| | Thomas Sowell has created a 4 part series of columns on Race and Politics that are jewels - each one is short, but glittering with intelligence.
The articles synthesize the effects of broad movements of peoples across geography and the course of history to show the how the resulting clashes of culture created differences alleged as racial. Dr. Sowell highlights, then destroys the the popular arguments used by 'race hustlers' through the centuries (it's in the genes, it's in the environment, it's the sins of the majority) and goes on to demolish multiculturalism.
A summary of race and politics of this quality could only have been done by Sowell, having written half a dozen books on the subject over the last few decades.
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From Part I: "Political demagoguery and political favoritism have turned groups violently against each other, even in countries where they have lived peacefully side by side for generations. Ceylon was one of those countries in the first half of the 20th century, before the politics of group favoritism so polarized the country-- now called Sri Lanka-- that it produced a decades-long civil war with mass slaughters and unspeakable atrocities."
From Part II: "No dogma has caused more mischief-- and, in some countries, tragedies-- than the notion that there is something strange and wrong when some groups are 'over-represented' or 'under-represented' in some occupations or institutions."
From Part III: "The blatant and undeniable fact that different racial, ethnic and other groups have had radically different economic and intellectual achievements for centuries, in countries around the world, has led to widely varying theories and widely varying political and other reactions."
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"Those who see differences among groups as being due to environment, rather than heredity, too often think of environment as the current immediate surroundings. But a major part of any group's environment is the culture that they have inherited from the past."
"One of a number of factors that has made Western Europeans more prosperous than Eastern Europeans is that Western Europe was conquered by the Romans, so that Western European languages acquired Roman letters, centuries before the languages of Eastern Europe had written versions."
From Part IV: "One of the most ominous developments of our time has been the multicultural dogma that all cultures are equal. It is one of the many unsubstantiated assertions that have become fashionable among self-congratulatory elites, with hard evidence being neither asked for nor offered."
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Few combinations are more poisonous than race and politics. That combination has torn whole nations apart and led to the slaughters of millions in countries around the world.
