How do you feel about this video from Thomas Sowell? Honest
- Thread starter KidJSoul
- Start date
He's wrong for a variety of issues in this - he shows a profound lack of understanding of the changing economic conditions within the United States (embarrassing considering he's an economist), the shift in urban political design and zoning, the barrier to entry regarding the opening up of physical stores, and the reasoning behind the rioting that was claimed as the end to easily-accessible stores.
Harlem was indeed bereft of quality stores at the time, people in Harlem during Sowell's childhood (the majority of whom were Black and white migrants) both grew and cultivated their own food to handle dry seasons in the stores, and received a steady shipment of produce and other necessary products from family members, friends, and neighbors - a good amount of which came from out of the area.
Food at the time was marked up in Black communities and Black neighborhoods (the same was true of rent, even in substandard conditions, Robin DG Kelley, Manning Marable, Keeanga Yahmatta Taylor, and Isabel Wilkerson all note this in their books, Hammer & Hoe, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Race for Profit, and The Warmth of Other Suns, respectively), but local production and smaller stores were a national thing - both in white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods - not *just* a product of segregation, but a product of the local mode of production and supply chains.
There's a reason he jumps from anecdotes to data, because his conclusions tend to be baseless.
Riots did not lead to white flight, but were in fact explicitly a product of white flight - the subjugation and exploitation that was openly visible and was happening as suburban sprawl commenced - was what led to these uprisings. "Race riots" having been a regular occurrence in the U.S. since the end of slavery (and largely before that, W.E.B. Du Bois notes it a few times in Black Reconstruction, but these anti-Black pogroms against free Blacks were not new). The poorest and most exploited areas were often in close proximity to working-class white neighborhoods, and the poverty simply continued after the end of the era - not as a product of uprisings during that era but instead due to wealth reproduction and the continued austerity and wealth extractive policies of a given local, state, and federal administration.
He also ignores the mass proliferation of Black businesses that came about throughout the 20th century, even as financial institutions either explicitly tried to undermine them, or lent to them at absurdly higher interest rates; the difficulty in maintaining stores in poorer neighborhoods due to issues of credit and access, as well as the clear problem of racial and economic segregation making a lower-income population the default customer base.
All to say: Sowell is an ahistorical clown who has no idea what he's talking about.
Harlem was indeed bereft of quality stores at the time, people in Harlem during Sowell's childhood (the majority of whom were Black and white migrants) both grew and cultivated their own food to handle dry seasons in the stores, and received a steady shipment of produce and other necessary products from family members, friends, and neighbors - a good amount of which came from out of the area.
Food at the time was marked up in Black communities and Black neighborhoods (the same was true of rent, even in substandard conditions, Robin DG Kelley, Manning Marable, Keeanga Yahmatta Taylor, and Isabel Wilkerson all note this in their books, Hammer & Hoe, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Race for Profit, and The Warmth of Other Suns, respectively), but local production and smaller stores were a national thing - both in white neighborhoods and black neighborhoods - not *just* a product of segregation, but a product of the local mode of production and supply chains.
There's a reason he jumps from anecdotes to data, because his conclusions tend to be baseless.
Riots did not lead to white flight, but were in fact explicitly a product of white flight - the subjugation and exploitation that was openly visible and was happening as suburban sprawl commenced - was what led to these uprisings. "Race riots" having been a regular occurrence in the U.S. since the end of slavery (and largely before that, W.E.B. Du Bois notes it a few times in Black Reconstruction, but these anti-Black pogroms against free Blacks were not new). The poorest and most exploited areas were often in close proximity to working-class white neighborhoods, and the poverty simply continued after the end of the era - not as a product of uprisings during that era but instead due to wealth reproduction and the continued austerity and wealth extractive policies of a given local, state, and federal administration.
He also ignores the mass proliferation of Black businesses that came about throughout the 20th century, even as financial institutions either explicitly tried to undermine them, or lent to them at absurdly higher interest rates; the difficulty in maintaining stores in poorer neighborhoods due to issues of credit and access, as well as the clear problem of racial and economic segregation making a lower-income population the default customer base.
All to say: Sowell is an ahistorical clown who has no idea what he's talking about.
saturn7
Politics is an EXCHANGE!!!
Sowell said there were plenty of markets, pharmacies and dentists in Harlem when he was growing up in the 40's. Who (which race of people) owned these businesses?
LOL, of course he has to throw those "victim mentality" and "entrepreneurial Asians" jabs in there.
LOL, of course he has to throw those "victim mentality" and "entrepreneurial Asians" jabs in there.
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This.
He doesn't seem to have the general understanding that the 1940s had more small businesses in general - nationwide. But that doesn't mean all of those small businesses were generating significant wealth, or that the small business employees were even being paid equitable wages. It was before the complete conglomeration of every business in America.
And they were white, largely immigrant-owned businesses at that. Wild how he just dodges data when it would prove him wrong.
saturn7
Politics is an EXCHANGE!!!
That's another great point.
I know I have to study more Sowell as many Right Wingers use his work to bolster their arguments.
I'm struggling to get through a chapter in one of his books where he says there was nothing unique about U.S. chattel slavery. Using that bs "the word slaves comes from the Slavs, the Slavs were the first slaves,..."
SleezyBigSlim
Banned
He blames the riots in the 60's for the reason the hood is still a food desert is bs. Blatant racism in the form of redlining is why that is and it continues to happen.