He's near the top for me too, but I list him (and Williams) among the greats of history, as well.
There's a black college student who works part-time where I work and we sometimes get into interesting discussions (he's a liberal). I once asked him if he ever read any black conservative commentators and he didn't know there were any! He asked me to name ONE! LOL! I started listing Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Herman Cain and J.C. Watts. He was incredulous.
What I realised, however, was that if I listed conservative thinkers I admired without regard to race, that black conservatives would be over-represented! I wonder why that is?
Find that student a copy of Dr. Sowell’s book about his own life and give it to him. He might find it highly instructive.
I've noted the same thing. Other black conservatives who reflect the very version of limited government conservatism as taught to me by my dear and wise dad MUCH much much better than ANY other pundit (Rush and Levin being exceptions -- their opinions have always been consistent with conservative principle) include Star Parker, Deroy Murdoch, and Ken Hamblin. I, too, realized that blacks were WAY overrepresented, and came to the conclusion that perhaps something in their American experience instilled the true principles of conservatism in a way that was totally absent among the likes of Hannity, Coulter, Ingraham, Krauthhammer, Kirstol, Savage, etc.
Have you ever heard Larry Elder's dad, or heard Larry talk about him? I swear, his ideas and thinking sounded EXACTLY like my dad, a business owner, restaurateur (for awhile, anyway ... Larry's dad was a restaurant owner), and self-employed entrepreneur. Larry's dad had a lot deeper "tan" than my whitey Norther European pop does, but other than that ... pretty much the same.