What flight? (Thomas Sowell hits one again)

TownHall ^ | Nov 24, 2005 | Thomas Sowell

[Sonny M]

"The New White Flight" was the title of an eye-opening article in the November 20th issue of the Wall Street Journal. It was about a high school in Cupertino, California, where a growing Asian American student population is causing rising academic standards -- and causing many white parents to withdraw their children from the school and some to move out of the community.

The school has some of the highest test scores in the state. But, although everybody is in favor of high academic standards in the abstract, not everyone is in favor of having to struggle to meet those standards.

One white mother who was taking her son to an after-school soccer game noticed all the Asian American parents arriving to take their children to an after-school study program. A few years of her son playing soccer while the Asian kids were hitting the books would be bound to create academic disparities.

The phrase "white flight" is completely misleading. All over the world and throughout history, groups have collected together with people like themselves, whether by race, income, education, religion, or any number of other characteristics. There is nothing unique when white people do it.

A century or so ago, when Polish immigrants began moving into various Detroit neighborhoods, blacks began moving out. The research of pioneering black sociologist E. Franklin Frazier showed long ago that Harlem and other black communities were internally divided, with people of different income, education, and behavior patterns living in distinctly different zones.

When Eastern European Jewish immigrants began arriving in the United States and some began moving into German Jewish neighborhoods in Chicago, the German Jews began moving out. Similar patterns have been found among all sorts of groups.

When blacks move into a neighborhood and whites move out, that is something visible to the naked eye but there is nothing unique about such "white flight." The phrase is misleading for the same reason that saying white people have toenails would be misleading. It is true in itself but suggests something unique that is in fact common to human beings of all sorts.

It is not just in residential patterns that people sort themselves out in many ways. People tend to marry other people with similar IQs, even when they don't know what those IQs are. They just tend to gravitate toward people whose levels of understanding are similar to their own.

Cliques form in all kinds of places for all kinds of reasons. Chess players, jazz fans, and gamblers tend to hang out with others who share their interests.

The fact that people sort themselves out in many ways is not usually a big problem -- except to those people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do. Government programs to unsort people who have sorted themselves out have produced one social disaster after another.

The decades-long attempts to mix black and white school children through school busing produced no real educational benefits but much racial polarization and ill will. The same thing continues to be done in colleges in the name of "diversity" -- and with the same bad results.

Among the most unconscionable attempts to unsort people who have sorted themselves out by behavior are government programs to relocate people into neighborhoods where they could not afford to live without subsidies. Often the people in those neighborhoods have sacrificed for years in order to be able to live where they could raise their children in decent surroundings and not have to live in fear of hoodlums -- only to have the government import the bad neighbors and hoodlums they have tried so hard to escape.

Both kinds of people may be of the same race but that does not make the consequences any less painful or the resentments any less bitter. Blacks as well as whites have objected to having problem people thrust into their midst through housing subsidies or government housing projects being built in their neighborhoods.

Almost never do the social experimenters relocate dysfunctional and dangerous people into their own elite neighborhoods. They unsort other people's neighborhoods and embitter other people's lives.

[Sonny M]

I read the Wall Street Journal article (unfortunatly I can't post it here).

It pretty much stated that whites were moving their kids out of schools because they felt their kids couldn't compete with asians and engaged in alot of nasty sterotypes.

Some of the parents had problems with the schools becoming to academic focused and emphasising math and science instead of "all around" learning.

[Qwertrew]

Sowell...what a voice of reason.

[AZRepublican]

I'd love to see a George Allen/Thomas Sowell ticket :-)

[GSlob]

Well, everyone has one's limits with regard to everything - be it the speed of running, the weight one could lift, acuity of hearing and vision, mental sharpness [IQ] and - necessarily derivative - ability to learn, the speed with which one learns, and the limits on one's capacity to learn as well. Thus everyone could indeed learn, but some will reach their limits at rudimentary reading and multiplication table within 6x6, while others would not reach theirs in MIT postdoctoral programs. And everything in between, of course. Thus the only reasonable solution would be rigorous streaming by capacity, with different curricula [and different schools] for each stream. Say, one could use the traditional set of 5 streams: retardees[IQ<=70], dullards [71<=IQ<=90], normals [91<=IQ<=110], brights [111<=IQ<=130] and the gifted [131<=IQ]. Transfer between adjacent streams ought to be made possible - both ways [one could drop down or - with effort - try to move up].

