Race And Culture: A World View

by Thomas Sowell

Overview

Encompassing more than a decade of research around the globe, this book shows that cultural capital has far more impact than politics, prejudice, or genetics on the social and economic fates of minorities, nations, and civilization.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541605787
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	948 KB

About the Author

Thomas Sowell has taught economics at a number of colleges and universities, including Cornell, University of California Los Angeles, and Amherst. He has published both scholarly and popular articles and books on economics, and is currently a scholar in residence at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

Editorial Reviews

Sowell, a bete noire of liberalism, here continues his high-octane flights against causal connections casually made between race and achievement. His dozen-plus titles tend to deal with specific aspects of racism ("Preferential Policies", 1990), but here the whole world's his stage, and he plays his part as scholarly scolder of shibboleths and sloppy thinking. Unlike the ideologically minded, Sowell ventures no certain theory as to why, for example, certain groups have predominated as middlemen in retail trade, such as the Chinese in Malaya, Jews and then Koreans in America, or Indians in East Africa. Rather, he explains things by how a group's cultural values are manifested in economic terms; he looks at trade-off factors, such as a willingness to sacrifice for the future. From his empirical stance, Sowell dissects how slavery, and not just of Africans, was eradicated; the connection, if any, between race and intelligence; and the workings of conquests and immigration. Though far from a breezy read, this footnote-studded study is a welcome contribution to sober thinking about race. Sowell reminds us that appreciating a group's special and changing stock of "cultural capital" does not constitute prejudice.

Gilbert Taylor