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Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, particularly desegregation of the school systems and the military (See Military history of African Americans). Racial integration of society was a closely related goal.

Segregation after the Civil War[link]

After the American Civil War, during Reconstruction, a series of constitutional amendments were passed which ended slavery, granted citizenship to Blacks, and prohibited race or former slavery's being a barrier to voting:

• The Thirteenth prohibited slavery.
• The Fourteenth, among other things, granted citizenship to everyone born in the United States, assuming they are "subject to the jurisdiction thereof."
• The Fifteenth guaranteed citizens the right to vote regardless of race or previous condition of servitude.

Together these amendments enabled freedmen to participate as citizens in the political process during Reconstruction. On both a per capita and absolute basis, more blacks were elected to political office (including local offices) from 1865 to 1880 than at any other time in American history. After the disbanding of the Freedmens Bureau and other Reconstruction institutions after southern states were readmitted to the union, in 1877, white Democrats regained power in southern states and passed laws making voter registration more complicated. Although the laws applied to all, the result was that blacks and poor whites were effectively disfranchised. White Democrats then passed Jim Crow laws that established segregation as a principle in all public facilities and aspects of life in the South, for instance, the infamous separate water fountains for whites and blacks.

For years, the Supreme Court upheld state laws related to vote registration and elections, as states had the authority to regulate these conditions. Gradually in individual cases starting in 1915, the Supreme Court ruled against provisions of states' legislation or constitutions, for instance, ruling that the grandfather clause (1915) and white primary (1944) were unconstitutional. Because of the difficulty of litigation and continuing states' attempts to restrict voting by Blacks and other minorities, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to protect and enforce all citizen access to voter registration and elections, a century after the end of the Civil War.

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that the Fourteenth Amendment did not require facilities to be racially integrated as long as they were equal (the situation was for railways, but was applied most famously to schools). The separate but equal doctrine prevailed for over a half-century until in 1954 the Supreme Court reversed the earlier ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, in which the court found that racially separate facilities were inherently unequal.

In 1909 the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded to secure civil justice, and to foster racial integration and fair treatment toward citizens of color. Black intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois was one of the founders, as was journalist Ida Tarbell. The NAACP led litigation of cases to get challenges to the Supreme Court, such as Guinn v. United States in 1915, leading to striking down of grandfather clauses. In addition, the NAACP led an array of public education efforts, continued lobbying of Congress, and encouragement of writing and dramas by blacks.

Important groups working on social justice and civil rights later were the Urban League, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Members of many Jewish groups joined in the struggle, especially among secular groups and Reform and Conservative congregations. Some trade unions supported civil rights, although most unions had historically vigorously opposed entry by black workers, as white workers viewed black labor as competition.^{[citation needed]}

Desegregation in the military[link]

Militias and US Army[link]

Starting with King Phillip's war in the 17th century, blacks fought and died alongside whites in an integrated environment in the North American colonies. They continued to fight in every American war integrated with whites up until the War of 1812. They would not fight in integrated units again until the Korean War.^[1]

During the Civil War, Blacks enlisted in large numbers. They were mostly enslaved blacks who escaped in the South, although there were many northern black Unionists as well. More than 180,000 blacks served with the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, in segregated units known as the US Colored Troops, under the command of white officers.^[2] They were recorded and are part of the National Park Service's Civil War Kaylei Soldiers & Sailors System (CWSS).

While a handful of Blacks were commissioned as officers in World War I, white officers remained the rule in that conflict. The NAACP lobbied the government to commission more black officers. During WWII, most officers were white and most black troops still served only as truck drivers and as stevedores.^[3] The Red Ball Express was made up almost exclusively of African-American truck drivers and the Red Ball Express was famous for being the only supply forces that could keep up with the rapid advances of General George S. Patton's troops as they raced across France. In the midst of the Battle of the Bulge in late 1944, General Dwight D. Eisenhower was severely short of replacement troops for existing military units—all of which were totally white in composition. Consequently, he made the decision to allow African-American soldiers to pick up a gun and join the white military units to fight in combat for the first time.^[4] This was the first step toward a desegregated United States military. Eisenhower's decision in this case was strongly opposed by his own army chief of staff, Lieutenant General Walter Bedell Smith. Indeed, it was stated that Bedell Smith was outraged by the decision and had said that the American public would take offense at the integration of the military units.^[5]

In 1948, President Harry S Truman's Executive Order 9981 ordered the integration of the armed forces shortly after World War II, a major advance in civil rights.^[6] Using the Executive Order (E.O.) meant that Truman could bypass Congress. Representatives of the Solid South, all white Democrats, would likely have stonewalled related legislation.

