Thomas Sowell - DU Opinions?

[chenGOD]

Is he an "uncle tom" or is he just a misguided conservative?

[WritingIsMyReligion]

1. Never heard of him.

Give me the scoop, someone?

[swag]

2. I don't think every black conservative is an "Uncle Tom"

but he is a free market fetishist with a very casual approach to the truth.

[chenGOD]

4. a casual approach to the truth... I like that...

I don't really like the term "uncle tom" as i think it's very insulting, but it was the first word that came to mind to describe the extreme.

I don't really know enough about him to label him, but general googling seems to indicate that he is pretty (neo)conservative.

[nvliberal]

5. Sowell

is just another right-wing hack
Who is a novelty because he is black.

[Voltaire]

3. Both

Been familiar with this guy for over 25 years and he has never changed. And never will. For the life of me, as a black man, I will never understand a black conservative. Never never never. Dopes.

[chenGOD]

7. So I have a couple of questions for you..

As a white Canadian, I can't ever really pretend to understand what black people in America go through.
To me he comes across as really disingenuous, he takes only the facts that confirm the reality he chooses to write about.

So anyways, do you think Sowell has any legitimacy to talk about the average black person's experience in America?


My second question for you is way off-topic, but it's something that I have to ask...
I had a discussion with a friend (who is also a white canadian) about the "n---er" word. He said that when black people use it amongst themselves, they are reclaiming it as a word of power and freeing it from it's racist meaning. I say that they can't reclaim it, as the word has had a racist meaning ever since it originated. What do you think?

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Such words do become loaded with the petty hatred

of the users, and, personally, I strongly suspect that, by using such names freely and often, themselves, the group that they are applied, do in some way contribute to weakening their effect.

It's an old trick, really, a sign of the contempt of the addressee for the aggressor and his opinions. The Allied Eighth Army in North Africa were originally dubbed as "desert rats", so they began to call themselves by the same title (first letters capitalised of course!). I think "The Old Contemptibles" was another from WWI.

They may not be exact parallels, but there's something of that spirit in them, I suspect when African Americans use that expression. But it is a term that is so replete with hatred, I believe just by African Americans saying it aloud freely in jest among themselves would have something of the effect of a kind of psychological excorcism - stripping it of much of what would have been in the past a kind of unnerving venom; a repressed fear of it.

It is also, I think, indicative of a change in society recognised by African Americans, that white people do consciously "get it", at last, and are ashamed of it. An externally-imposed shame, of course, for the kkk types, who will use it more covertly, unless among their own kind.

The Jews simply get heir own back by rubbing the gentiles' nose in the sh*t economically. The best revenge as they say, is served cold.... "I'll tell you what, you call me a yid, and I'll get every damn penny you've got from you - at least that's what you'll think; though simply because you're less competent at screwing your brothers than we are, and jealous as hell!".... sort of thing.

Of course, that would be parlance of the shady business type, but the worldly success and status of a minority, however legitimately achieved, as of course the Jewish people mostly are, are just as hurtful to witness to the racist loser.

[benddem]

11. He doesn't speak

about the black man's experience. He sees the world strictly as a conservative...and he frequently if not lies...stretches the truth. His opinions are not representative of any blacks I know.

[gratuitous]

6. An "I got mine" Republican

Someone who has by dint of his own minor talent and a boatload of help from other folks likes to think he slammed a home run without noting that he was batting from second base.

[frazzledmom]

8. Neither... he's an asshole... n/t

[Joy Anne]

9. both of the above

At least 10 years ago, I read a book he wrote on ethnic groups and immigration. Lots of stereotypes and sweeping generalizations. The man's a stone bigot and doesn't know it.

He was ignorant (in the unknowledgeable sense) about my particular ethnic group in his book but not particularly nasty; if I were Irish, though, I would have sued for defamation of national character, or somesuch.

[Hand]

12. Classic right-wing "intellectual"...

Sowell long ago posited a narrow set of intellectual and ideological notions as absolute and unquestionable truths and formulates a frequently convoluted logic from all events and ideas that supports and confirms them. It's a cheap trick that pays well for the likes of Sowell, George Will, Robert Bork, and the entire Chicago/Straussian school.

It's still just a cheap trick, however.

[JNelson6563]

13. He's a complete and utter asshole

:puke: