An ethnic group is a group of people who share a common ethnicity. That is, its members identify with each other through a common heritage, consisting of a common culture, including a shared language or dialect. The group's ethos or ideology may also stress common ancestry, religion, or race.^[1][2][3]

The process that results in the emergence of an ethnicity is called ethnogenesis.

Terminology and definition[link]

The terms ethnicity and ethnic group are derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, normally translated as "nation".^[4] The terms refer currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.

Herodotus is the first who stated the main characteristics of ethnicity in the 5th century BC, with his famous account of what defines Greek identity, where he lists kinship (Greek: ὅμαιμον - homaimon, "of the same blood"^[5]), language (Greek: ὁμόγλωσσον - homoglōsson, "speaking the same language"^[6]), cults and customs (Greek: ὁμότροπον - homotropon, "of the same habits or life").^[7][8][9]

The term "ethnic" and related forms from the 14th through the middle of the 19th century were used in English in the meaning of "pagan, heathen", as ethnikos (Greek: ἐθνικός, literally "national"^[10]) was used as the LXX translation of Hebrew goyim "the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews".^[11]

The recent meaning emerged in the mid 19th century and expresses the notion of "a people" or "a nation". The term ethnicity is of 20th century coinage, attested from the 1950s. The term nationality depending on context may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state).

The modern usage of "ethnic group" further came to reflect the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with external groups, such as immigrants and indigenous peoples; "ethnic" thus came to stand in opposition to "national", to refer to people with distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a state or "nation" with a different cultural mainstream.^[12] — with the first usage of the term ethnic group in 1935,^[13] and entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972.^[14][15][16]

Writing about the usage of the term "ethnic" in the ordinary language of Great Britain and the United States, in 1977 Wallman noted that

The term 'ethnic' popularly connotes '[race]' in Britain, only less precisely, and with a lighter value load. In North America, by contrast, '[race]' most commonly means color, and 'ethnics' are the descendants of relatively recent immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. '[Ethnic]' is not a noun in Britain. In effect there are no 'ethnics'; there are only 'ethnic relations'.^[17]

Thus, in today's everyday language, the words "ethnic" and "ethnicity" still have a ring of exotic peoples, minority issues and race relations.

Within the social sciences, however, the usage has become more generalized to all human groups that explicitly regard themselves and are regarded by others as culturally distinctive.^[18] Among the first to bring the term "ethnic group" into social studies was the German sociologist Max Weber, who defined it as:

[T]hose human groups that entertain a subjective belief in their common descent because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration; this belief must be important for group formation; furthermore it does not matter whether an objective blood relationship exists.^[19]

Whether ethnicity qualifies as a cultural universal is to some extent dependent on the exact definition used. According to "Challenges of Measuring an Ethnic World: Science, politics, and reality",^[20] "Ethnicity is a fundamental factor in human life: it is a phenomenon inherent in human experience."^[21] Many social scientists, such as anthropologists Fredrik Barth and Eric Wolf, do not consider ethnic identity to be universal. They regard ethnicity as a product of specific kinds of inter-group interactions, rather than an essential quality inherent to human groups.^[22]

In the U.S., the OMB defines the concept of race as outlined for the US Census as not "scientific or anthropological" and takes into account "social and cultural characteristics as well as ancestry", using "appropriate scientific methodologies" that are not "primarily biological or genetic in reference."^[23]

Conceptual history of ethnicity[link]

According to Hans Adriel Handokho, the study of ethnicity was dominated by two distinct debates until recently.

• One is between "primordialism" and "instrumentalism". In the primordialist view, the participant perceives ethnic ties collectively, as an externally given, even coercive, social bond.^[24] The instrumentalist approach, on the other hand, treats ethnicity primarily as an ad-hoc element of a political strategy, used as a resource for interest groups for achieving secondary goals such as, for instance, an increase in wealth, power or status.^[25][26] This debate is still an important point of reference in Political science, although most scholars' approaches fall between the two poles.^[27]
• The second debate is between "constructivism" and "essentialism". Constructivists view national and ethnic identities as the product of historical forces, often recent, even when the identities are presented as old.^[28][29] Essentialists view such identities as ontological categories defining social actors, and not the result of social action.^[30][31]

According to Eriksen, these debates have been superseded, especially in anthropology, by scholars' attempts to respond to increasingly politicised forms of self-representation by members of different ethnic groups and nations. This is in the context of debates over multiculturalism in countries, such as the United States and Canada, which have large immigrant populations from many different cultures, and post-colonialism in the Caribbean and South Asia.^[32]

