Information, Entropy, and Progress Book

The story of six ethnic groups who migrated away from their homelands in large numbers - the Germans, the Japanese, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and the Indians. There are of course many more examples of mass migration, but these groups are representative. Many found niches in their host societies as "middleman minorities" - shopkeepers, moneylenders, peddlers, rent and tax collectors and the like. They were reviled by the majority ethnic group, who accused them of overcharging their customers and, contradictorily, of undercutting their competitors. Think of Gogol's Taras Bulba and Yankel, or more recently, Andrew Young and the Koreans, Arabs and Jews, or more tragically, Latasha Harlins and Soon Ja Du. Yet when they were expelled, as Idi Amin did with the Indians of Uganda and medieval European rulers did with Jews, the economy was wrecked. The hosts do not understand the reasons for the prosperity of the minority, like the Zambezi boatman who told Paul Theroux that the Indians catch diamond-stuffed fish using hearts of African virgins as bait.

Some of the ethnic groups and subgroups profiled came with the skills that made them richer than their hosts, as with German clockmakers and brewers who emigrated to the Americas. Some became rich through hard work, as the Volga Germans did first in Russia, and then, re-emigrating, in South America, running farms on the frontier that were much more productive than the farms of their Russian and Argentine neighbors. Some were poor but still lived honorably; far fewer Italian women in the United States became prostitutes than equally poor Irish and Jewish women. Different ethnic groups were concentrated in different occupations, had different family lives, and different attitudes towards education; for example, the Italians were much more tolerant of having their children work instead of going to school than American laws allowed. Attitudes towards their mother country were also different; the Japanese Brazilians were ultra-nationalistic; when Japan lost World War II, some Japanese Brazilians organized a tour to the Atlantic coast to meet the victorious Japanese Navy, and murdered those of their community who said that the Japanese Navy had been sunk; the Japanese Americans were much less nationalistic, which is ironic given that they were treated much more harshly.

Sowell is not a biological racist; he does not say that the Cambodians run donut shops because they have a gene for it, and that the Jews are bad at farming because they don't have the right genes. He is a culturalist, though; he claims that some cultures are better in reaching wealth and avoiding poverty than others. A professor of ethnic studies may claim that no culture is better than any other; most other observers disagree, finding that members of different ethnic groups are more or less likely to have children out of wedlock, to save for their children's education, and in college to choose liberal arts versus engineering - and they choose to emulate some and disdain others. Why, asks Sowell, should we honor the professor's point of view over that of the other observers? Of course discrimination also affects the fates of different minority ethnic groups, but Sowell contends that its role is secondary to that of the group's own culture. This is of course wildly controversial, but I think he has a point. Why would the Japanese of mainland United States be more prosperous than the Japanese of Hawaii, the North Italians in the United States more than the South Italians? From the majority's point of view they are all Japanese and Italian.