Thomas Sowell is the latest great black man to be celebrated as part of Black History Month, HG style. An economists, Sowell has been an institution in America for decades. He’s one of the most influential economists of his generation and has been an outspoken defender of economic liberty. Let’s all learn more about Mr. Sowell. (All quotes are from Wikipedia– duh.)
He served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He received a bachelor’s degree, graduating magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1958 and a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his Doctorate in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Damn. That’s pretty cool. Fought in a war and then received degrees from three badass universities. I never fought in a war and my two degrees are not from schools that good. Sowell has written A LOT of books. Look:
Say’s Law: An Historical Analysis (1972)
Race and Economics (1975)
Knowledge and Decisions (1980)
Ethnic America: A History (1981)
Markets and Minorities (1981)
The Economics and Politics of Race (1983)
Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality (1984)
Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (1985)
Education: Assumptions Versus History: Collected Papers (1985)
Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays (1987)
Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (5th Ed. 2014)
Choosing a College: A Guide for Parents and Students (1989)
Preferential Policies: An International Perspective (1990)
Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas (1992)
Is Reality Optional? and Other Essays (1993)
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy (1995)
Race and Culture: A World View (1995)
Migrations and Cultures: A World View (1996)
Late-Talking Children (1997)
Conquests and Cultures: An International History (1998)
The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999)
Barbarians Inside the Gates and Other Controversial Essays (1999)
The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late (2001)
A Personal Odyssey (2002)
Controversial Essays (2002)
Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study (2004)
Black Rednecks and White Liberals (2005)
Ever Wonder Why and Other Controversial Essays (2006)
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles (2007)
A Man of Letters (2007)
On Classical Economics (2007)
Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (2003,,2008)
Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008)
The Housing Boom and Bust (2009)
Intellectuals and Society (2010)
Dismantling America (essays) (2010)
The Thomas Sowell Reader (2011)
“Trickle Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts for the Rich” (2012)
Intellectuals and Race (2013)
Wealth, Poverty and Politics: An International Perspective (2015)
I haven’t read that many books, let alone written that many – and that’s not even all of them. He has also been teaching at Stanford for a long time too!
Sowell has upset people but been praised for being smart. Being smart is good. Look at this commentary on him:
In 2011, Kevin D.Williamson, reviewing The Thomas Sowell Reader for Commentary, said “If a mad scientist were to repair to his laboratory to design a machine that would make white liberals uncomfortable, that machine would be Thomas Sowell, whose input is data and whose output is socioeconomic criticism in several grades, ranging from bemused observation to thorough debunking to high-test scorn—all of which are represented in The Thomas Sowell Reader” Williamson says “Thomas Sowell is that rarest of things among serious academics: plainspoken…. His plain speaking also makes him dangerous, and that danger is intensified by the fact that Sowell is black. And not just black, but unassailably black: He’s Southern-born, Harlem-raised, brought up poor, and the first of his family to be educated beyond the sixth grade….Because he is black, his opinions about race are controversial. If he were white, they probably would be unpublishable. This is a rare case in which we are all beneficiaries of American racial hypocrisy. That he works in the special bubble of permissiveness extended by the liberal establishment to some conservatives who are black (in exchange for their being regarded as inauthentic, self-loathing, soulless race traitors) must be maddening to Sowell, even more so than it is for other notable black conservatives. It is plain that the core of his identity, his heart of hearts, is not that of a man who is black. It is that of a man who knows a whole lot more about things than you do and is intent on setting you straight, at length if necessary, if you’d only listen.”
That sounds pretty impressive! I’m impressed at least. Let’s take a look at some of the awards he’s won:
In 1990, Sowell won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the independent American Enterprise Institute. In 1998 he received the Sydney Hook Award from the National Association of Scholars. In 2002, Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. In 2003, he was awarded the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement. In 2004 he was given a Lysander Spooner Award for his book Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. In 2008, getAbstract awarded his book Economic Facts and Fallacies with its International Book Award.
I don’t know what those are but I haven’t won any of them. Cool! Hey, let’s watch a video of him to wrap this up.
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