The latest National Review devotes a full three pages to a profile of economist Thomas Sowell, the Gastonia native whose perceptive analysis has generated so many fans within this forum.
Among the more interesting segments of Jay Nordlinger’s article:
In the course of our conversation, Sowell and I talk about one of his pet peeves: the notion that people ought to be evenly distributed across institutions and occupations. Evenly distributed by race and ethnicity, that is. And if they are not, someone has been done wrong, somehow. Sowell says that, if you take a look around the world, “people aren’t evenly distributed anywhere, in anything. Gross disproportions are the norm, whether or not there is any discrimination going on.” He talks about Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Chinese in Malaysia. He also cites an example closer to home: “I watch a lot of football. Over the years, I’ve seen hundreds of blacks score a touchdown. I have never seen a black player kick an extra point.” And he has a coda: “Imagine if there were different organizations supplying running backs and extra-point kickers. The ones supplying the extra-point kickers would have the EEOC all over them.”