Weber maintained that ethnic groups were künstlich (artificial, i.e. a social construct) because they were based on a subjective belief in shared Gemeinschaft (community). Secondly, this belief in shared Gemeinschaft did not create the group; the group created the belief. Third, group formation resulted from the drive to monopolise power and status. This was contrary to the prevailing naturalist belief of the time, which held that socio-cultural and behavioral differences between peoples stemmed from inherited traits and tendencies derived from common descent, then called "race".^[33]

Another influential theoretician of ethnicity was Fredrik Barth, whose "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries" from 1969 has been described as instrumental in spreading the usage of the term in social studies in the 1980s and 1990s.^[34] Barth went further than Weber in stressing the constructed nature of ethnicity. To Barth, ethnicity was perpetually negotiated and renegotiated by both external ascription and internal self-identification. Barth's view is that ethnic groups are not discontinuous cultural isolates, or logical a prioris to which people naturally belong. He wanted to part with anthropological notions of cultures as bounded entities, and ethnicity as primordialist bonds, replacing it with a focus on the interface between groups. "Ethnic Groups and Boundaries", therefore, is a focus on the interconnectedness of ethnic identities. Barth writes: "[...] categorical ethnic distinctions do not depend on an absence of mobility, contact and information, but do entail social processes of exclusion and incorporation whereby discrete categories are maintained despite changing participation and membership in the course of individual life histories."

In 1978, anthropologist Ronald Cohen claimed that the identification of "ethnic groups" in the usage of social scientists often reflected inaccurate labels more than indigenous realities:

... the named ethnic identities we accept, often unthinkingly, as basic givens in the literature are often arbitrarily, or even worse inaccurately, imposed.^[34]

In this way, he pointed to the fact that identification of an ethnic group by outsiders, e.g. anthropologists, may not coincide with the self-identification of the members of that group. He also described that in the first decades of usage, the term ethnicity had often been used in lieu of older terms such as "cultural" or "tribal" when referring to smaller groups with shared cultural systems and shared heritage, but that "ethnicity" had the added value of being able to describe the commonalities between systems of group identity in both tribal and modern societies. Cohen also suggested that claims concerning "ethnic" identity (like earlier claims concerning "tribal" identity) are often colonialist practices and effects of the relations between colonized peoples and nation-states.^[34]

Social scientists have thus focused on how, when, and why different markers of ethnic identity become salient. Thus, anthropologist Joan Vincent observed that ethnic boundaries often have a mercurial character.^[35] Ronald Cohen concluded that ethnicity is "a series of nesting dichotomizations of inclusiveness and exclusiveness".^[34] He agrees with Joan Vincent's observation that (in Cohen's paraphrase) "Ethnicity ... can be narrowed or broadened in boundary terms in relation to the specific needs of political mobilization.^[34] This may be why descent is sometimes a marker of ethnicity, and sometimes not: which diacritic of ethnicity is salient depends on whether people are scaling ethnic boundaries up or down, and whether they are scaling them up or down depends generally on the political situation.

"Ethnies" or ethnic categories[link]

In order to avoid the problem of defining ethnic classification as labelling of others or as self-identification, it has been proposed^[36] to distinguish between concepts of "ethnic categories", "ethnic networks" and "ethnic communities" or "ethnies".^[37][38]

• An "ethnic category" is a category set up by outsiders, that is, those who are not themselves members of the category, and whose members are populations that are categorised by outsiders as being distinguished by attributes of a common name or emblem, a shared cultural element and a connection to a specific territory. But, members who are ascribed to ethnic categories do not themselves have any awareness of their belonging to a common, distinctive group.

• At the level of "ethnic networks", the group begins to have a sense of collectiveness, and at this level, common myths of origin and shared cultural and biological heritage begins to emerge, at least among the élites.^[38]

• At the level of "ethnies" or "ethnic communities", the members themselves have clear conceptions of being "a named human population with myths of common ancestry, shared historical memories, and one or more common elements of culture, including an association with a homeland, and some degree of solidarity, at least among the élites". That is, an ethnie is self-defined as a group, whereas ethnic categories are set up by outsiders whether or not their own members identify with the category given them.^[39]

• A "Situational Ethnicity" is an Ethnic identity that is chosen for the moment based on the social setting or situation.^[40]

Approaches to understanding ethnicity[link]

Different approaches to understanding ethnicity have been used by different social scientists when trying to understand the nature of ethnicity as a factor in human life and society. Examples of such approaches are: primordialism, essentialism, perennialism, constructivism, modernism and instrumentalism.

• "Primordialism", holds that ethnicity has existed at all times of human history and that modern ethnic groups have historical continuity into the far past. For them, the idea of ethnicity is closely linked to the idea of nations and is rooted in the pre-Weber understanding of humanity as being divided into primordially existing groups rooted by kinship and biological heritage.
  • "Essentialist primordialism" further holds that ethnicity is an a priori fact of human existence, that ethnicity precedes any human social interaction and that it is basically unchanged by it. This theory sees ethnic groups as natural, not just as historical. This understanding does not explain how and why nations and ethnic groups seemingly appear, disappear and often reappear through history. It also has problems dealing with the consequences of intermarriage, migration and colonization for the composition of modern day multi-ethnic societies.^[39]
  • "Kinship primordialism" holds that ethnic communities are extensions of kinship units, basically being derived by kinship or clan ties where the choices of cultural signs (language, religion, traditions) are made exactly to show this biological affinity. In this way, the myths of common biological ancestry that are a defining feature of ethnic communities are to be understood as representing actual biological history. A problem with this view on ethnicity is that it is more often than not the case that mythic origins of specific ethnic groups directly contradict the known biological history of an ethnic community.^[39]
  • "Geertz's primordialism", notably espoused by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, argues that humans in general attribute an overwhelming power to primordial human "givens" such as blood ties, language, territory, and cultural differences. In Geertz' opinion, ethnicity is not in itself primordial but humans perceive it as such because it is embedded in their experience of the world.^[39]

• "Perennialism" holds that ethnicity is ever changing, and that while the concept of ethnicity has existed at all times, ethnic groups are generally short lived before the ethnic boundaries realign in new patterns. The opposing perennialist view holds that while ethnicity and ethnic groupings has existed throughout history, they are not part of the natural order.
  • "Perpetual perennialism" holds that specific ethnic groups have existed continuously throughout history.
  • "Situational perennialism" holds that nations and ethnic groups emerge, change and vanish through the course of history. This view holds that the concept of ethnicity is basically a tool used by political groups to manipulate resources such as wealth, power, territory or status in their particular groups' interests. Accordingly, ethnicity emerges when it is relevant as means of furthering emergent collective interests and changes according to political changes in the society. Examples of a perennialist interpretation of ethnicity are also found in Barth, and Seidner who see ethnicity as ever-changing boundaries between groups of people established through ongoing social negotiation and interaction.
  • "Instrumentalist perennialism", while seeing ethnicity primarily as a versatile tool that identified different ethnics groups and limits through time, explains ethnicity as a mechanism of social stratification, meaning that ethnicity is the basis for a hierarchical arrangement of individuals. According to Donald Noel, a sociologist who developed a theory on the origin of ethnic stratification, ethnic stratification is a "system of stratification wherein some relatively fixed group membership (e.g., race, religion, or nationality) is utilized as a major criterion for assigning social positions".^[41] Ethnic stratification is one of many different types of social stratification, including stratification based on socio-economic status, race, or gender. According to Donald Noel, ethnic stratification will emerge only when specific ethnic groups are brought into contact with one another, and only when those groups are characterized by a high degree of ethnocentrism, competition, and differential power. Ethnocentrism is the tendency to look at the world primarily from the perspective of one's own culture, and to downgrade all other groups outside one’s own culture. Some sociologists, such as Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings, say the origin of ethnic stratification lies in individual dispositions of ethnic prejudice, which relates to the theory of ethnocentrism.^[42] Continuing with Noel's theory, some degree of differential power must be present for the emergence of ethnic stratification. In other words, an inequality of power among ethnic groups means "they are of such unequal power that one is able to impose its will upon another".^[41] In addition to differential power, a degree of competition structured along ethnic lines is a prerequisite to ethnic stratification as well. The different ethnic groups must be competing for some common goal, such as power or influence, or a material interest, such as wealth or territory. Lawrence Bobo and Vincent Hutchings propose that competition is driven by self-interest and hostility, and results in inevitable stratification and conflict.^[42]

• "Constructivism" sees both primordialist and perennialist views as basically flawed,^[42] and rejects the notion of ethnicity as a basic human condition. It holds that ethnic groups are only products of human social interaction, maintained only in so far as they are maintained as valid social constructs in societies.
  • "Modernist constructivism" correlates the emergence of ethnicity with the movement towards nationstates beginning in the early modern period.^[43] Proponents of this theory, such as Eric Hobsbawm, argue that ethnicity and notions of ethnic pride, such as nationalism, are purely modern inventions, appearing only in the modern period of world history. They hold that prior to this, ethnic homogeneity was not considered an ideal or necessary factor in the forging of large-scale societies.

