The Hoover Institution’s Thomas Sowell has written another book — bringing the total to more than 40. Even more remarkable is that he finished writing his latest book — Social Justice Fallacies — at the age of 93. He recently appeared on Uncommon Knowledge, hosted by Peter Robinson, to discuss the book, which, befitting its title, undermines the claims of the social justice warriors and bureaucrats who promote and wield the coercive powers of the state to attempt to bring about absolute equality.

Thomas Sowell has spent decades revealing liberal and progressive fallacies in various areas of public policy in books such as Ethnic America (1980), The Economics and Politics of Race (1983), A Conflict of Visions (1987), Preferential Policies (1990), Race and Culture (1994), The Vision of the Anointed (1995), Migrations and Cultures (1996), Conquests and Cultures (1998), The Quest for Cosmic Justice (1999), Economic Facts and Fallacies (2008), Wealth, Poverty and Politics (2015), and Discrimination and Disparities (2018). (READ MORE: Harvard’s Stupidly Obvious Affirmative-Action Fix)

In all of his books, Sowell relies on data, facts, and experience, not abstract theories, to explain unequal outcomes among groups and individuals — even in the same family and even under identical environmental conditions. Sowell notes in Social Justice Fallacies that “Even in a society with equal opportunity people from different backgrounds do not necessarily even want to do the same things.” But that doesn’t stop social justice warriors from trying to compel human behavior to conform to their abstract theories. And quite often, Sowell says, the government’s “solutions” end up making things worse for the very people they are intended to help.

Take, for example, the liberal or progressive approach to racial disparities. Sowell notes that while the Civil Rights laws of the 1960s provided African Americans with equality under the law (and Sowell delights in pointing out that a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats voted for those laws), the Great Society programs that were designed in part to help African-American families actually helped to undermine those families. Here, the data does not lie. Sowell notes that in 1940 — long before the Great Society welfare programs were created — only 17 percent of African-American children grew up in single-parent households, whereas after those programs were instituted, eventually 68 percent of African-American children were raised by a single parent. “Fatherlessness,” Sowell says, “has a bigger effect than race and poverty” on the well-being of black children and black neighborhoods. In fact, Sowell argues, government programs upended a century of economic and social progress among blacks. (READ MORE: Affirmative Action Never Stood a Chance Against Clarence Thomas)

Racism, Sowell says, does not cause poverty. “White supremacy” does not cause black families not to form or to break apart. Black families were relatively intact prior to the 1960s. Today, black families in which both parents are present are successful economically and socially. Racism in America was greater in the 1950s than it is now, yet the black family is, in general, far worse off now than it was in the 1950s. 

The experience of the last 60 years, however, has had little effect on the approach of the social justice warriors who promote defunding police while black neighborhoods in large cities suffer from gang violence, who throw more money at the public schools, which in many instances are “lousy”; who fight against charter schools that do a far better job than the public schools of educating low-income black children; and who continue to tell blacks that they are victims of racism and white supremacists and are entitled to reparations for past injustices.

Peter Robinson began the program with a famous clip from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Sowell, in Social Justice Fallacies, writes: “Dr. King’s message was equal opportunity for individuals, regardless of race. In the years that followed, the goal changed to equal outcomes for groups. What now rose to dominance was the social justice agenda.” In an earlier book, Sowell wrote that the social justice agenda produces “grievance-driven attitudes, emotions and actions” that seldom result in justice for anyone. (READ MORE: Freedom Conservatives: A Stand Against Progressivism and Populism)

Thomas Sowell has spent years and thousands of words fighting against the social justice agenda because facts and experience matter to him. At age 93, he remains steadfast in his commitment to the truth, and his intellectual brilliance continues to shine. We are fortunate that he continues to speak truth to power.