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Walter Williams: The State Against Blacks- Full Documentary
For more videos:Facebook: www.facebook.com/FreeToChooseNetworkMedia Website: http://freetochoosemedia.org/index.phpTwitter: https://twitter.com/FreeToChooseN...
Thank you my friend MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. for posting the powerlineblog.com perspective of John Hinderaker that economist, teacher and columnist, Walter Williams, died on December 3, 2020
Rest in peace Walter Williams.
Walter Williams: The State Against Blacks- Full Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pomvHeQdATc
Images
1. Walter Edward Williams with characteristic smile
2. Walter E. Williams 'But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?
3. Professor Walter E. Williams at lectern
4. Walter E. Williams '“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man'
Biographies:
1. walterewilliams.com/about
2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
1. Background from {[http://walterewilliams.com/about/]}
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.
Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.
Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored ten books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary “Good Intentions,” All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, More Liberty Means Less Government, Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and American Contempt for Liberty.
He has made scores of radio and television appearances which include “Nightline,” “Firing Line,” “Face the Nation,” Milton Friedman’s “Free To Choose,” “Crossfire,” “MacNeil/Lehrer,” “Wall Street Week” and was a regular commentator for “Nightly Business Report.” He is also occasional substitute host for the “Rush Limbaugh” show. In addition Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites. His most recent documentary is “Suffer No Fools,” shown on PBS stations Fall/Spring 2014/2015, based on Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.
Dr. Williams serves as Emeritus Trustee at Grove City College and the Reason Foundation. He serves as Director for the Chase Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. He also serves on numerous advisory boards including: Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Heritage Foundation. Dr. Williams serves as Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: the 2017 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foudation, the Fund for American Studies David Jones Lifetime Achievement Award, Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year, and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.
Dr. Williams has participated in numerous debates, conferences and lectures in the United States and abroad. He has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and the American Economic Association.
2. Background from {[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams]}
Born Walter Edward Williams; on March 31, 1936 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died December 1, 2020 (aged 84) at Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.
Nationality American
Spouses) Connie Taylor (m. 1960; died 2007)
Children 1
Institution George Mason University; Temple University; Los Angeles City College; California State University, Los Angeles; Grove City College
Field Economics, education, politics, free market, race relations, liberty
School or tradition Laissez-faire
Alma mater California State University, Los Angeles (BA); University of California, Los Angeles (MA, PhD)
Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936 – December 1, 2020) was an American economist, commentator, and academic. He was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his classical liberal and libertarian views. His writings frequently appeared on Townhall.com, WND, and Jewish World Review.
Contents
• 1Early life and education
• 2Academic career
• 3Economic and political views
• 4Personal life
• 5Bibliography
• 6Filmography
• 7See also
• 8References
• 9External links
o 9.1Text
o 9.2Audio
o 9.3Video
Early life and education
Williams was born in Philadelphia on March 31, 1936. His family during childhood consisted of his mother, his sister, and him; Williams's father played no role in raising Williams or his sister. The family initially lived in West Philadelphia, moving to North Philadelphia and the Richard Allen housing projects when Williams was ten years old. His neighbors included a young Bill Cosby. Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood, including Weird Harold and Fat Albert.
Following graduation from Benjamin Franklin High School, Williams went to California to live with his father and attend one semester at Los Angeles City College. He later returned to Philadelphia and drove taxi for Yellow Cab Company. In 1959, he was drafted into the military and served as a private in the United States Army. While stationed in the South, he "waged a one man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army". He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers. This resulted in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams. Williams argued his own case and was found not guilty. While considering filing countercharges against the officer who had brought him up for court martial, Williams found himself transferred to Korea. Upon arriving there, Williams marked "Caucasian" for race on his personnel form. When challenged on this, Williams replied wryly if he had marked "Black", he would end up getting all the worst jobs. From Korea, Williams wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs, writing:
Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality? Or should we demand human rights as our Founding Fathers did at the risk of being called extremists ... I contend that we relieve ourselves of oppression in a manner that is in keeping with the great heritage of our nation.
He received a reply from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Alfred B. Fitt, a response which he termed "the most reasonable response that I received from any official."