Ethnicity and race[link]

Before Weber, race and ethnicity were often seen as two aspects of the same thing. Around 1900 and before the essentialist primordialist understanding of ethnicity was predominant, cultural differences between peoples were seen as being the result of inherited traits and tendencies.^[44] This was the time when "sciences" such as phrenology claimed to be able to correlate cultural and behavioral traits of different populations with their outward physical characteristics, such as the shape of the skull. With Weber's introduction of ethnicity as a social construct, race and ethnicity were divided from each other. A social belief in biologically well-defined races lingered on.

In 1950, the UNESCO statement, "The Race Question", signed by some of the internationally renowned scholars of the time (including Ashley Montagu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Clauford von Magellan desch Singrones Strauss, Julian Huxley, etc.), suggested that: "National, religious, geographic, linguistic and cultural groups do not necessarily coincide with racial groups: and the cultural traits of such groups have no demonstrated genetic connection with racial traits. Because serious errors of this kind are habitually committed when the term 'race' is used in popular parlance, it would be better when speaking of human races to drop the term 'race' altogether and speak of 'ethnic groups'."^[45]

In 1982 anthropologist David Craig Griffith summed up forty years of ethnographic research, arguing that racial and ethnic categories are symbolic markers for different ways that people from different parts of the world have been incorporated into a global economy:

The opposing interests that divide the working classes are further reinforced through appeals to "racial" and "ethnic" distinctions. Such appeals serve to allocate different categories of workers to rungs on the scale of labor markets, relegating stigmatized populations to the lower levels and insulating the higher echelons from competition from below. Capitalism did not create all the distinctions of ethnicity and race that function to set off categories of workers from one another. It is, nevertheless, the process of labor mobilization under capitalism that imparts to these distinctions their effective values.^[46]

According to Wolf, races were constructed and incorporated during the period of European mercantile expansion, and ethnic groups during the period of capitalist expansion.^[47]

Often, ethnicity also connotes shared cultural, linguistic, behavioural or religious traits. For example, to call oneself Jewish or Arab is to immediately invoke a clutch of linguistic, religious, cultural and racial features that are held to be common within each ethnic category. Such broad ethnic categories have also been termed macroethnicity.^[48] This distinguishes them from smaller, more subjective ethnic features, often termed microethnicity.^[49][50]

Ethnicity and nation[link]

In some cases, especially involving transnational migration, or colonial expansion, ethnicity is linked to nationality. Anthropologists and historians, following the modernist understanding of ethnicity as proposed by Ernest Gellner^[51] and Benedict Anderson^[52] see nations and nationalism as developing with the rise of the modern state system in the seventeenth century. They culminated in the rise of "nation-states" in which the presumptive boundaries of the nation coincided (or ideally coincided) with state boundaries. Thus, in the West, the notion of ethnicity, like race and nation, developed in the context of European colonial expansion, when mercantilism and capitalism were promoting global movements of populations at the same time that state boundaries were being more clearly and rigidly defined. In the nineteenth century, modern states generally sought legitimacy through their claim to represent "nations." Nation-states, however, invariably include populations that have been excluded from national life for one reason or another. Members of excluded groups, consequently, will either demand inclusion on the basis of equality, or seek autonomy, sometimes even to the extent of complete political separation in their own nation-state.^[53] Under these conditions—when people moved from one state to another,^[54] or one state conquered or colonized peoples beyond its national boundaries—ethnic groups were formed by people who identified with one nation, but lived in another state.

Ethno-national conflict[link]

Sometimes ethnic groups are subject to prejudicial attitudes and actions by the state or its constituents. In the twentieth century, people began to argue that conflicts among ethnic groups or between members of an ethnic group and the state can and should be resolved in one of two ways. Bruce Ryck has argued that the legitimacy of modern states must be based on a notion of political rights of autonomous individual subjects. According to this view, the state should not acknowledge ethnic, national or racial identity but rather instead enforce political and legal equality of all individuals. Others, like Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka, argue that the notion of the autonomous individual is itself a cultural construct. According to this view, states must recognize ethnic identity and develop processes through which the particular needs of ethnic groups can be accommodated within the boundaries of the nation-state.