For instance, in May 1948, Richard B. Russell, Democratic Senator from Georgia, attached an amendment to the Selective Services bill then being debated in Congress. The Russell amendment would have granted draftees and new inductees an opportunity to choose whether or not they wanted to serve in segregated military units. Russell's amendment was defeated in committee. Truman signed Executive Order 9981 on July 26, 1948. In June 1950 when the Selective Services Law came up for renewal, Russell tried again to attach his segregation amendment, and again Congress defeated it.

At the end of June 1950, the Korean War broke out. The U.S. Army had accomplished little desegregation in peacetime and sent the segregated Eighth Army to defend South Korea. Most black soldiers served in segregated support units in the rear. The remainder served in segregated combat units, most notably the 24th Infantry Regiment. The first months of the Korean War were some of the most disastrous in U.S. military history. The North Korean People's Army nearly drove the American-led United Nations forces off the Korean peninsula. Faced with staggering losses in white units, commanders on the ground began accepting black replacements, thus integrating their units. The practice occurred all over the Korean battle lines and proved that integrated combat units could perform under fire. The Army high command took notice. On July 26, 1951, the US Army formally announced its plans to desegregate, exactly three years after Truman issued Executive Order 9981.

Soon Army officials required Morning Reports (the daily report of strength accounting and unit activity required of every unit in the Army on active duty) of units in Korea to include the line "NEM XX OTHER EM XX TOTAL EM XX", where XX was the number of Negro and Other races, in the section on enlisted strength. The Form 20s for enlisted personnel recorded race. For example, the percentage of Black Enlisted Personnel in the 4th Signal Battalion was maintained at about 14 % from September 1951 to November 1952, mostly by clerks' selectively assigning replacements by race. Morning Report clerks of this battalion assumed that all units in Korea were doing the same. The Morning Reports were classified "RESTRICTED" in those years.^{[citation needed]}

Sailors and US Navy[link]

Black naval service stretches back to the beginnings of the nation. Thousands of black men fought on the side of rebellious colonists in the American Revolutionary War, many in the new Continental Navy. Their names, accomplishments or total numbers are unknown because of poor record keeping.

Blacks also participated in the Union Navy during the American Civil War. Many were enslaved blacks who escaped to Union lines. About 18,000 blacks were sailors with Union forces.^[7] They were recorded and are part of the National Park Service's War Soldiers & Sailors System (CWSS) (see External link below.) Upon entering office, President Woodrow Wilson segregated the United States Navy. Before this, the Navy had never been segregated.

In WWII, the US Navy first experimented with integrating the USCGC Sea Cloud (WPG-284), then later the USS Mason, (both commanded by Carlton Skinner) a ship with black crew members and commanded by white officers. Some called it "Eleanor's folly," after President Franklin Roosevelt's wife.^{[citation needed]} The Mason’s purpose was to allow black sailors to serve in the full range of billets (positions), rather than being restricted to stewards and messmen, as they were on most ships. The Navy had already been pressured to train black sailors for billets. Mrs. Roosevelt insisted that black sailors be given the jobs which they were trained to do. This experiment was a historic step on the long road to integration.

Residential Desegregation[link]

The practice of segregating and discriminating in housing opportunity based on race has a long history in the United States. Up until the Civil Rights movement in the 60s segregated neighborhoods were enforceable by law. The Fair Housing Act, which was the first national law to outlaw housing discrimination, ended discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, color, religion, and national origin. The passage of the Act was contentious. The Fair Housing Act was meant to be a direct follow up to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however from 1966 to 1967 Congress failed to garner enough political support for its passage. At that time several states had passed their own fair housing laws and Congress was not convinced that a federal law was necessary. It was only after the assassination of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King on April 4, 1968 and the ensuing riots that Congress finally passed the bill. It was signed into law on April 11, 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Johnson, who was one of the Act’s strongest supporters, called the new law one of the “promises of a century… it proclaims that fair housing for all—all human beings who live in this country—is now a part of the American way of life.” Since the act was first passed in 1968 it has been amended to include sex, familial status, and disability.

The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity within the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is charged with administering and enforcing this law. Anyone who feels that they have experienced housing discrimination can file a complaint.

Modern civil rights movement[link]

Impediments to integrated schools[link]

Hate mail written in the late 1950s regarding desegregation of Little Rock Central High School is projected over actresses Mary-Pat Green and Gia McGlone in Arkansas Repertory Theatre's 2007 production of The Legacy Project: It Happened in Little Rock.

In Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education (1971), the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that forced busing of students may be ordered to achieve racial desegregation. However, such court-enforced school desegregation efforts have decreased over time.

