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Thomas Sowell on Why Some Cultures and Racial Groups Succeed Race and Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 331 pages. $25.00)
REVIEWED BY RICHARD A. GOLDSBY
Thomas Sowell is one of the conservative movement's most lucid spokesmen. Many of his books and articles offer carefully crafted and fluent arguments for social laissez faire that have come to be his ideological trademark. Sowell seems most at home when taking aim at schemes and social manipulations that are intended to assure more equitable distribution of wealth and opportunity to groups perceived as disadvantaged. The energy, creativity, and tenacity with which he has sought to undermine the foundations of affirmative action have earned him a place in the intellectual pantheon of the contemporary American right. Not an easy feat for anyone, and a remarkable one for a black man. Put it on par with squaring the circle.
In his new book Race and Culture: A World View, Sowell examines the influence of culture in determining the wealth, political fortunes, and historical place of ethnic groups. The possibility that culture is an important determinant of intelligence is entertained with warmth and enthusiasm. In gathering material for his arguments, he ranges widely, harvesting examples across a broad sweep of geography, using a mixture of contemporary and historic examples. The author calls upon a background of extensive travel and a reading list that would be daunting even for a graduate of St. Johns.
Be aware that this is much more a book about culture and ethnicity than about culture and race. In view of the author's promise in the preface to use a loose rather than a biological definition of race, this is certainly a good thing. Whenever one strays from a strict statistical and genetic definition of race, i.e., as a breeding population with characteristic frequency (or frequency range) of particular genes, things get muddy. I suspect the title was chosen more to provoke than to inform the prospective reader of the true focus of this lively and thoughtful book. On the other...