Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell is an amazing book on social theory, and Sowell is the smartest intellectual alive in America today. I encourage everyone to read his books or watch his interviews he did with Will Buckley and Peter Robinson. This article is a summary of what I learned:
Many people push for equal representation of all racial and ethnic groups in our institutions. However, this is based on the assumption that uneven representation must always be due to some sort of discrimination. Discrimination still exists and is terrible. However, there are many factors besides discrimination that determine the representation of a racial group in a institution or an endeavor.
One factor is age. For example, 32% of the players in the MLB are Hispanic despite being only about 16% of the American population. The average Hispanic American is 29 years old. The average black American is 34 years old. The average white American is 44 years old. The average Japanese American is 50 years old. There are huge age differences between different racial and ethnic groups. This is one reason why Hispanic Americans are more likely to be represented in Major League Baseball, but Japanese Americans are overrepresented in higher paying fields such as medicine because being a doctor requires many years of education and experience.
Culture also makes a huge difference. In the early 1980s, there were three times as many Hispanic Americans with PHDs in history as there were Asian Americans with PHDs in history. However, there were ten times as many Asian Americans with PHDs in chemistry as there were Hispanic Americans with PHDs in chemistry. This disparity is driven by culture. For thousands of years, Asian cultures have put a huge emphasis on math and science education. This is why many foreign–born software engineers are from India, and the CEOs of Twitter, Microsoft, Adobe, Google, and IBM are Indian. India and other Asian countries have a cultural emphasis on math and science, which is a huge advantage in the software field.
Often times, many groups that have experienced discrimination still outperform the native population in many different endeavors. The Jews are the best example in America. They were poor and experienced a lot of discrimination when they first came to America, but they now have a median income substantially higher than the average American and make up 35% of the Forbes 400 list despite being only 2% of the American population.
The Chinese in Malaysia also succeeded despite discrimination. They first arrived in Malaysia in the 1940s and were poor. By the early 1980s, the Chinese were ⅓ of the Malaysian population (biggest minority in Malaysia), but they made up 94% of the engineering students in Malaysian colleges and universities. The Chinese in Malaysia had a per capita income that was double the per capita income of the average native Malaysian. The Chinese immigrants in Malaysia succeeded despite the legal and social discrimination they experienced.
Geography also determines racial disparities. Ethnic groups that live on the coastal areas are richer than groups that live in the mountains. Coastal areas in temperate climate zones make up 8% of the world’s land, 23% of the world’s population, and produce 53% of the world’s GDP. The reason for this is that coastal areas have more access to trade via seaports, and there is a lot more commerce in seaports than in areas that are landlocked.
Thomas Sowell acknowledges that discrimination still exists and that discrimination is one factor that drives racial disparities. It is one factor, but it can not be used as a blanket explanation for all racial disparities. Even without discrimination, racial and ethnic groups would not be represented equally in all fields or endeavors. There are NO genetic differences between different groups, but there are age differences, cultural differences, and geographic differences. Human beings are diverse, and there are many different cultures. It is unrealistic to expect equal and proportional representation. Thomas Sowell uses a data driven approach to this book, and this is one of his greatest books. Thomas Sowell is the greatest sociologist in American history, and I encourage everyone to read him.