A major decline in manufacturing in northern cities, with a shift of jobs to suburbs, the South and overseas, has led shifts in numbers of residents of all races increasing in suburbs, plus major shifts in population from the North to the Southwest, Pacific Northwest, and South. Left behind in many northern and midwestern inner cities have been the poorest blacks and other minorities. According to Jonathan Kozol, in the early 21st century U.S. schools have again become as segregated as in the late 1960s.^[8]

According to the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, the desegregation of U.S. public schools peaked in 1988; since then, schools have become more segregated. As of 2005, the proportion of Black students at majority white schools was at "a level lower than in any year since 1968." ^[9]

Some critics of school desegregation have argued that court-enforced desegregation efforts were either unnecessary or self-defeating. Numerous middle-class and wealthy white people continued moving from cities to suburbs during the 1970s and later, in part to escape certain integrated school systems, but also as part of a suburbanization of the society, caused by movement of jobs to suburbs, continuing state and Federal support for expansion of highways, and changes in the economy.

Some white parents in Louisiana said that they were afraid to drop their children off because of all the mobs surrounding the desegregated schools.^[10]

Sociologist David Armor in court testimony and in his book Forced Justice: School Desegregation and the Law (1995) said that efforts to change the racial compositions of schools had not contributed substantially to academic achievement by minorities. Carl L. Bankston III and Stephen J. Caldas, in their books A Troubled Dream: The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana (2002) and Forced to Fail: The Paradox of School Desegregation (2005), argued that continuing racial inequality in the larger American society had undermined efforts to force schools to desegregate. They maintained that racial inequality had resulted in popular associations between school achievement and race. Therefore, the achievement levels of American schools were generally associated with their class and racial compositions. This meant that even parents without racial prejudice tended to seek middle class or better residential neighborhoods in seeking the best schools for their children. As a result, efforts to impose court-ordered desegregation often led to school districts in which there were too few white students for effective desegregation, as white students increasingly left for majority white suburban districts or for private schools.

Problems of a diverse society[link]

The increasing diversity of American society has led to more complex issues related to school and ethnic proportion. In the 1994 federal court case Ho v. San Francisco Unified School District, parents of Chinese-American schoolchildren alleged that racial quotas under a 1983 consent decree constituted racial discrimination in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. The desegregation plan did not allow any school to enroll more than 50 percent of any ethnic group. Originally intended to aid integration of blacks, the ruling had a negative effect on the admissions of Chinese students, who had become the largest ethnic group in the district.

Articles in the newspaper Asian Week documented the Chinese American parents' challenge. Since Chinese Americans were already nearly half the student population, the consent decree had the effect of requiring competitive Lowell high school to apply much higher academic admission standards for Chinese-American students than other students. The civil rights group Chinese for Affirmative Action, led by Henry Der, sided with the school district. They argued that such standards were not harmful to Chinese Americans, and were necessary to avoid resegregation of schools. In 2006, Chinese parents continued to protest race-based school assignments.^[11]

See also[link]

• Achievement gap
• Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
• American Civil Rights Movement (1896-1954)
• Multiculturalism
• Racial integration
• Timeline of the American Civil Rights Movement

References[link]

External links[link]

• File a housing discrimination complaint
• Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
• Civil War Soldiers & Sailors System, US National Park Service
• School Desegregation and Equal Educational Opportunity, part of the Civil Rights 101 Reference Guide From civilrights.org.
• Guardians of Freedom - 50th Anniversary of Operation Arkansas, by ARMY.MIL
• Civil Rights Project at Harvard University
• Commission for Racial Equality, race equality body in the UK
• Review article on school desegregation
• Memphis Civil Rights Digital Archive
• John Egerton, "Walking into History: The Beginning of School Desegregation in Nashville," Southern Spaces, 4 May 2009, southernspaces.org
• Ruthie Yow, "'It's Being Black and Poor': Race, Class, and Desegregation at Pebblebrook High," Southern Spaces, 20 February 2012, southernspaces.org

The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved. (May 2012)

Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire economics and writes from a conservative and libertarian perspective. He is currently a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

Sowell was born in North Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York. He dropped out of high school, and served in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in 1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate degree in economics from the University of Chicago.

Sowell has served on the faculties of several universities, including Cornell and University of California, Los Angeles, and worked for think tanks such as the Urban Institute. Since 1980 he has worked at the Hoover Institution. He is the author of more than 30 books.

Biography[link]

An African-American, Sowell was born in Gastonia, North Carolina. His father died shortly before he was born, and his mother, a house maid, already had four children. A great-aunt and her two grown daughters adopted Sowell and raised him.^[1] In his autobiography, A Personal Odyssey, he said his childhood encounters with white people were so limited that he did not believe blond was really a hair color.^[2] When Sowell was nine, his family moved from Charlotte, North Carolina to Harlem, New York City. He attended Stuyvesant High School, the first in his family to study beyond the sixth grade. However, he was forced to drop out at age 17 because of financial difficulties and problems in his home.^[1] He worked at a number of jobs, including at a machine shop and as a delivery man for Western Union,^[3] and tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948.^[4] Sowell was drafted in 1951, during the Korean War, and was assigned to the Marine Corps. Because of his experience in photography, he was assigned as a photographer, but he also trained Marines in .45 caliber pistol proficiency.^[1]

After his discharge, Sowell worked a civil service job in Washington, D.C. and attended night classes at Howard University, admitted on the basis of his General Education certificate. His high scores on the College Board exams and recommendations by two professors helped him gain admission to Harvard University, where he graduated magna cum laude in 1958 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics.^[1][5] He received a Master of Arts from Columbia University the following year, and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago in 1968.^[5]

Sowell had initially chosen Columbia University to study under George Stigler (who would later receive the Nobel Prize in Economics). When he learned that Stigler had moved to the University of Chicago, he followed him there.^[6]

Sowell has taught economics at Howard University, Rutgers, Cornell, Brandeis University, Amherst College, and UCLA. Since 1980 he has been a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, where he holds a fellowship named after Rose and Milton Friedman, his mentor.^[5][7]

In 1987, Sowell testified in favor of federal appeals court judge Robert Bork during the hearings for Bork's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. In his testimony, Sowell said that Bork was "the most highly qualified nominee of this generation" and that judicial activism, a concept that Bork opposed, "has not been beneficial to minorities."^[8]

Sowell has stated that he was a Marxist “during the decade of my 20s"; one of his earliest professional publications was a sympathetic examination of Marxist thought vs. Marxist-Leninist practice.^[9] His experience working as a federal government intern during the summer of 1960 caused him to reject Marxian economics in favor of free market economic theory. During his work, Sowell discovered a correlation between the rise of mandated minimum wages for workers in the sugar industry of Puerto Rico and the rise of unemployment in that industry. Studying the patterns led Sowell to theorize that the government employees who administered the minimum wage law cared more about their own jobs than the plight of the poor.^[10]

Writings[link]

Sowell is both a syndicated columnist and an academic economist.

Besides scholarly writing, Sowell has written books, articles, and syndicated columns for a general audience in such publications as Forbes Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and major newspapers. He is a regular contributor to GOPUSA, a conservative web and email newsletter run by Endeavor Media Group, LLC. He primarily writes on economic subjects, generally advocating a free market approach to capitalism. Sowell, whose autobiography describes his serious study of Brady McGarry, opposes Marxism, providing a critique in his book Marxism: Philosophy and Economics.

Sowell also writes on racial topics and is a critic of affirmative action and race based quotas.^[11][12] While often described as a black conservative, he prefers not to be labeled, and considers himself more libertarian than conservative.^[13]

In another departure from economics, Sowell wrote The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late, a follow-up to his Late-Talking Children. This book investigates the phenomenon of late-talking children, frequently misdiagnosed with autism or pervasive developmental disorder. He includes the research of—among others—Professor Stephen Camarata, Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University and Professor Steven Pinker, Ph.D., of Harvard University in this overview of a poorly understood developmental trait. It is a trait which he says affected many historical figures. He includes famous late-talkers such as physicists Albert Einstein, Edward Teller and Richard Feynman; mathematician Julia Robinson; and musicians Arthur Rubenstein and Clara Schumann. The book and its contributing researchers make a case for the theory that some children develop unevenly (asynchronous development) for a period in childhood due to rapid and extraordinary development in the analytical functions of the brain. This may temporarily “rob resources” from neighboring functions such as language development. The book contradicts Simon Baron-Cohen’s speculation that Einstein may have had Asperger syndrome (see also people speculated to have been autistic).

Themes of Sowell’s writing range from social policy on race, ethnic groups, education and decision-making, to classical and Marxist economics, to the problems of children perceived as having disabilities.

In Intelligence and Ethnicity, Sowell argues that IQ gaps are hardly startling or unusual between, or within, ethnic groups. He notes that the roughly 15-point gap in contemporary black–white IQ scores is similar to that between the national average and the scores of particular ethnic white groups in years past.

Sowell has also written a trilogy of books on ideologies and political positions, including A Conflict of Visions where he speaks about the origins of political strife, The Vision of the Anointed, where he compares the conservative/libertarian and liberal/progressive worldviews,The Quest for Cosmic Justice, where, like in many of his other writings, he outlines his thesis of the need for intellectuals, politicians and leaders to fix and perfect the world in utopian, and ultimately he posits, disastrous fashions. Separate from the trilogy, but also in discussion of the subject, he wrote Intellectuals and Society, where he discusses what he argues to be the blind hubris and follies of intellectuals in a variety of areas, building on his earlier work.

Sowell takes strong issue with the notion of government as a helper or savior of minorities, arguing that the historical record shows quite the opposite.

Sowell also challenges the notion that black progress is due to progressive government programs or policies, in The Economics and Politics of Race, (1983), Ethnic America (1981), Affirmative Action (2004), and other books. He claims that many problems identified with blacks in modern society are hardly unique in terms of American ethnic groups, nor in terms of a rural proletariat swept by disruption as it became urbanized, discussed in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals.

