I attended a basketball coaches clinic last weekend at the Columbus Convention Center. As I was walking down a long hallway toward the clinic, I noticed people carrying orange bags and wearing badges attached to orange lanyards around their neck. These people were attending a Materials Science and Engineering Technology conference that was being held in another hall at the convention center. Being curious, I stopped where these people were registering and found out this conference “brought together scientists, engineers, students, suppliers and more to discuss current research and technical applications, and to shape the future of materials science and engineering technology”.
As I stood there I noticed the people who were attending this conference were different from the people attending the basketball clinic. I walked over to a black gentlemen who worked for the convention center checking badges as people were entering the hall, and started talking to him. He said, “you’re here for the basketball clinic”. He laughed when I said, “how could you tell”? I asked him, “if I went over and stood in the middle of the people registering for the tech conference, would you be able to pick out the one person who didn’t belong”? He started laughing. I said, “90% of the people are Asian aren’t they”? He said, “yeah, and the rest are from India”. I said, “I bet I won’t see one Asian person at the basketball clinic”.
A coach I went to the clinic with came by and as we walked down the hall to our clinic I told him about the Materials Science and Engineering Technologies conference that was going on at the same time as our clinic. I said, “I want one of those orange bags so people will think I am with the other conference”. He said, “people would probably be wondering who you stole that orange bag from”.
As I read Thomas Sowell’s recent articles ‘Charlatans And Sheep’ (link to articles, and excerpts below), the differences I observed between the people attending the tech conference and the basketball clinic came to mind. I’ve read many of the books about race and culture that Dr. Sowell has written over the years, and here are a few things I’ve learned. 1) Certain races and cultures are better at certain things than other races and cultures. 2) These differences should not be a shock to anyone because group differences have existed through out history. 3) Politicians will exploit peoples ignorance about group differences, and blame one group for preventing the other group from excelling in that particular field.
Reading Thomas Sowell’s books on Race and Culture (click here) gives a person a base of knowledge for understanding why these differences exist. It also allows you to see how politicians, the media, and courts show their ignorance about this subject, and use others ignorance to gain power.
THOMAS SOWELL – CULTURE MATTERS
Here are some excerpts from Dr. Sowell’s three articles titled, Charlatans and Sheep (click here), Charlatans and Sheep Part II (click here), and Charlatans and Sheep Part III (click here).
“Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes.”
“This preconception of equal outcomes requires not one speck of evidence, and defies mountains of evidence to the contrary. Even in activities where individual performances are what determine outcomes, and those performances are easily measured objectively, there is seldom anything resembling equal representation.”
“For 12 consecutive years — from 2001 through 2012 — each home run leader in the American League had a Hispanic surname. When two American boys whose ancestors came from India tied for first place in the U.S. National Spelling Bee in 2014, it was the 7th consecutive year in which the U.S. National Spelling Bee was won by an Asian Indian.”
“We all know about the large over-representation of blacks among professional basketball players, and especially among the star players. The best-selling brands of beer in America were created by people of German ancestry, who also created China’s famed Tsingtao beer. Of the 100 top-ranked Marathon runners in the world in 2012, 68 were Kenyans. The list could go on and on. Although blacks are over-represented among professional football players, even the most avid National Football League fan is unlikely to be able to recall seeing even one black player who kicked a punt or a point after touchdown.”
“Among the many reasons for gross disparities in many fields, and at different income levels, is that human beings differ in what they want to do, quite aside from any differences in what they are capable of doing, or what others permit them to do. Observers cannot just grab a statistic and run with it, though that is what they do….”
“….. we constantly hear charlatans loudly proclaiming numerical “gender gaps” in employment or pay, and suing for discrimination.
“One of the secrets of successful magicians on stage is directing the audience’s attention to something that is attractive or distracting, but irrelevant to what is actually being done. That is also the secret of successful political charlatans.”
“Charlatans are only half the story. The other half includes people who are gullible enough to be led around like sheep by those exploiting the prevailing political correctness dispensed in our schools, colleges and the media……..So long as there is widespread gullibility, there will be charlatans ready to exploit it for their own benefit, either politically or financially.”
Related Article – Thomas Sowell: The Economics And Politics Of Race, at austrianaddict.com.
Related Article – Thomas Sowell: Human Capital More Important Than Physical Capital, at austrianaddict.com.
AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT 