African American Economist Thomas SowellThomas Sowell: Free Market Fights DiscriminationThomas Sowell: Free Market Fights Discrimination It's axiomatic: Discrimination accounts for racial inequality in our society, and government action is needed to fix this injustice. Not so fast, says economist Thomas Sowell. There are many causes of inequality, and discrimination often explains less than we think it does. Furthermore, discrimination is most powerful when it's state policy, because government can force someone else to pay the price of discrimination. In the free market, businesses are "out to make a buck," and there's a heavy price from discriminating against potential customers and employees based on race. In part two of a wide-ranging interview with IBD, Sowell explains intellectuals' many misconceptions about race, discrimination and inequality. IBD: In one of your first books, "Black Education: Myths and Tragedies," you said self-sufficient, intellectually oriented, hardworking black students were a threat to the preconceptions held by white faculty members who feel guilty about discrimination. Do you think such students — or even such black people, more generally — are a threat to the preconceptions of intellectuals? Sowell: Yes. And they are a tremendous threat to the more militant blacks on campus who make a determined effort to keep them out. I mentioned in that book a young woman who did very well on the SATs whose mother was a maid and father an alcoholic, and the university admissions committee tried to keep her out. The self-interest of the academic black establishment I think is very clear in that black people like that student make it harder for them to mobilize recruits to their causes. Also, people like that don't minister to the need of white liberals to feel like they're doing something to get rid of their guilt. IBD: Do you think that was part of the motivation behind the attacks on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas when he was nominated? Sowell: Perhaps. But I'm also reminded of another situation that occurred at Harvard (involving) a black student who had come from a poor educational background. He had made a special effort to raise his educational level and wanted to attend a special summer program at Harvard for people who were going on to medical school. He received a form letter saying that he didn't need to be in this program because he had done so well. I then wrote to the head of the program that sent that letter saying, "You need to get the best people you can into the Harvard Medical School. If this guy needs some more help, for goodness' sake give him some more."
  
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