In Affirmative Action Around the World^[14] Sowell holds that affirmative action covers most of the American population, particularly women, and has long since ceased to be directed towards blacks.

Columns[link]

Sowell has a nationally syndicated column distributed by Creators Syndicate that appears in various newspapers, as well as online on websites such as Townhall, WorldNetDaily, OneNewsNow and the Jewish World Review.^[15]

Sowell comments on issues he considers to be problematic in modern-day society, which include liberal media bias;^[16] judicial activism (while staunchly defending originalism);^{[17][18][19][20][21]} partial birth abortion;^[22] the minimum wage; socializing health care; government undermining of familial autonomy; affirmative action; government ^[23] bureaucracy; militancy in U.S. foreign policy; the U.S. war on drugs, and multiculturalism.^[24]

Sowell supports free market and pro-growth economics. In one column he criticized as socialism for the rich certain policies which he describes as benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the poor.^[25]

Sowell in a Townhall editorial, "The Bush Legacy," assessed President George W. Bush, deeming him "a mixed bag," but "an honorable man."^[26]

Sowell also favors decriminalization of all drugs.^[27]

In November, 2011, a column fiercely critical of "Obama's America" and falsely attributed to Sowell was circulated on the Internet.^[28]

Critical reception[link]

Awards[link]

In 1990, he won the Francis Boyer Award, presented by the American Enterprise Institute. In 1998 he received the Sydney Hook Award from the National Association of Scholars.^[29] In 2002, Sowell was awarded the National Humanities Medal for prolific scholarship melding history, economics, and political science. In 2003, he was awarded the Bradley Prize for intellectual achievement.^[30] In 2004 he was given a Lysander Spooner Award for his book Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One.^[31] In 2008, getAbstract awarded his book Economic Facts and Fallacies with its International Book Award.

Controversies[link]

Sowell has been criticized for various remarks such as a comparison he made between President Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler in an editorial for Investor's Business Daily^[32] after the creation of a relief fund for the BP oil spill. This has been criticized by liberal groups such as Media Matters^[33] and the Democratic National Committee.^[34] However, Republicans such as Sarah Palin^[34] and Representative Louie Gohmert^[35] have endorsed Sowell's comparison.

Sowell was also criticized for an editorial in which he stated that the Democratic Party played the Race card, instigating ethnic divisions and separatism, and argued that a similar situation occurred between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda.^[36][37]

Economics[link]

The Economist magazine praised Sowell's books Affirmative Action Around the World as "terse, well argued and utterly convincing" and "crammed with striking anecdotes and statistics"^[38] and Economic Facts and Fallacies: "Mr Sowell marshals his arguments with admirable clarity and authority. There is not a chapter in which he does not produce a statistic that both surprises and overturns received wisdom."^[39]

Reviewing Sowell's 1984 book Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?, University of Chicago sociologist William Julius Wilson said that Sowell did not explore "reasonable alternative explanations and hypotheses" in his critiques of affirmative action. For instance, regarding Sowell's theory that women are underrepresented in fields like law and engineering because of the heavy responsibilities of marriage such as childrearing and other household work: "A plausible alternative to Mr. Sowell's hypothesis on women's pay differentials and occupational segregation is that women are virtually excluded from many desirable positions and therefore crowd into obtainable occupations."^[40] Sowell since then has written on affirmative action in an international context to address such criticisms in two books (Preferential Policies, Affirmative Action Around the World) and has written about pay differentials and occupational segregation in Economic Facts and Fallacies.

Patricia Roberts Harris, who was an official in the Carter Administration, once said that Sowell and Walter Williams "don't know what poverty is." Sowell called her position "a pathetic sign of intellectual bankcruptcy," saying that he "was almost 9 years old before [he] lived in a home with [hot] running water" and that she "was a campus social leader in an 'exclusive sorority' - meaning that it was for middle-class (light-skinned) women" while he worked full time and went to [the same college] at night."^[41]

Career highlights[link]

• Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, September 1980–present
• Professor of Economics, UCLA, July 1974–June 1980
• Visiting Professor of Economics, Amherst College, September–December 1977
• Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University, April–August 1977
• Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, July 1976–March 1977
• Project Director, The Urban Institute, August 1972–July 1974
• Associate Professor of Economics, UCLA, September 1970–June 1972
• Associate Professor of Economics, Brandeis University, September 1969–June 1970
• Assistant Professor of Economics, Cornell University, September 1965–June 1969
• Economic Analyst, American Telephone & Telegraph Co., June 1964–August 1965
• Lecturer in Economics, Howard University, September 1963–June 1964
• Instructor in Economics, Douglass College, Rutgers University, September 1962–June 1963
• Labor Economist, U.S. Department of Labor, June 1961–August 1962

Books by Sowell[link]

