Book Review — Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell

Yesterday, I finished Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell. Sowell is an African American economist, social philosopher, and political commentator. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal in 2002. The book was published in 2023.

“Social Justice Fallacies” is an attempt to deconstruct how some of our best intentions in policymaking end up making the people we want them to help worse. For instance, say, you observe that at the University of Chicago, one of the most prestigous schools in the world, you find out that people of a particular race get the lowest admission. You say this is unjust, term it racism, and request that equal number of people from all races should be admitted as a way of reversing this trend of social injustice. On the surface of it, it is the right thing. We, humans, generally bark at injustice. And doing something about it is what always tugs at our hearts.

Something like this was done. Despite having SAT scores more than 200 points lower than their Asian and white classmates, black and Hispanic students were admitted to the top-ranked campus at Berkeley (at the University of Chicago). There has been a history of just using SAT scores to weed out those who do not meet up, so in the case, justice was served. Or was it? Years later, an analysis was done on the black students, and it was…