Alan Wolfe thinks Thomas Sowell is no fun, a humorless, repetitive bore. To see why, and presumably to see an example of how Sowell would write if he were a more interesting writer, read Wolfe’s clever, oh so clever, review in the New Republic.
Alan Wolfe is an old friend, or at least acquaintance (we both were related to The Nation years ago, in former lives), though we haven’t stayed in touch. He’s smart, he does write well, and I find his work well worth reading even when (which is most of the time) I don’t agree with him. I have no interest in defending Sowell from his scorn — as the author of 46 books, Sowell can defend himself if he chooses — but I would like to pull out one of his many criticisms to discuss.
Wolfe confesses that he has not read all forty-six of Sowell’s books, but he has
read enough of them to know that Sowell is not one for changing his mind. Although he claims to have been a Marxist in his youth, his published writings never vary: the same themes — the market works, affirmative action does not work, Marxism is wrong, and, yes, intellectuals are never to be trusted—dominate from start to finish….
I haven’t read all of Sowell’s books either, but I have read most of his extensive criticisms of affirmative action, and it would never have occurred to me to say that that criticism is based on the view that it “doesn’t work.” Maybe I’m simply projecting my own views onto Sowell, or ignoring the thrust of his work by assuming that his criticism of affirmative action shares the assumptions of other critics. If so, correct me by pointing to what I’ve missed. But since I don’t think I’ve ever read any serious criticism of affirmative action by anyone that is grounded in a belief that it “doesn’t work,” I will be surprised if that curious notion — what does “work” mean? “work” for whom? how? — has much to do with Sowell’s argument.
Perhaps Wolfe phrases his barb in this manner because he himself is a thoroughgoing pragmatist. In any event he makes it clear that he himself changed his own mind on the subject because affirmative action “works” … for him.
I am not in the conversion business, but I have changed my mind more than a few times in the forty or so years that I have been putting my views before the public. Reality can do that to you. You might think, for example, as I once did, that affirmative action is highly suspect because it gives more weight to group membership than individual achievement. But if you teach at a university and see your classes enriched by the diversity that affirmative action brings to them, and if you then hear remarkable stories of the individual achievements made possible through the magic of the college admissions process, you may begin to change your mind.
The insinuation here that anyone in touch with “reality” will support affirmative action is disappointing coming from Wolfe. Although that belief is a common conceit among liberals, Wolfe is usually better, and less snarky, than that. I have no doubt that Wolfe’s classes are good, or even that they benefitted from the presence of minorities many of whom presumably would not have been there but for the discrimination against some Asians and whites that made their admission possible. (If that presumption is not accurate, then affirmative action is not relevant to the goodness of Wolfe’s classes.)
I do have doubts about the value of affirmative action-produced “diversity” to a whole host of other classes at Boston College, where Wolfe teaches. But even if “diversity works,” I don’t believe that justifies the racial discrimination on which it is based.