Following his military service, Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967. Williams also resumed his education, earning a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from California State College at Los Angeles (now California State University, Los Angeles, or Cal State Los Angeles for short). He earned both his master's degree (1967) and his Ph.D. (1972) in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Williams's doctoral thesis was titled The low-income market place.
Speaking of his early college days, Williams said: "I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence." While at UCLA, Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian, James M. Buchanan, and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions.
While Williams was at UCLA, Thomas Sowell arrived on campus in 1969 as a visiting professor. Although he never took a class from Dr. Sowell, the two met and began a friendship that lasted for decades. In the summer of 1972, Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institute's Ethnic Minorities Project, which Williams joined shortly thereafter. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in the 2007 "A Man of Letters" piece by Sowell.
Academic career
During his doctoral studies, Williams was an instructor in economics at Los Angeles City College from 1967 to 1969 and Cal State Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971.
Returning to his native Philadelphia, Williams was an economics professor at Temple University from 1973 to 1980. For the 1975–76 academic year, Williams was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1980, Williams joined the economics faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; Williams began writing a syndicated column, "A Minority View", for Heritage Features Syndicate, which merged with Creators Syndicate in 1991. From 1995 to 2001, Williams chaired the economics department at George Mason. Courses taught by Williams at George Mason include "Intermediate Microeconomics" for undergraduate students and "Microeconomic Theory I" for graduate students. He continued to teach at George Mason until his death in 2020.
From 1971, Williams wrote hundreds of research articles, book reviews, and commentaries for scholarly journals including American Economic Review, Policy Review, and Journal of Labor Research as well as popular journals including The American Spectator, Newsweek, Reason, and The Wall Street Journal.
Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He served on advisory boards including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, Reason Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and Hoover Institute.
Williams wrote ten books, beginning in 1982 with The State Against Blacks and America: A Minority Viewpoint. He wrote and hosted documentaries for PBS in 1985. The "Good Intentions" documentary was based on his book The State Against Blacks.
Economic and political views]
As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism is the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.
In the mid-to-late 1970s, Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government's interventional programs are harmful. Among those state programs Williams was critical of were minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help. He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment. Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family." Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses, city halls, and libraries, Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people's right of freedom of association.
Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supported legalization of selling one's own bodily organs He argued that government prohibiting the selling of one's bodily organs is an infringement upon one's property rights.
Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo, and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzo's anti-Abraham Lincoln book, The Real Lincoln. Williams maintained that the U.S. states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish, as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War, and asserted that the Union's victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government "to run amok over states' rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today."
In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." It is still offered to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.
Williams was opposed to the Federal Reserve System arguing that central banks are dangerous.
In his autobiography, Williams cited Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian. Williams praised Ayn Rand's 1967 work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read."
Besides his weekly columns, Williams acted as guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio program when Limbaugh was away traveling. In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel. Reason called Williams "one of the country's leading libertarian voices."
Personal life
Williams lived in Devon, Pennsylvania, since 1973. He was married to Connie (née Taylor) from 1960 until her death on December 29, 2007. They had one daughter, Devyn. When he began teaching at George Mason, he rented a cheap hotel room in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived from Tuesdays through Thursdays around his teaching schedule. Williams was a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving.
Williams served on the board of directors of Media General, parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, from 2001 until his retirement from the board in 2011. He was also chairman of the Audit Committee.
Williams died on December 1, 2020, at age 84, shortly after teaching a class at George Mason. His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension.
Bibliography
Williams, Walter E. (1982). The State Against Blacks. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN [login to see] 780. OCLC 15984778.
• Williams, Walter E. (1982). America: A Minority Viewpoint. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 623. OCLC 492741326.
• Williams, Walter E. (1987). All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View. Washington: Regnery Gateway. ISBN [login to see] 696. OCLC 242317610.
• Williams, Walter E. (1989). South Africa's War Against Capitalism. New York: Praeger. ISBN [login to see] 797. OCLC 246932397.
• Williams, Walter E. (1990). South Africa's War Against Capitalism (revised ed.). Kenwyn [South Africa]: Juta. ISBN [login to see] 457. OCLC 758452218.
