on equality at Washington University

33:04

in St. Louis. And I was there

33:07

as a commentator on a paper being

33:09

given by a professor of law at Columbia

33:12

University named Ruth

33:14

Bauter Ginsburg. Really?

33:16

Yes. And I have a few critical

33:18

things to say, as a matter of fact. And

33:22

on another panel, the main

33:25

presenter was a professor of

33:27

law from the University of Chicago named

33:29

Antonyne Scalia. And

33:32

in the audience was an unknown young

33:34

black lawyer named Clarence

33:36

Thomas. And that's where

33:38

we met. And he introduced

33:41

himself to you? Yes. At

33:43

that point, had he read any of your work? Well,

33:46

what had happened is he himself

33:48

had thrown away the stuff that

33:50

he had believed before and

33:53

he was explaining his viewpoint

33:57

to a friend of his. another

34:00

guy who said the same thing. And

34:02

that's why, so I was

34:05

not the reason that he said that

34:08

he reached the conclusion, that was the reason

34:10

he came there to see me and the

34:12

other people. But

34:14

this touches something really important. And

34:17

we can see it in the

34:18

YouTube video. If you watch some of the faces there,

34:21

the faces are, they're

34:23

hearing things they haven't heard before. And

34:25

the question is, is

34:28

it hopeless? Or can people change their minds?

34:31

Clarence Thomas changed his mind.

34:34

You changed your mind. Oh yes, I

34:36

was a Marxist.

34:38

Until what age? During the McCarthy

34:40

era.

34:41

Your Marxist during the McCarthy era. Oh,

34:44

you think you know how to pick your enemies. Yes. Well,

34:47

what changed your mind? Facts.

34:51

You know, whereas you get more

34:53

and more facts, especially if you pay attention to

34:55

them, you realize that this

34:57

doesn't square what's being said. And at

35:01

that point. And you were working

35:03

for the government. Wasn't that a formative experience?

35:05

Yes, that was it. I was

35:08

a summer intern. I was still a graduate

35:10

student, but during the summer I was an intern at the Labor

35:12

Department. And I was

35:15

concerned about minimum wages then as

35:18

now. And the question

35:20

was, were the minimum wages causing poor

35:23

people to get more money? Or

35:25

were they causing them not to be employed at all?

35:27

Which means they got less money. It also

35:29

means, by the way, for teenagers, that

35:33

they not only get no job, it

35:36

means that if they want money,

35:38

they have to do things that are illegal, like selling

35:40

drugs. Which

35:43

has its own hazards. Yes,

35:45

it does. But the people who

35:48

are for minimum wages, they

35:50

think that they are doing a wonderful thing for

35:52

the poor. And it never occurs to them

35:54

to ever check what they believe against

35:56

hard facts.

35:58

All right.

35:59

Could you read us this? from Justice Thomas, the whole thing.

36:02

There are a lot of people who like your voice. Well,

36:05

I don't know about all that, but the

36:08

court's opinion sees

36:10

the universities' admissions policies for what

36:12

they are. Race-based preferences

36:15

designed to ensure

36:18

a particular racial mix in their entering classes. Those

36:21

policies fly in the face of our colorblind

36:24

constitution

36:25

and our nation's equality ideal. In

36:28

short, they are plainly unconstitutional. While

36:31

I am painfully aware of the social and economic

36:34

ravages which have befallen my race

36:36

and all who suffer discrimination, I

36:38

hold that enduring hope that this country

36:40

will live up to its principles so

36:43

clearly enunciated

36:45

in the Declaration of Independence and the

36:47

Constitution of the United States

36:49

that all men are created equal,

36:52

are equal citizens, and must be treated

36:55

equally before the law. Tom

36:58

Soule subscribes to every word? Yes. Thomas

37:01

Soule, economist, teacher, social

37:04

critic,

37:05

author,

37:06

most recently of Social Justice Fallacies.

37:09

Thank you.

37:10

Thank you.

37:11

For Uncommon Knowledge, the Hoover Institution,

37:14

and Fox Nation, I'm Peter Robinson.

37:20

Thank you.