[AbeKrieger]

the only reasonable solution would be rigorous streaming by capacity

Sorry, but that's called racism in these horribly PC United States. And THAT is a fact. Remember, if we can't all achieve equal greatness then we will all be held down to equal mediocrity.

[wallace144]

This article reminded me of some movie trivia I read on IMDB.com about the movie Planet of the Apes.

"During breaks in filming, actors made up as different ape species tended to hang out together--- gorillas with gorillas, orangutans with orangutans, chimps with chimps. It wasn't required, it just naturally happened."

[GSlob]

Whatever it is called - the answer ought to be "so what?" - and I hope to see many private schools for the gifted.

[okie01]

If a farmer puts all of his livestock out into one pasture, at the end of the day he will find the sheep with the sheep, the goats with the goats, the pigs with the pigs, the cattle with the cattle.

A farmer is not surprised by this phenomenon. He considers it normal.

Only a liberal would be surprised...

[Cacique]

ping

[uncbob]

Well Murray in his book "The Bell Shaped Curve" states that on average Chinese( can't remember if it was Asians in general) have IQs 15 points higher than Caucasians

[AbeKrieger]

I hope to see many private schools for the gifted.

Ah, yes, More exclusionarey, racist schools. :) :) :)

[GSlob]

Yep. With [horribile dicti!] competitive admission by exams, no less.

[GSlob]

It's not THAT bad - they have only about 7 points advantage, not 15. 12 to 15 is the IQ advantage of Ashkenazi Jews.

[VOA]

I couldn't help but think that the white students are just the children
of geeky parents that suffered through high-school...
and now want to live vicariously through their children being rich, popular
and cool during their running of the high-school popularity gauntlet.

That sort of thing is difficult to do in a high-school in which most
of the kids (of any race) and their parents are more concerned about
academic achievement and honing analytical/scientific skills.

[DogBarkTree]

"I couldn't help but think that the white students are just the children
of geeky parents that suffered through high-school...
and now want to live vicariously through their children being rich, popular
and cool during their running of the high-school popularity gauntlet."
THANK YOU VOA! That is what this is about. It's not that Asians are smarter. They are however, MUCH better parents. Jewish parents hold the same kind of high standards for their kids.

[DogBarkTree]

This makes me sick. The weak parents feel it's more important that their coddled brats feel good about themselves than put in the work and study like the Asian kids.

[twntaipan]

The fact that people sort themselves out in many ways is not usually a big problem -- except to those people who cannot feel fulfilled unless they are telling other people what to do.

That's the money sentence in the whole article.

[sine_nomine]

At Ivy League schools there are often the children of the wealthy gathered to network and mate. There is also a very high level of academic achievement. Those who want to be there apply themselves and find each class fascinating and challenging.

Then there are the community colleges where one student said, "I came here to get an easy degree." I told him, "Your associates degree will allow you to man the prestigious job of Second Window at McDonald's." If you are strong, you might do yardwork.

[uncbob]

It's not THAT bad - they have only about 7 points advantage, not 15. 12 to 15 is the IQ advantage of Ashkenazi Jews.

I knew about the Jews but the article was about the Asian/white

I went back and reread some of the book

Testing has basically two areas --scientific --verbal--. If you factor out the verbal IQ differences than the Asian is 8 to 13 points higher in the scientific area which will be 6 to 8 overall as you state

[x]

It pretty much stated that whites were moving their kids out of schools because they felt their kids couldn't compete with asians and engaged in alot of nasty sterotypes.

I didn't quite get that impression. The article is here.

It didn't sound like the parents whose kids left Monte Vista just wanted their children to socialize, just that they wanted a more congenial atmosphere -- a better fit for their children and their talents. What stood out in my mind were the Asian-American parents and graduates of the school who didn't like the atmosphere either, finding the competitive spirit driven by the newest arrivals.

It's not clear that ethnic groups going all out in competition with each other is the best recipe for keeping the country together. There is at least a little to be said for high school activities making the competition a bit less intense and bringing people of different groups closer together.