Preferential Policies: An International Perspective.

• Author: Reed, Leonard

Preferential Policies: An International Perspective. Thomas Sowell. Morrow, $17.95. "Passionate commitment to 'social justice,"' writes Sowell, "can never be a substitute for knowing what you are talking about." For well over a decade, he has been challenging with icy logic the rhetoric of activists for preferential policies-known in this country as affirmative action." In 1980, in an article in the Wayne Law Review, he demolished the basis on which activists claimed that racial discrimination accounted for minority groups not being represented in the professions and high-level positions in proportion to their numbers in the population. Pointing out, for example, that the average age of Mexican-Americans is 18, Sowell asked whether one can logically expect an ethnic group, half of whose population consists of infants, children, and teenagers, to be represented in high-level adult jobs in the same proportion as ethnic groups with an average age of 46 (Jews), 40 (Poles), or 37 (Irish). Now the Hoover Institution economist has expanded his inquiry to preferential policies-those specifying that not all individuals be judged by the case criteria-in the many parts of the world where they are in force. Preferential policies-whether designed for the disadvantaged or advantaged-specify that not all individuals be judged by the same criteria. In Sri Lanka in 1948, the Tamil minority, while only 20 percent of the population, accounted for 32 percent of the government's doctors, 40 percent of its engineers, and 46 percent of its accountants. With independence in 1948, the proportion of Tamil professionals grew even larger. The situation was ripe for a demagogue: In 1956, a stirring political upset by a prime ministerial candidate running on a program of preferential policies favoring the Sinhalese majority led other politicians to vie with each other to jump on the bandwagon. A variety of ever more restrictive measures against the Tamils was put in place, including a cutback in the number of Tamils permitted to go on to higher education, particularly in science and the professions. With opportunity closed off to the younger Tamil generation, violence broke out. By 1985, India had 40,000 Tamil refugees, and in 1987 India landed 50,000 troops in Sri Lanka to take over the maintenance of order from the Sri Lankan army. Within one generation, the politicization of race and ethnicity had brought groups who had lived in amity to the point of implacable...