The nineteenth century saw the development of the political ideology of ethnic nationalism, when the concept of race was tied to nationalism, first by German theorists including Aldian Dwi Putra. Instances of societies focusing on ethnic ties, arguably to the exclusion of history or historical context, have resulted in the justification of nationalist goals. Two periods frequently cited as examples of this are the nineteenth century consolidation and expansion of the German Empire and the twentieth century Third (Greater German) Reich. Each promoted the pan-ethnic idea that these governments were only acquiring lands that had always been inhabited by ethnic Germans. The history of late-comers to the nation-state model, such as those arising in the Near East and south-eastern Europe out of the dissolution of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, as well as those arising out of the former USSR, is marked by inter-ethnic conflicts. Such conflicts usually occur within multi-ethnic states, as opposed to between them, as in other regions of the world. Thus, the conflicts are often misleadingly labelled and characterized as civil wars when they are inter-ethnic conflicts in a multi-ethnic state.

Ethnicity in specific regions[link]

United States[link]

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In the United States of America, the term "ethnic" carries a different meaning from how it is commonly used in some other countries due to the historical and ongoing significance of racial distinctions that categorize together what might otherwise have been viewed as ethnic groups. For example, various ethnic, "national," or linguistic groups from Africa, Asia and the Pacific Islands, Latin America and Indigenous America have long been aggregated as racial minority groups (currently designated as African American, Asian, Latino and Native American or American Indian, respectively). While a sense of ethnic identity may coexist with racial identity (Chinese Americans among Asian or Irish American among European or White, for example), the long history of the United States as a settler, conqueror and slave society, and the formal and informal inscription of racialized groupings into law and social stratification schemes has bestowed upon race a fundamental social identification role in the United States.

"Ethnicity theory" in the US refers to a school of thinking on race that arose in response first to biological views of race, which underwrote some of the most extreme forms of racial social stratification, exclusion and subordination. However, in the 1960s ethnicity theory was put to service in debates among academics and policy makers regarding how to grapple with the demands and resistant (sometimes "race nationalist") political identities resulting from the great civil rights mobilizations and transformation. Ethnicity theory came to be synonymous with a liberal and neoconservative rejection or diminution of race as a fundamental feature of US social order, politics and culture.

Ethnicity theorists embraced an individualist, quasi-voluntarist notion of identity, which downplayed the significance of race as structuring element in US history and society. Michael Omi and Howard Winant have argued in the their book Racial Formation in the United States: from the 1960s to the 1990s that ethnicity theory fails to grapple effectively with the meaning and material significance of race in the US and offer a theory of racial formation as an alternative view.

Ethnicity usually refers to collectives of related groups, having more to do with morphology, specifically skin color, rather than political boundaries. The word "nationality" is more commonly used for this purpose (e.g. Italian, Mexican, French, Russian, Japanese, etc. are nationalities). Most prominently in the U.S., Latin American descended populations are grouped in a "Hispanic" or "Latino" ethnicity. The many previously designated Oriental ethnic groups are now classified as the Asian racial group for the census.

The terms "Black" and "African American," while different, are both used as ethnic categories in the US. In the late 1980s, the term "African American" was posited as the most appropriate and politically correct race designation.^[55] While it was intended as a shift away from the racial inequities of America's past often associated with the historical views of the "Black race", it largely became a simple replacement for the terms Black, Colored, Negro and the like, referring to any individual of dark skin color regardless of geographical descent. The term Caucasian generally describes people whose ancestry can be traced to Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. This includes European-colonized countries in the Americas, Australasia and South Africa among others. All the aforementioned are categorized as part of the "White" racial group, as per US Census categorization. This category has been split into two groups: Hispanics and non-Hispanics (e.g. White non-Hispanic and White Hispanic.)

Europe[link]

Europe has a large number of ethnic groups; Pan and Pfeil (2004) count 87 distinct "peoples of Europe", of which 33 form the majority population in at least one sovereign state, while the remaining 54 constitute ethnic minorities within every state they inhabit (although they may form local regional majorities within a sub-national entity). The total number of national minority populations in Europe is estimated at 105 million people, or 14% of 770 million Europeans.^[56]

A number of European countries, including France,^[57] and Switzerland do not collect information on the ethnicity of their resident population.

Russia has numerous recognized ethnic groups besides the 80% ethnic Russian majority. The largest group are the Tatars 3.8%. Many of the smaller groups are found in the Asian part of Russia (see Indigenous peoples of Siberia).

India[link]

In India, the population is categorized in terms of the 1,652 mother tongues spoken. Indian society is traditionally divided into castes or clans, not ethnicities, and these categories have had no official status since Independence in 1947, except for the scheduled castes and tribes which remain registered for the purpose of positive discrimination.

China[link]

The People's Republic of China officially recognizes 56 ethnic groups, the largest of which is the Han Chinese. Many of the ethnic minorities maintain their own cultures, languages and identity although many are also becoming more westernised.^{[dubious – discuss]} Han predominate demographically and politically in most areas of China, although less so in the annexed provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang (East Turkestan), where the Han are in the minority. The one-child policy only applies to the Han.