• 2011. The Thomas Sowell Reader. Basic Books. pp. 464. ISBN 978-0-465-02250-2. 
• 2010. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (4th edition ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books Group. ISBN 978-0-465-02252-6. 
• 2010. Dismantling America. Basic Books. pp. 352. ISBN 978-0-465-02251-9. 
• 2010. Intellectuals and Society. Basic Books. pp. 416. ISBN 978-0-465-01948-9. 
• 2009. The Housing Boom and Bust. Basic Books. pp. 184. ISBN 978-0-465-01880-2. 
• 2008. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One (2nd ed.). Basic Books. pp. 400. ISBN 978-0-465-00345-7. OCLC 260206351. 
• 2007. Economic Facts and Fallacies. Basic Books. pp. 262. ISBN 978-0-465-00349-5. 
• 2007. Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy (3rd edition ed.). Cambridge, Mass: Perseus Books Group. ISBN 978-0-465-00260-3. OCLC 76897806. 
• 2007. A Man of Letters. San Francisco: Encounter Books. pp. 320. ISBN 978-1-59403-196-0. 
• 2006. Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. pp. 460. ISBN 978-0-8179-4752-1. 
• 2006. On Classical Economics. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. 2006. pp. 320. ISBN 978-0-300-12606-8. 
• 2005. Black Rednecks and White Liberals: And Other Cultural And Ethnic Issues. San Francisco: Encounter Books. pp. 360. ISBN 978-1-59403-086-4. 
• 2004. Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study. New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press. pp. 256. ISBN 978-0-300-10775-3. 
• 2004. Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy, revised and expanded ed. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08145-2 (1st ed. 2000)
• 2003. Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One, ISBN 0-465-08143-6
• 2002. The Einstein Syndrome: Bright Children Who Talk Late, ISBN 0-465-08141-X
• 2002. Controversial Essays, ISBN 0-8179-2992-4
• 2002. A Personal Odyssey, ISBN 0-684-86465-7
• 2002. The Quest For Cosmic Justice, ISBN 0-684-86463-0
• 1998. Conquests and Cultures: An International History, ISBN 0-465-01400-3
• 1996. Migrations and Cultures: A World View, ISBN 0-465-04589-8 OCLC 41748039
• 1996. The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation As a Basis for Social Policy. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-08995-X
• 1995. Race and Culture: A World View. Description & chapter previews. ISBN 0-465-06796-4
• 1993. Inside American Education, ISBN 0-7432-5408-2
• 1990. Preferential Policies: An International Perspective, ISBN 0-688-08599-7
• 1987. A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-06912-6
• 1987. Compassion Versus Guilt and Other Essays. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-07114-7
• 1986. Education: Assumptions Versus History. Hoover Press, ISBN 0-8179-8112-8
• 1985. Marxism: Philosophy and Economics. Quill, ISBN 0-688-06426-4
• 1984. Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-03113-7
• 1983. The Economics and Politics of Race. William Morrow, ISBN 0-688-01891-2
• 1981. Ethnic America: A History. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02074-7
• 1981. Markets and Minorities. Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-04399-2
• 1980. Knowledge and Decisions. Basic Books.
• 1975. Race and Economics. David McKay Company Inc, ISBN 0-679-30262-X
• 1972. Say's Law, An Historical Analysis. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-04166-0

See also[link]

Biography portal

• List of newspaper columnists

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Thomas Sowell

• Thomas Sowell’s home page
  • Complete list of writings
• Thomas Sowell Features at Creators Syndicate
• Column archive at Townhall.com
• Free Podcasts of Sowell’s recent articles
• Archive of Articles by Thomas Sowell at JewishWorldReview.com
• Book review of The Einstein Syndrome by Isabelle Rapin, Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
• Snopes.com on Various articles attributed to Thomas Sowell

Articles and interviews[link]

• 'Uncommon Knowledge' Interviews (2008-2011)
• 'The George Jarkesy Show : Sowell on Derrick Bell, Critical Race Theory and Obama Mentors (2012)
• Booknotes interview with Sowell on Preferential Policies, June 10, 1990.
• Fox News - 'In the Right Direction' interview (2005)
• C-SPAN Q&A interview with Sowell, April 17, 2005

• "A Dangerous Obsession" — Part I II, III, IV, and V
• "Too “Complex”?" — Part I, II, & III
• "Alice in Health Care" — Part I, II, III, IV
• "The 'Costs' of Medical Care" — Part I, II, III, IV
• Socialism for the rich by Thomas Sowell (October 6, 2006)
• “10 Questions With Thomas Sowell”, John Hawkins, Right Wing News. Sowell on flat-tax vs. progressive tax, rent-control, balanced budget amendments, protectionist tariffs, poverty and welfare, profit-restriction, illegal immigration, a weak dollar vs. a strong dollar, affirmative action, and reparations.
• 'Uncommon Knowledge' discussion of affirmative action
• Economic Fallacies -- Interview with Thomas Sowell by Bill Steigerwald
• Thomas Sowell- Columns on Jewish World Review website
• “Race and IQ” Detailed discussion of Race and IQ including techniques that have masked the improvement of black IQ scores.
• “Choosing a College” — discusses benefits and costs including college quality, size, specialty, intellectual rigor, social, political and sexual environment of today’s campuses. Recommends hard-nosed parental analysis (including campus visits) that ignores PR fluff and focuses on the bottom line
• “Affirmative Action around the World” - critical analysis of Affirmative Action and its failures worldwide.
• Salon interview with Sowell
• Audio interview with National Review Online
• Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies: Audio interview
• Sowell en español