• Williams, Walter E. (1995). Do The Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 825. OCLC 32666686.
• Williams, Walter E. (1999). More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-9612-5. OCLC 237344402.
• Williams, Walter E. (2008). Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 129. OCLC 495418182.
• Williams, Walter E. (2010). Up From The Projects: An Autobiography. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1255-0. OCLC 670480882.
• Williams, Walter E. (2011). Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1244-4. OCLC 939069012.
• Williams, Walter E. (2015). American Contempt for Liberty. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1875-0. OCLC [login to see] ."
FYI COL Mikel J. Burroughs SMSgt Lawrence McCarter SPC Michael Duricko, Ph.D GySgt Thomas Vick SGT Denny Espinosa SSG Stephen Rogerson SPC Matthew Lamb LTC (Join to see) LTC Greg Henning Maj Bill Smith, Ph.D. SGT (Join to see) PO1 William "Chip" Nagel PO2 (Join to see) SSG Franklin Briant SPC Woody Bullard TSgt David L. SMSgt David A Asbury MSgt Paul Connors
Rest in peace Walter Williams.
Walter Williams: The State Against Blacks- Full Documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pomvHeQdATc
Images
1. Walter Edward Williams with characteristic smile
2. Walter E. Williams 'But let me offer you my definition of social justice: I keep what I earn and you keep what you earn. Do you disagree? Well then tell me how much of what I earn belongs to you - and why?
3. Professor Walter E. Williams at lectern
4. Walter E. Williams '“Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man'
Biographies:
1. walterewilliams.com/about
2. wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
1. Background from {[http://walterewilliams.com/about/]}
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Dr. Walter E. Williams holds a B.A. in economics from California State University, Los Angeles, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from UCLA. He also holds a Doctor of Humane Letters from Virginia Union University and Grove City College, Doctor of Laws from Washington and Jefferson College and Doctor Honoris Causa en Ciencias Sociales from Universidad Francisco Marroquin, in Guatemala, where he is also Professor Honorario.
Dr. Williams has served on the faculty of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, since 1980; from 1995 to 2001, he served as department chairman. He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia, and Grove City College, Grove City, Pa.
Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored ten books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary “Good Intentions,” All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, More Liberty Means Less Government, Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and American Contempt for Liberty.
He has made scores of radio and television appearances which include “Nightline,” “Firing Line,” “Face the Nation,” Milton Friedman’s “Free To Choose,” “Crossfire,” “MacNeil/Lehrer,” “Wall Street Week” and was a regular commentator for “Nightly Business Report.” He is also occasional substitute host for the “Rush Limbaugh” show. In addition Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites. His most recent documentary is “Suffer No Fools,” shown on PBS stations Fall/Spring 2014/2015, based on Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.
Dr. Williams serves as Emeritus Trustee at Grove City College and the Reason Foundation. He serves as Director for the Chase Foundation and Americans for Prosperity. He also serves on numerous advisory boards including: Cato Institute, Landmark Legal Foundation, Institute of Economic Affairs, and Heritage Foundation. Dr. Williams serves as Distinguished Affiliated Scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.
Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: the 2017 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foudation, the Fund for American Studies David Jones Lifetime Achievement Award, Foundation for Economic Education Adam Smith Award, Hoover Institution National Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Valley Forge Freedoms Foundation George Washington Medal of Honor, Veterans of Foreign Wars U.S. News Media Award, Adam Smith Award, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year, and Alpha Kappa Psi Award.
Dr. Williams has participated in numerous debates, conferences and lectures in the United States and abroad. He has frequently given expert testimony before Congressional committees on public policy issues ranging from labor policy to taxation and spending. He is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, and the American Economic Association.
2. Background from {[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams]}
Born Walter Edward Williams; on March 31, 1936 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died December 1, 2020 (aged 84) at Fairfax, Virginia, U.S.