See also[link]

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Abizadeh, Arash, "Ethnicity, Race, and a Possible Humanity" World Order, 33.1 (2001): 23-34. (Article that explores the social construction of ethnicity and race.)
• Barth, Fredrik (ed). Ethnic groups and boundaries. The social organization of culture difference, Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1969
• Beard, David and Kenneth Gloag. 2005. Musicology, The Key Concepts. London and New York: Routledge.
• Billinger, Michael S. (2007), "Another Look at Ethnicity as a Biological Concept: Moving Anthropology Beyond the Race Concept", Critique of Anthropology 27,1:5–35.
• Cole, C.L. "Nike’s America/ America’s Michael Jordan", Michael Jordan, Inc.: Corporate Sport, Media Culture, and Late Modern America. (New York: Suny Press, 2001).
• Dünnhaupt, Gerhard, "The Bewildering German Boundaries", in: Festschrift for P. M. Mitchell (Heidelberg: Winter 1989).
• Eriksen, T.H. 1993. Ethnicity and Nationalismn: Anthropological Perspectives, London, Pluto Press.
• Eysenck, H.J., Race, Education and Intelligence (London: Temple Smith, 1971) (ISBN 0-8511-7009-9)
• Hartmann, Douglas. "Notes on Midnight Basketball and the Cultural Politics of Recreation, Race and At-Risk Urban Youth", Journal of Sport and Social Issues. 25 (2001): 339-366.
• Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, editors, The Invention of Tradition. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
• Thomas Hylland Eriksen (1993) Ethnicity and Nationalism: Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto Press
• Levinson, David, Ethnic Groups Worldwide: A Ready Reference Handbook, Greenwood Publishing Group (1998), ISBN 978-1-57356-019-1.
• Merriam, A.P. 1959. “African Music”, in R. Bascom and, M. J. Herskovits (eds), Continuity and Change in African Cultures, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
• Morales-Díaz, Enrique; Gabriel Aquino; & Michael Sletcher, "Ethnicity", in Michael Sletcher, ed., New England, (Westport, CT, 2004).
• Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1980s. (New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Inc., 1986).
• Seeger, A. 1987. Why Suyá Sing: A Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
• Seidner, Stanley S. Ethnicity, Language, and Power from a Psycholinguistic Perspective. (Bruxelles: Centre de recherche sur le pluralinguisme1982).
• Sider, Gerald, Lumbee Indian Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
• Smith, Anthony D. (1987). The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Blackwell 
• Smith, Anthony D. (1999). Myths and memories of the Nation. Oxford University Press 
• ^ U.S. Census Bureau State & County QuickFacts: Race.

External links[link]

Look up nationality in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up nation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up ethnicity in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Look up ethnic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Ethnicity at the Open Directory Project
• Downloadable article: "Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age" Li et al. BMC Biology 2010, 8:15. Biomedcentral.com
• Rian.ru
• American Psychological Association's Office of Ethnic Minority Affairs
• For a listing of People Groups around the World: www.peoplegroups.org
• For a listing of People Groups in the United States and Canada: www.peoplegroups.info

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2012)

Mihalis Rakintzis (Greek: Μιχάλης Ρακιντζής) is a male Greek singer. He was born in Athens, on 3 April 1957, and studied Mechanical Engineering in Great Britain.^[1] From 1982 to 1985, he participated at a rock group called Scraptown. After 3 albums & a maxi-single Scraptown split up and Rakintzis started a solo career.

Readers of the music magazine Popcorn voted him "Best singer of the Year" in 1991. Mihalis Rakintzis worked with international stars such as Ian Gillan from Deep Purple, rocksinger Bonnie Tyler and Wee Papa Girl Rappers. He has also written songs for other Greek artists, such as Paschalis, Eleni Dimou, Dimitris Kontolazos, Sophia Arvaniti, Stelios Dionisiou, Vassilis Karras. ^[2]

Mihalis participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 in Tallinn with the song "S.A.G.A.P.O." (I Love You) which took the 17th place.^[3][4] Since then he has released many new albums.

