Thomas Sowell ranks among the more notable of 2016's casualties. What I remember most about Sowell was his willingness to investigate alternative causal factors for differences in family incomes (ages, cultures, education types, education levels, work preferences, number of working adults) at a time when most establishment thinkers fanatically and erroneously chanted sexism and racism. If anything, the situation is worse now. Establishment thinkers still won't face facts, acting as if their rage and belief in a thing makes the thing true. Groupthink and epistemic cowardice keep escalating.
(Sowell developed a devoted following. At a university I briefly attended, someone went to the trouble of stuffing photocopies of Sowell's articles into thousands of library books.)
Inside American Education was probably Sowell's greatest book, a work even William Raspberry praised.
Unfortunately, Sowell largely ignored genetic factors. Even as Sowell railed against those he slurred as "intelligentsia," Sowell was blinded by his own neoliberalism and cultural Marxism.
Almost all forms of assimilationism are and were variants of cultural Marxism, including Sowell's.
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