2016 June 30^th

Dr. Thomas Sowell’s column today is titled “SCOTUS fraud goes on.” This means the Thomas Sowell doesn’t agree with some of the recent Supreme Court decisions. Sowell was trained many, many years ago at the University of Chicago as an economist. Nowhere in his c.v. is there the least hint of any training in constitutional law. Lack of knowing what you are talking about has not stopped his party’s standard bearer from talking about whatever he pleases, nor will it stop Sowell from pontificating on any issue. It seems that for these folks feeling strongly about a situation is enough to overcome total ignorance.

When I saw this headline I was sure Sowell was unhappy about the court’s 5 to 3 decision on the restrictive rules Texas had put on abortion clinics. The court decided that these rules were unconstitutional because they did nothing to protect the health of an abortion seeker. This ruling delighted Planned Parenthood president, Cecile Richards (the daughter of former Texas governor Ann Richards). That wasn’t Sowell’s problem at all.

Sowell has been consumed with anger for years over any and all legal support for affirmative action. The ruling that has him livid about this SCOTUS decision was one in which the University of Texas was allowed to give admission preference to minority students even though that resulted in the exclusion of an academically qualified white girl.  The university argued that there were sound educational reasons to provide their students with a diverse student body. Here is part of the University’s statement on the issue:

 “Proposal to Consider Race and Ethnicity in Admissions,” the University identifies the educational values it seeks to realize through its admissions process: the destruction of stereotypes, the “‘promot[ion of] cross-racial understanding,’” the preparation of a student body “‘for an increasingly diverse workforce and society,’” and the “‘cultivat[ion of] a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry.”

What does Sowell have to say about these aims? He never mentions them. He tells us that the SCOTUS “…affirmative action cases have now had 42 years of evasion, sophistry and fraud with no end in sight.” He obviously isn’t happy with SCOTUS!

Later, his bluster yields to some data: He writes that, “When black students who scored at the 90^th percentile in math were admitted to MIT where other students scored at the 99^th percentile a significant number of black students failed to graduate there, even though they could have graduated with honors at most other academic institutions.”

That is simply nonsense. Sowell could have discovered that if he had bothered to look at the statistics for this freshman class at MIT. The data are online. About 45 percent of MIT’s freshman class scored below the top 1 percent on the quantitative SAT. So he begins with inaccurate data and then draws conclusions that make no sense. We have minority students introduced to an elite college. They have certainly not come in the same proportion as their classmates from elite high schools and private prep schools. They are suddenly in a very different environment and Sowell believes that if they now fail to achieve it is because of a small difference in the average of their entrance exam scores?

Sowell decided long ago that minority students are poorly served by affirmative action. Everything he sees must support that position.