What is is with brothers named Thomas? I mean there must be some type of divine crystal ball at work here. Trust me, the irony isn’t lost on me that both Clarence Thomas, and Thomas Sowell, are….how do I say this; firmly in the Tom camp. These two brothers are embraced by the conservative movement, which doesn’t automatically qualify them as Toms. But then I stumble across some of the writings by Sowell-who is clearly regarded as the more intellectual of the two-I really have to wonder. Honestly, Mr. Sowell, have you lost your mind? I mean did you really say this in Capitalism Magazine? “Minimum wages in South Africa have been set higher than the productivity of many workers, so employers have no incentive to hire those workers…”
Sir, I know you are a die in the wool capitalist, but I think the poor workers in South Africa have the right to a living wage and an income to take care of their basic every day needs. Your type of thinking is what allowed the British to pay their colonies little or nothing for sugar cane, banana, and bauxite, thus creating poor Third World countries throughout the West Indies.
For you to suggest that you can minimize the productivity of these hard working people merely by giving them lower wages is absurd. If the capitalist in South Africa want to do the right thing, they will take a small hit on their bottom line for the greater good of the country. The last time I checked the crime rate in South Africa was spiralling out of control. Unfortunately, this is what happens when families are not given a decent wage for a days work. They turn to stealing and other nefarious activities to make a quick buck.
You try to suggest that the high minimum wage is why unemployment is so high in that country. That’s hog wash and you know it. I submit to you that the unemployment is high because the minimum wage isn’t high enough. Your supply side hog- wash may fly here in the good old United States, where we have a very strong middle class and jobs galore. But I guarantee you Thomas, it will never fly in a country as poor as South Africa. Too much poverty, and years of oppression under a racist regime. You do remember that don’t you? It was called Apartheid, and it was meant to keep people that looked like you from achieving economic or political power. How is that for irony? What a wonderful world we live in huh Thomas. Just be thankful you were born in the house Thomas, and not the mean fields of Soweto.
If it ws not for minimum wage laws employers would pay lesser wages. They would hire those who would work for the cheapest wage. Also, Thomas Sowell dropped out of high school and he went to the military, and when he got out he took advantage of a government program that allowed him to go to college.
He was a dro out like many young black men he criticize as high school drop out because they remind him of being a drop out failure. Clarence Thomas got into yal on Affirmative action he is ashamed of this too, and tries to cut affirmative action in college admissions out because it reminds him that he needed help to get into the university. He could not have gotten into yale on his own he feels like a failure so he tries to stop others from gaining access to colleges on Affirmative action.
“These two brothers are embraced by the conservative movement, which doesn’t automatically qualify them as Toms.”
It doesn’t? Care to share some examples of those kissed by the right but who aren’t Toms?
I cant stand Sowell he is a clown. But I dont know if his and Clarence Thomas Tomming has anything to do with them bieng named thomas others how do you explain Ward ” Coonerly”.
‘“These two brothers are embraced by the conservative movement, which doesn’t automatically qualify them as Toms.”
It doesn’t? Care to share some examples of those kissed by the right but who aren’t Toms?”
OK Johnston, I will try…….ahhhhh….still thinking…..well, I really don’t consider Shelby Steele a “Tom”, and …… Condi isn’t really a “Tom” is she? ……. mmmm……. I tell you what; let me get back to you when I think of some more people
Mark, I know that it’s just by chance that these two have Thomas in their names, but you must admit, that the irony is rich?
What makes Sowell a tom is his constant denial as to the causes of failure within the black community. By Sowell’s logic, every problem facing black america is self induced. While I don’t doubt that many of the problem blacks face can be self corrected, his inability, or refusal to acknowledge any external factors is nonsense!
It would be one thing if Sowell was working on the mean streets of Newark, Philly, or Chicago showing black folk how to “lift themselves up by their boot-straps” and looking for solutions. But dropping bricks down on your own people from the safety of your crow’s nest is not only Tommism, but cowardly.
I loathe Thomas Sowell with a passion. Unfortunately, I have family members who are very stubborn and won’t listen to me about him, but if I had my way, any paper in which his articles appear isn’t a paper that I’d have a subscription to. He constantly goes out of his way to pick on and put down black people to the exclusion of everything and everyone else. This is in addition to his parroting virtually everything that the Bush administration says (when I bother myself with reading him), no matter how nonsensical and inhumane it might be.
An example would be an article of his that I read a while back where he castigates black people for ‘unprofessional’ names as an obscurantist attack on the study that said that people with ‘black’ sounding names were less likely to get hired. The last time I took any coursework, most of my instructors were Indian or Arabs-and I seriously doubt that any of THEM had trouble getting hired with their names in their field, and I’m sure there was a time when their names were new in the distant past. So why pick on black people exclusively?
Of course, we all know the answer to that-because he’s paid to do so, and he’s paid well to write books excoriating ‘black rednecks’, while letting white rednecks that have constantly had their feet on our necks for hundreds of years off the hook.
I doubt they’d show him any mercy when it came down to it. What a fool.
Of course in this piece, Sowell appears to place the “blame” (if any is to be placed) squarely at the feet of white folks disaffectionately known as “rednecks” and “crackers.” In this instance (rare for Sowell), he appears to take the line of Marcus Garvey and Elijah Muhammad arguing that proximity to (among other things) ignant-ass white folk was the root cause of our cultural misorientation away from roots and culture.
Thomas the Elder writes:
“The culture of the people who were called “rednecks” and “crackers” before they ever got on the boats to cross the Atlantic was a culture that produced far lower levels of intellectual and economic achievement, as well as far higher levels of violence and sexual promiscuity. That culture had its own way of talking, not only in the pronunciation of particular words but also in a loud, dramatic style of oratory with vivid imagery, repetitive phrases and repetitive cadences.
Although that style originated on the other side of the Atlantic in centuries past, it became for generations the style of both religious oratory and political oratory among Southern whites and among Southern blacks–not only in the South but in the Northern ghettos in which Southern blacks settled. It was a style used by Southern white politicians in the era of Jim Crow and later by black civil rights leaders fighting Jim Crow. Martin Luther King’s famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 was a classic example of that style.
While a third of the white population of the U.S. lived within the redneck culture, more than 90% of the black population did. Although that culture eroded away over the generations, it did so at different rates in different places and among different people. It eroded away much faster in Britain than in the U.S. and somewhat faster among Southern whites than among Southern blacks, who had fewer opportunities for education or for the rewards that came with escape from that counterproductive culture.
Nevertheless the process took a long time. As late as the First World War, white soldiers from Georgia, Arkansas, Kentucky and Mississippi scored lower on mental tests than black soldiers from Ohio, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania. Again, neither race nor racism can explain that–and neither can slavery.
The redneck culture proved to be a major handicap for both whites and blacks who absorbed it. Today, the last remnants of that culture can still be found in the worst of the black ghettos, whether in the North or the South, for the ghettos of the North were settled by blacks from the South. The counterproductive and self-destructive culture of black rednecks in today’s ghettos is regarded by many as the only “authentic” black culture–and, for that reason, something not to be tampered with. Their talk, their attitudes, and their behavior are regarded as sacrosanct.
The people who take this view may think of themselves as friends of blacks. But they are the kinds of friends who can do more harm than enemies.”