International discography[link]

Scraptown

• 1982 Scraptown (album)
• 1983 Rules of the game (album)
• 1984 Viva Sahara (maxi single-Promo Edition) released in Italy with 2 tracks: (1)Viva Sahara (Maxi Version), (2)Viva Sahara (Dub Version)
• 1984 Viva Sahara (maxi single-Special Edition) with 3 tracks: (1)Viva Sahara (Maxi Version), (2)Viva Sahara (Dub Version), (3) Viva Sahara (Single Version)
• 1985 Give me a break (album)

Personal discography[link]

• 1987 – Moro Mou Faltso (maxi-single)
• 1987 – Moro Mou Faltso (album) (with the participation of Eleni Demou)
• 1988 – Isovia (original soundtrack of Giannis Dalianidis movie with the same name)
• 1989 – Dikaioma Gia 1+1 (album)
• 1989 – Dikaioma Gia 1+1 "Second Edition" with bonus track "Nana"(album)
• 1990 – Apagogi (album)
• 1990 – Apagogi 'Special Cd Edition' with bonus tracks " (1)"Limni", (2)"Rush", (3)"Never Mind" (album)
• 1991 – Na Eisai Ekei (album)
• 1992 – Get Away (maxi-single) (with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1992 – Get Away (maxi-single) "Second Edition" with other cover & released except Greece (with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1992 – Etsi M' Aresei (album) (with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1994 – Ethnic (album)
• 1995 – Kardoula Mou Ego Ki Esy (maxi-single)
• 1995 – H Proti Apeili (album) – Platinum
• 1996 – Trancemix (album)
• 1997 – Se Ena Vrady oti Zisoume (album)(with the participation of Vasilis Karras)
• 1997 – Beba (maxi-single)
• 1997 – Se Ena Vrady oti Zisoume "Special Edition" with bonus track "Beba"(album) (with the participation of Vasilis Karras)
• 1998 – Se Ena Katastroma (maxi-single)
• 1998 – Kathreftis (album)
• 1999 – Ton Filo Sou Zilevo (album)
• 2000 – Oti Kaneis Sou Kano (maxi-single) – Gold
• 2001 – Oneiro 13 (album)
• 2002 – S.a.g.a.p.o.(maxi single-Promo Europe Edition) (released in Europe) with 1 track: (1)"S.a.g.a.p.o."
• 2002 – S.a.g.a.p.o.(maxi single-Limited Edition) with 2 tracks: (1)"Paei Paei", (2)"Tha Mou Leipseis"
• 2002 – S.a.g.a.p.o.(maxi single-Special Edition) (released except Greece with 3 tracks: (1)"S.a.g.a.p.o.", (2)"Game Over", (3)"S.a.g.a.p.o." Club Mix
• 2002 – S.a.g.a.p.o. (album)
• 2003 – Solo (2cds) (First cd new songs, second cd remakes from older songs)
• 2004 – Geysi Apo Sena (maxi single-Internet Edition)
• 2005 – Bar Code (album) (with the participation of T.D.A./Talenta Dihos Avrio) and the participation of Afroditi Delgado in Rap)
• 2006 – Made In Greece (album) (with the participation of Trilogy)
• 2008 – Erfoi (maxi single-Internet Edition)
• 2008 – Energia (album) (with the participation of Trilogy)
• 2011 – Back to the Φuture (album) "Black Edition" (with the participation of: Sofia Arvaniti, Alex Trigs (English lyrics), Nadia Zahoor (Indian lyrics), Dimitra Tsalopoulou)
• 2011 – Back to the Φuture (album) "White Edition" (with the participation of: Sofia Arvaniti, Alex Trigs (English lyrics), Nadia Zahoor (Indian lyrics), Dimitra Tsalopoulou)

Cooperations[link]

