Walter Williams Columns category

Editor’s note: Walter Williams passed away Dec. 2. This is his final column. One of the first lessons in an economics class is every action has a cost. That is in stark contrast to lessons in the political arena, where politicians virtually ignore cost and talk about benefits and free...

Editor’s note: Walter Williams, whose syndicated column has appeared in the Tribune-Review and Valley News Dispatch for many years, died Dec. 1 at the age of 84. His last column will appear next Saturday. Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore’s school system. What they found was...

Some of the confusion in thinking about matters of race stems from the ambiguity in the terms that we use. I am going to take a stab at suggesting operational definitions for a couple terms in our discussion of race. Good analytical thinking requires that we do not confuse one...

You present to a physician with severe abdominal pain. He examines you and concludes that your ingrown toenails are the cause of your abdominal distress. He prescribes that you soak your feet in warm water, but that does not bring relief to your abdominal pain. Then he suggests that you...

The academic achievement gap between Black and white students has proven resistant to most educational policy changes. Some say educational expenditures explain the gap, but is that true? Look at per-pupil educational expenditures: Baltimore city ranks fifth in the U.S. for per-pupil spending at $15,793. The Detroit Public Schools Community...

I was a teenager, growing up in the Richard Allen housing project of North Philadelphia, when Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Miss., on Aug. 28, 1955, and his brutalized, unrecognizable body later recovered from the Tallahatchie River. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Roughly 73%, or...

President Donald Trump is not the first president to be hated by a large segment of the American population. In more recent times, there was considerable hate for President Ronald Reagan. Even though the Democratic Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill and Reagan were polar opposites in their politics, they...

The ugliness that we have recently witnessed including rioting, billions of dollars of property destruction, assaults, murders and grossly stupid claims about our nation has its origins on college campuses. Two websites, Campus Reform and The College Fix, report on the despicable teachings on college campuses across the nation. Let...

The violence, looting and mayhem this nation has seen over the last several months has much of its roots in academia, where leftist faculty teach immature young people all manner of nonsense that contradicts common sense and the principles of liberty. Chief among their lessons is a need to attack...

The United States Constitution’s Article 2, Sec. 2, cl. 2, provides that the president of the United States “shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court, and all other Officers of the...

Seventeenth-century poet and intellect John Milton predicted, “When language in common use in any country becomes irregular and depraved, it is followed by their ruin and degradation.” Gore Vidal, his 20th-century intellectual successor, elaborated by saying: “As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise,...

In matters of race and other social phenomena, there is a tendency to believe that what is seen today has always been. For Black people, the socioeconomic progress achieved during my lifetime, which started in 1936, exceeded anyone’s wildest dreams. In 1936, most Black people lived in gross material poverty...

Check out any professional and most college basketball teams. Their starting five, and most of their other 10 players, are Black, as is 80% of the NBA. This does not come anywhere close to the diversity and inclusion sought by the nation’s social justice warriors. Both professional and college coaches...

Institutional racism and systemic racism are terms bandied about these days without much clarity. Being 84 years of age, I have seen and lived through what might be called institutional racism or systemic racism. Both operate under the assumption that one race is superior to another. It involves the practice...

Parents, legislators, taxpayers and others footing the bill for college education might be interested in just what is in store for the upcoming academic year. Since many college classes will be online, there is a chance to witness professors indoctrinating their students in real time. So there’s a chance that...

Most people who call themselves Marxists know very little of Karl Marx’s life and have never read his three-volume “Das Kapital.” Volume I was published in 1867, the only volume published before Marx’s death in 1883. Volumes II and III were later edited and published in his name by his...

I doubt whether any American would defend the police treatment of George Floyd that led to his death. But many Americans are supporting some of the responses to Floyd’s death — rioting, looting, wanton property destruction, assaults on police and other kinds of mayhem by both whites and blacks. The...

The Confederacy has been the excuse for some of today’s rioting, property destruction and grossly uninformed statements. Among the latter is the testimony before the House Armed Services Committee by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley in favor of renaming Confederate-named military bases. He said:...

The Michigan State University administration pressured professor Stephen Hsu to resign from his position as vice president of research and innovation because he touted research that found police are not more likely to shoot Black Americans. The study found: “The race of a police officer did not predict the race...

Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published “Charter Schools and Their Enemies.” He presents actual test scores of students in traditional public schools and charter schools on New York State Education Department’s annual English language arts test and its Mathematics Test. Sowell gives the results of student tests in charter schools...

Dr. Thomas Sowell has been both a friend and a colleague of mine for over a half-century. On June 30, he completed his 90th year of life, and I want to highlight some important features of that life. Sowell was born in Gastonia, N.C., in 1930. As part of the...

Many whites are ashamed, saddened and feel guilty about our history of slavery, Jim Crow and gross racial discrimination. Many Black people remain angry over the injustices of the past and what they see as injustices of the present. Both Blacks and whites can benefit from a better appreciation of...

No decent person can support George Floyd’s mistreatment, or the mistreatment of anyone else, at the hands of police officers with the sworn duty to uphold the law. The Minneapolis authorities moved quickly, and Derek Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis police department, placed under arrest and charged with second-degree...

While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called “systemic racism.” Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our...

Imagine that you are an unborn spirit in heaven. God condemns you to a life of poverty but will permit you to choose the country in which you will spend your life. Which country would you choose? I would choose the United States of America. A recent study by Just...