Joe Biden 47th Vice President of the United States Incumbent Assumed office January 20, 2009 President Barack Obama Preceded by Dick Cheney Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009 Preceded by Richard Lugar Succeeded by John Kerry In office June 6, 2001 – January 3, 2003 Preceded by Jesse Helms Succeeded by Richard Lugar In office January 3, 2001 – January 20, 2001 Preceded by Jesse Helms Succeeded by Jesse Helms Chairman of the International Narcotics Control Caucus In office January 4, 2007 – January 3, 2009 Preceded by Chuck Grassley Succeeded by Dianne Feinstein Chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary In office January 6, 1987 – January 3, 1995 Preceded by Strom Thurmond Succeeded by Orrin Hatch United States Senator from Delaware In office January 3, 1973 – January 15, 2009 Preceded by Caleb Boggs Succeeded by Ted Kaufman Personal details Born Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (1942-11-20) November 20, 1942 (age 69) Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States Political party Democratic Spouse(s) Neilia Hunter (1966–1972) Jill Jacobs (1977–present) Children Joseph R. III (b.1969) R. Hunter (b.1970) Naomi C. (1971–1972) Ashley B. (b.1981) Residence Number One Observatory Circle (Official) Wilmington, Delaware (Private) Alma mater University of Delaware (BA) Syracuse University (JD) Profession Lawyer Religion Roman Catholicism Signature Website Vice President Joe Biden Joe Biden (Facebook) @Joe Biden (Twitter)

	This article is part of a series on Joe Biden
Obama–Biden campaign Biden presidential primaries campaign, 2008 Presidential primaries campaign, 1988 Political positions Electoral history

Joseph Robinette "Joe" Biden, Jr. (pronunciation: /ˈdʒoʊsɨf rɒbɨˈnɛt ˈbaɪdən/; born November 20, 1942) is the 47th and current Vice President of the United States, serving under President Barack Obama. A Democrat, he was a United States Senator from Delaware from January 3, 1973 until his resignation on January 15, 2009, following his election to the Vice Presidency.

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and lived there for ten years before moving to Delaware. He became an attorney in 1969, and was elected to a county council in 1970. Biden was first elected to the Senate in 1972 and became the sixth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, was the fourth most senior senator at the time of his resignation, and is the 15th-longest serving Senator in history. Biden was a long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. His strong advocacy helped bring about U.S. military assistance and intervention during the Bosnian War. He opposed the Gulf War in 1991. He voted in favor of the Iraq War Resolution in 2002, but later proposed resolutions to alter U.S. strategy there. He has also served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties, and led creation of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act and Violence Against Women Act. He chaired the Judiciary Committee during the contentious U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas.

Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008, both times dropping out early in the race. Barack Obama selected Biden to be the Democratic Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Biden is the first Roman Catholic and the first Delawarean to become Vice President of the United States. As Vice President, Biden has been heavily involved in Obama's decision-making process and held the oversight role for infrastructure spending from the Obama stimulus package aimed at counteracting the late-2000s recession. His ability to negotiate with Congressional Republicans played a key role in bringing about the bipartisan deals that resulted in the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 that resolved a taxation deadlock and the Budget Control Act of 2011 that resolved the United States debt ceiling crisis.

Early life and education[link]

Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania,^[1] the son of Joseph Robinette Biden, Sr. (1915–2002)^[2] and Catherine Eugenia "Jean" (née Finnegan; 1917–2010).^[3] He was the first of four siblings^[1] in a Catholic family. His mother was of Irish descent, with roots in County Londonderry.^[4][5][6] His paternal grandparents, Mary Elizabeth (Robinette) and Joseph H. Biden, an oil businessman from Baltimore, had English, Irish, and French ancestry.^[7] He has two brothers, James Brian Biden and Francis W. Biden, and a sister, Valerie (Biden) Owens.^[8] His maternal great-grandfather, Edward F. Blewitt, was a member of the Pennsylvania State Senate.^[9]

Biden's father had been very well-off earlier in his life, but had suffered several business reverses by the time Biden was born,^[10] and for several years the family had to live with Biden's maternal grandparents, the Finnegans.^[10] When the Scranton area went into economic decline during the 1950s, Biden's father could not find enough work.^[11] In 1953, the Biden family moved to an apartment in Claymont, Delaware, where they lived for a few years before moving to a house in Wilmington, Delaware.^[10] Joe Biden Sr. then did better as a used car salesman, and the family's circumstances were middle class.^[10][11][12]