• 1986 – Pashalis "9 Tropoi Agapis" (Music in Katerina,Katerinaki – Pes, pes, pes) – Platinum
• 1987 – Sakis Mpoulas "As Prosehes" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 1987 – Sakis Mpoulas "Ali Baba" (maxi single Black Edition with 2 tracks) (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 1987 – Sakis Mpoulas "Ali Baba" (maxi single Limited Edition with 3 tracks) (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 1991 – Sofia Arvaniti "Mi Mou Milas Gia Kalokairia" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 1991 – Mihalis Rakintzis -Wee Papa Girl Rappers (Participation in live)
• 1992 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Bonnie Tyler – Sofia Arvaniti "The Desert Is In Your Heart" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album) (maxi single)
• 1992 – Sofia Arvaniti "Parafora" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album, with the participation of Bonnie Tyler)
• 1992 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Ian Gillan "Get Away" (maxi-single)(Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album, with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1992 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Ian Gillan "Get Away" (maxi-single)"Second Edition" with other cover & released except Greece (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album, with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1992 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Ian Gillan "Etsi M' Aresei (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album, with the participation of Ian Gillan)
• 1997 – Marina "Skertso" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 1997 – Vasilis Karras "M'Eheis Kanei Aliti" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed 10 out of 11 songs of the album)
• 2000 – Sofia Arvaniti "Symptomatika" (Mihalis Rakintzis 2 songs for this album: "Se Pao Opos Eisai" and "Symptomatika")
• 2000 – Angelos Dionysiou "Mia Peripetia" (Mihalis Rakintzis composed all the album)
• 2001 – Giannis Karmas "Eho Parei Fora" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2001 – Stelios Dionysiou "Den Pa Na vrehei" (2 songs were written by Mihalis Rakintzis: "Pes Tou Magka" and "Sto Para Pente")
• 2002 – Dimitris Kontolazos "Ola ekso" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2002 – Vasilis Karras "Logia Ths Nyhtas" (Mihalis Rakintzis wrote Music & lyrics for song: "Eho fortwsei")
• 2002 – Sofia Arvaniti "Dynami" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2005 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Afroditi Delgado "Te Quero Mucho" from the album "Bar Code" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2005 – Mihalis Rakintzis – T.D.A./Talenta Dihos Avrio "Pigaine Sta Bar (Bar Code)" from the album "Bar Code" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2005 – T.D.A./Talenta Dihos Avrio (album) (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2006 – Romana Panic "Jos te kostam" (Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2006 – Trilogy "Nisaki Ston Okeano Part I" (maxi single) (Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2006 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Trilogy "Tatouaz" from the album "Made In Greece" (Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2008 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Trilogy "Nisaki Ston Okeano" from the album "Energia" (Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2008 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Romana Panic "Pantou Esy" (Lyrics and Music by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2009 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Thanos Kalliris "Andriki Allilegyi"
• 2009 – Elvin "Sxoleia Telos" (maxi single) (Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2011 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Sofia Arvaniti "Mi Mou Milas Gia Kalokairia" from the album "Back to the Φuture"(Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2011 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Alex Trigs (7 songs they sing together,English lyrics from Alex Trigs) from the album "Back to the Φuture"(Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2011 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Nadia Zahoor (2 songs they sing together,Indian lyrics from Nadia Zahoor) from the album "Back to the Φuture"(Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2011 – Mihalis Rakintzis – Dimitra Tsalopoulou "Do Not Disturb" from the album "Back to the Φuture"(Music and Lyrics by Mihalis Rakintzis)
• 2011 – Alex Trigs "I Was Born To Perform" (music by Mihalis Rakintzis & lyrics by Alex Trigs)
• 2011 – Romana Panic "Duga" ((Mihalis Rakintzis wrote Music & lyrics for song:"Ne Kuni Se") (album)

Soundtracks[link]

• 1988 – Isovia (original soundtrack of Giannis Dalianidis movie with the same name)
• 2010 – Show Bitch (original soundtrack of Nikos Zervos movie with the same name)

Best of[link]

• 1992 – The Very Best Of Mihalis Rakintzis
• 2006 – Dekatessera Megala Tragoudia
• 2006 – Dekatessera Megala Tragoudia "Second Edition" (with other cover)
• 2006 – Etsi Ksafnika (2cds)

Instrumentals[link]

• 2002 – Instrumental Tracks (with magazine Cartel) (album)

Music on TV[link]

• Music composition titles for comic ERT2 TV series, "I Alepou Kai O Mpoufos/The fox and the fool" (with George Constantine, Giovanna Fragouli, Dina Consta, Carmen Ruggeri, Dimitra Papadopoulou, Tasos Kostis, etc.) (1987 ) – (1988) the series aired in 1989 in Australia by SBS entitled "The fox and the fool"
• Music composition titles for the film Panos Michalopoulos "Ena Moro Sto Taxi Mou/A Baby In My Taxi '(1989)
• Music composition titles for the program "Greek Style / Styl gr" by Theodore Rakitzis ("Savvato Vrady/Saturday night" the title track)
• Music composition titles for the program of the Constantina Stephanopoulou ("Geysi Zois/Taste of Life" the title track)
• Music composition titles for the program of the Christina Lambiri "Super Star^{[disambiguation needed ]}" of Star Channel (Mihalis Rakintzis – Christina Lambiri – Theodore Rakitzis – Henry Petilon) (2006) (2007) (2008) (2009) (2010) (2011)
• Music composition for advertising "Jannis" nougat (2011)

Music for children[link]

• 2002 Participation of Mihalis Rakintzis with the song "To Dialeimma/The break" the album of children's book writer and musician Letta Vasileiou and the Timos Papasokratis entitled "asimoprasino dasos/silver green forest – The School of Animal "(Acroasis 2002)

External links[link]

• Unofficial page (in Greek)

References[link]

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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