So when Cobb asks, Who is better than Sowell? I've got two answers. On the straight academic tip--the only one that matters to me--I'd point to Glenn Loury (who is not only fiercely independent but who HAS published in top tier economic journals), Steven Levitt (who, while not black still asks novel questions about black urban life with novel data), even Roland Fryer. My real money is probably on Bomani if his ass would get his dissertation finished. But again, I'm not looking for plans from any of these joes. I'm looking for interesting questions, interesting answers, theoretical novelty, and fit (that is, the answers plausibly respond to social reality).
To that degree, Sowell doesn't pass the smell test. Period. And it doesn't matter whether anyone is better as far as "planning". Kind of like asking who was a better point guard, Mike Piazza or Tiger Woods. What the hell would we ask that question for? We've talked over and over here about how we're trying to come up with an independent mode of black leadership, a form of leadership that revolves around cell based organization.
Why would we want a two bit economist who has written the same book for the last thirty years without a journal article to his name, participate in that project?
I've long maintained that many of the cultural characteristics and personal behaviors, good and bad, that Northern commentators (largely white) consider "black" are in fact southern. Being dissed makes the typical good ol' boy just as irrationally mad as it makes an inner-city black guy. And I'd suspect you'd find plenty of Bell Curve-like results if you could break out whites of southern origin, regardless of where they live now, as a separate ethnic group (even more so if you could exclude certain highly educated subgroups, notably the Presbyterians whose attitudes toward education and involvement in commerce have made them the souther equivalent of Jews or Chinese).