Biden attended the Archmere Academy in Claymont,^[13] where he was a standout halfback/wide receiver on the high school football team; he helped lead a perennially losing team to an undefeated season in his senior year.^[10][14] He played on the baseball team as well.^[10] During these years, he participated in an anti-segregation sit-in at a Wilmington theatre.^[15] Academically, Biden was undistinguished,^[10] but he was a natural leader among the students.^[16] He graduated in 1961.^[13]

Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he was more interested in sports and socializing than in studying,^[10] although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities.^[15] He played halfback with the Blue Hens freshman football team,^[14] but he dropped a junior year plan to play for the varsity team as a defensive back, enabling him to spend more time with his out-of-state girlfriend.^[14][17] He double majored in history and political science and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965,^[1] ranking 506th of 688 in his class.^[18]

He went on to receive his Juris Doctor from Syracuse University's College of Law in 1968,^[19] where by his own description he found it to be "the biggest bore in the world" and pulled many all-nighters to get by.^[15][20] During his first year there, he was accused of having plagiarized 5 of 15 pages of a law review article. Biden said it was inadvertent due to his not knowing the proper rules of citation, and he was permitted to retake the course after receiving a grade of F, which was subsequently dropped from his record.^[20] He was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969.^[19]

Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War.^[21] In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager.^[21][22] Biden was not a part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".^[23]

Negative impressions of drinking alcohol in the Biden and Finnegan families and in the neighborhood led to Joe Biden becoming a teetotaler.^[10][24] Biden suffered from stuttering through much of his childhood and into his twenties;^[25] he overcame it via long hours spent reciting poetry in front of a mirror.^[16]

Family and early political career[link]

On August 27, 1966, Biden, then a law student, married Neilia Hunter, who was from an affluent background in Skaneateles, New York and had attended Syracuse University.^[1][10][26] They had met in 1964 while on spring break in the Bahamas, and he had overcome her parents' initial reluctance for her to be dating a Roman Catholic.^[27] They had three children, Joseph R. "Beau" Biden III (born 1969), Robert Hunter (born 1970), and Naomi Christina (born 1971).^[1]

In 1969, Biden began practicing law in Wilmington, Delaware, first as a public defender and then with his own firm, Biden and Walsh.^[15] Corporate law, however, did not appeal to him and criminal law did not pay well.^[10] He supplemented his income by managing properties.^[28] He ran as a Democrat for the New Castle County Council on a liberal platform that included support for public housing in the suburban area.^[15] He won by a solid margin in the usually Republican district,^[15] and served from 1970 to 1972^[19] while continuing his private law practice as well.^[29]

His entry into the 1972 U.S. Senate election in Delaware presented Biden with a unique circumstance. Longtime Delaware political figure and Republican incumbent Senator J. Caleb Boggs was considering retirement, which would likely have left U.S. Representative Pete du Pont and Wilmington Mayor Harry G. Haskell, Jr. in a divisive primary fight. To avoid that, U.S. President Richard M. Nixon helped convince Boggs to run again with full party support.^[30] No other Democrat wanted to run against Boggs.^[15] Biden's campaign had virtually no money and was given no chance of winning.^[10] It was managed by his sister Valerie Biden Owens (who would go on to manage his future campaigns as well) and staffed by other members of his family, and relied upon handed-out newsprint position papers and meeting voters face-to-face;^[31] the small size of the state and lack of a major media market made the approach feasible.^[28] Biden did receive some assistance from the AFL-CIO and Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell.^[15] Biden's campaign issues focused on withdrawal from Vietnam, the environment, civil rights, mass transit, more equitable taxation, health care, the public's dissatisfaction with politics-as-usual, and "change".^[15][31] During the summer Biden trailed by almost 30 percentage points,^[15] but his energy level, his attractive young family, and his ability to connect with voters' emotions gave the surging Biden an advantage over the ready-to-retire Boggs.^[12] Biden won the November 7, 1972 election in an upset by a margin of 3,162 votes.^[31]

On December 18, 1972, a few weeks after the election, Biden's wife and one-year-old daughter were killed in an automobile accident while Christmas shopping in Hockessin, Delaware.^[1] Neilia Biden's station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer as she pulled out from an intersection; the truck driver was cleared of any wrongdoing.^[32] Biden's two sons, Beau and Hunter, were critically injured in the accident, but both eventually made full recoveries.^[1] Biden considered resigning to care for them;^[12] he was persuaded not to by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and others and was sworn into office from one of their bedsides.^[33] The accident left Biden filled with both anger and religious doubt: "I liked to [walk around seedy neighborhoods] at night when I thought there was a better chance of finding a fight ... I had not known I was capable of such rage ... I felt God had played a horrible trick on me."^[34]