"For Sowell, therefore, you must take cues from history. If you cannot find a historical precedent, then stop looking for that kind of a world."
The west's fervent and uncritical support of Israel
even when Israel commits a genocide makes me think about human equality.
Is equality a mirage?
Given the persecution of the Jewish people in
Europe in the last 2000 years, I feel saddened by the fact that those who know
what means to be hated and persecuted by simply being who they are, now premise
peace and co-existence on bombs.
I teach young people. I do research on young people.
In these activities, my aim is to work toward a better world, a world in which
everyone would feel respected, a world in which what fails you is your
inability.
That is the world I want to leave behind for my
children and the youth I teach. This world is yet to be realized.
But there are conservative thinkers like Thomas
Sowell (see: Social Justice Fallacies, Intellectuals and Society,
Intellectuals and Race), John McWhorter (Woke Racism) and Coleman
Hughes (End of Race Politics) who think differently.
They either say such a world is already here, or
they believe it is an impossible world. A utopia of Saint Thomas More variety. Meaning a
search for a just and equal world is fantastical, a childish wish. They want us
to live according to what the world throws at us. In other words, we must live
in the real world and accept things as they are.
Violence. Military brutality. Military invasion.
Genocides. Murders of civilians. Wars. Economic equality.
Within this framework, Israel is said to be adapting
to a world it cannot change. Israeli genocidal destruction of Gaza is, by this
account, a response to a real world Israel did not create.
This is a world in which equality is a pipe dream.
For instance, equality is a natural impossibility
for Thomas Sowell. We shouldn't dream of a world that is not and has
never been. Pssst: Sowell uses history to make his point. He makes this
point in Black Rednecks and White Liberals and Conquest and Culture.
For Sowell, therefore, you must take cues from
history. If you cannot find a historical precedent, then stop looking for that
kind of a world.
As such, for the Sowells, the Hughes, and the
McWhorters of the world, racism is, largely, a passé.
To be realistic, they are right or wrong
based on one's ideological camp. You will find their supporters and haters in
boat loads. Sowell puts this well in Intellectuals and Society:
“The
coincidence of real world challenge and intellectual challenge, which [H. G] Wells
and others have tended to treat as almost axiomatic, depends on the initial
assumptions of one’s social vision.”
To
Sowell, the left forces their vision (as the anointed – McWhorter would call
them “The Elect” and Hughes would call them “Neo-racist”) on the rest of us. Conservative
intellectuals, according to Sowells, remain faithful to the facts of the real
world.
But here is where they seem naive. They think their
assessments are simply objective. That they write about facts, common
sense, and the real world.
Here is Sowell again:
