I don’t normally post a link to just one video, but I found this one enormously interesting and, indeed, exciting and hopeful. It’s 5 young black men watching Peter Robinson’s interview of Thomas Sowell and discussing his ideas. I was riveted.
Notice how one of them pronounces his name at the start. It reminds me of when I would tell my students the first day of a new class about my background. I mentioned my affiliation with the Hoover Institution and inevitably a student would ask me if I knew Thomas Sow (pronounced the same as you pronounce “sow”) ell. It means that they knew of him by reading him. These young men see his name on the screen. Same idea.
So many highlights. I won’t mention more than a few because the whole thing is fascinating.
6:56: Watch their reaction at 6:56 to a point that Sowell makes.
7:48 to 8:30: Check Sowell’s point about blacks growing up in Germany than the young men’s reactions.
15:25: Watch their reaction to white “liberals” taking responsibility.
HT2 Tyler Cowen.
READER COMMENTS
MarkW
Nov 21 2023 at 9:18am
Great stuff! I saw that from MR — it looks like you forgot to include the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAxjWorde-4
David Henderson
Nov 21 2023 at 10:22am
Thanks, but no, I membered. It’s in the first line of my post.
steve
Nov 21 2023 at 10:20am
Have seen bits of several of their videos. I think they might seem surprising to some people but I think that if you know a lot of black people they are not surprising at all. They manage to get in a lot of important concepts in a short bit of time if you pay attention.
There is a toxic black culture(s) AND white culture(s). I am always struck by how much the poor white people in coal country behave like the poor black people in inner city Philadelphia. However, many if not most black people dont think that culture really represents them and they arent happy with it. I think many, maybe most white people understand this but lots dont.
They laugh at or are disgusted at the white liberals doing BLM stuff. So do most other white liberals. I mean, you really have to be full of yourself to say stuff like that and have it recorded.
IQ. People dont like to remember Flynn’s work in Germany. IQ clearly does have some effect but culture, how you are brought up, also clearly matters.
Shootings. This isn’t only confined to Harlem or inner cities. It has affected many small towns, midsized cities and even rural areas. Working in an ED in the 70s we rarely had people with guns on them. Now they are very common. Even when they know they are going to the ED they forget to leave them at home. People have a lot more guns and, probably, they are more willing to use them.
So some people will have hope knowing that some black people arent the idiots they believe them to be. I think there is also some hope in knowing that some white people are learning that black people are more like them than they think.
Steve
JK Brown
Nov 21 2023 at 8:24pm
You should read Sowell’s ‘Black Rednecks and White Liberals’ or look up a video discussing it. He offers the hypothesis that the culture adopted by African slaves and later freemen in the South was that of the poor whites from Northern England, Scotland, etc., i.e., rednecks. Similar language, habits, etc. When Southern blacks migrated to the Northern cities for jobs, they took the culture with them, which is what is seen in the inner city areas. Problem the black community has is that there are several industries that make a lot of money keeping the redneck culture alive and well in the black community. Where on the other side, redneck behavior by whites is, and was, pushed back against.
steve
Nov 22 2023 at 12:10pm
I grew up mostly Southern Indiana, adjacent to Appalachia and have a fair number of relatives in that culture so I think I have a pretty fair idea of what it’s like. Lots of people are still stuck there. From my POV Sowell’s book was hardly original and many others had written the same thing. I think that I was just a bit surprised that coal country behavior was so similar. It’s not really the same groups who had settled and worked there, with a lot more Polish, Irish and Slavic influence. Also, the area was fairly prosperous for a while.
Steve
Richard Fulmer
Nov 21 2023 at 1:57pm
Thomas Sowell is probably the greatest living American economist. One could also make a good case that he is also America’s greatest living historian and philosopher. Yet, the fact that these educated young black men are just discovering him speaks of the power that the left has over our media, schools, and universities.
The left has chosen to deal with Sowell largely by ignoring him and his arguments. That is probably a wise choice; debating Sowell and not coming out looking like a fool would be a difficult task to say the least.
On the other hand, it suggests that they understand how weak their arguments are, and explains their rejection of reason and objectivity. If you’re going to die by the sword, try to eliminate swords.
David Seltzer
Nov 21 2023 at 6:23pm
Richard said, “Thomas Sowell is probably the greatest living American economist.” The Man should be a Nobel Laureate. I suspect at age ninety, that won’t happen. He’s well outside the the econ department left-wing crowd. After all it took the Nobel Committee over forty years to recognize Gene Fama’s monumental work in finance and economics.
Mark Z
Nov 22 2023 at 2:15am
The Nobel Prize is given for original academic research, and Sowell isn’t prolific economic researcher and that’s not what he’s known for, so it would be strange if he did get the Nobel. It would be like giving Carl Sagan the Nobel Prize in physics. Sure, Sagan did do academic research, but the vast majority of his work, and what he was known for, was popularization, commentary, and writing for a general audience. That’s just not what the Nobel is for.
Anders
Nov 22 2023 at 12:26pm
Leading us to the strange phenomenon of Friedman winning the prize for his flawed monetarism, not for his much larger contribution of persuasion…
Mike Wagner
Nov 21 2023 at 9:59pm
David,
Excellent video and well worth the watch, thanks. The IQ study in Germany has some similarities with the Jews when they first hit NYC. They were not considered smart and capable….because the kids couldn’t speak English. It didn’t take long for that reality and perception to change.
Anna
Nov 26 2023 at 11:52pm
I grew up in former Czechoslovakia. There were not that many black people around 30 years ago, so we never learned how to recognize color of skin. We simply did not see different color of skin. We never saw ANY difference at all. …. Until I moved to US. Suddenly, race comments everywhere . It is artificial , political game in this country. Thomas Sowell is superb.
Sara
Nov 22 2023 at 4:14am
I’ve been watching these guys for months. They are student athletes at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. They started with music reaction videos and then moved on to meatier topics such as the video you linked. Their discussions are always good – they’re open minded, comfortable with saying what they think, and very honest. Highly recommend.
l-r: Ross, Brock, Tae (Ty), Solomon, Brandon
Charley Hooper
Nov 22 2023 at 1:11pm
This is an interesting study in discovering one’s “culture.” Slaves taken from Africa could no longer exercise their original African cultures. (Note: cultures plural.) They were forced into the slave culture. Then, when freed, they took on characteristics of the local white population, even though many of these behaviors were negative.
Later, blacks came to define that negative culture as their own, which it really isn’t. It’s really perverse to align and define yourself by something that’s self-destructive and was borrowed from others.
Today, blacks must essentially create their culture from scratch. They can’t go back to African culture, partly because there isn’t an “African” culture. No one would want to go back to the slave culture. The white redneck culture has many flaws and holds people back. As a result, blacks need to create a new culture. So we can be anthropologists and watch this happen in real-time. It’s really fascinating to behold.
Richard Fulmer
Nov 22 2023 at 4:34pm
Do they have to create a culture from scratch or choose the positive culture that is theirs by right? Gospel music; jazz; rock and roll; great inventors, musicians, composers, engineers, entrepreneurs, entertainers, poets, writers, composers, artists, economists, scientists, doctors, and educators; pioneers in furthering human liberty; amazing achievements in sports; heroism on the battlefield and in protecting people here at home.
Ed Duncan
Nov 22 2023 at 10:53pm
Dr. Thomas Sowell, Stanford man, very possibly the smartest man walking the earth today, THE Man! It will take wisdom, boldness, and courage like his to save our urban war zones today. But with God’s help, it can be done.
Comments are closed.