Nationality American
Spouses) Connie Taylor (m. 1960; died 2007)
Children 1
Institution George Mason University; Temple University; Los Angeles City College; California State University, Los Angeles; Grove City College
Field Economics, education, politics, free market, race relations, liberty
School or tradition Laissez-faire
Alma mater California State University, Los Angeles (BA); University of California, Los Angeles (MA, PhD)
Walter Edward Williams (March 31, 1936 – December 1, 2020) was an American economist, commentator, and academic. He was the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, as well as a syndicated columnist and author known for his classical liberal and libertarian views. His writings frequently appeared on Townhall.com, WND, and Jewish World Review.
Contents
• 1Early life and education
• 2Academic career
• 3Economic and political views
• 4Personal life
• 5Bibliography
• 6Filmography
• 7See also
• 8References
• 9External links
o 9.1Text
o 9.2Audio
o 9.3Video
Early life and education
Williams was born in Philadelphia on March 31, 1936. His family during childhood consisted of his mother, his sister, and him; Williams's father played no role in raising Williams or his sister. The family initially lived in West Philadelphia, moving to North Philadelphia and the Richard Allen housing projects when Williams was ten years old. His neighbors included a young Bill Cosby. Williams knew many of the individuals that Cosby speaks of from his childhood, including Weird Harold and Fat Albert.
Following graduation from Benjamin Franklin High School, Williams went to California to live with his father and attend one semester at Los Angeles City College. He later returned to Philadelphia and drove taxi for Yellow Cab Company. In 1959, he was drafted into the military and served as a private in the United States Army. While stationed in the South, he "waged a one man battle against Jim Crow from inside the army". He challenged the racial order with provocative statements to his fellow soldiers. This resulted in an overseeing officer filing a court-martial proceeding against Williams. Williams argued his own case and was found not guilty. While considering filing countercharges against the officer who had brought him up for court martial, Williams found himself transferred to Korea. Upon arriving there, Williams marked "Caucasian" for race on his personnel form. When challenged on this, Williams replied wryly if he had marked "Black", he would end up getting all the worst jobs. From Korea, Williams wrote a letter to President John F. Kennedy denouncing the pervasive racism in the American government and military and questioning the actions black Americans should take given the state of affairs, writing:
Should Negroes be relieved of their service obligation or continue defending and dying for empty promises of freedom and equality? Or should we demand human rights as our Founding Fathers did at the risk of being called extremists ... I contend that we relieve ourselves of oppression in a manner that is in keeping with the great heritage of our nation.
He received a reply from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Alfred B. Fitt, a response which he termed "the most reasonable response that I received from any official."
Following his military service, Williams served as a juvenile group supervisor for the Los Angeles County Probation Department from 1963 to 1967. Williams also resumed his education, earning a bachelor's degree in economics in 1965 from California State College at Los Angeles (now California State University, Los Angeles, or Cal State Los Angeles for short). He earned both his master's degree (1967) and his Ph.D. (1972) in economics from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Williams's doctoral thesis was titled The low-income market place.
Speaking of his early college days, Williams said: "I was more than anything a radical. I was more sympathetic to Malcolm X than Martin Luther King because Malcolm X was more of a radical who was willing to confront discrimination in ways that I thought it should be confronted, including perhaps the use of violence. But I really just wanted to be left alone. I thought some laws, like minimum-wage laws, helped poor people and poor black people and protected workers from exploitation. I thought they were a good thing until I was pressed by professors to look at the evidence." While at UCLA, Williams came into contact with economists such as Armen Alchian, James M. Buchanan, and Axel Leijonhufvud who challenged his assumptions.
While Williams was at UCLA, Thomas Sowell arrived on campus in 1969 as a visiting professor. Although he never took a class from Dr. Sowell, the two met and began a friendship that lasted for decades. In the summer of 1972, Sowell was hired as director of the Urban Institute's Ethnic Minorities Project, which Williams joined shortly thereafter. Correspondence between Sowell and Williams appears in the 2007 "A Man of Letters" piece by Sowell.
Academic career
During his doctoral studies, Williams was an instructor in economics at Los Angeles City College from 1967 to 1969 and Cal State Los Angeles from 1967 to 1971.
Returning to his native Philadelphia, Williams was an economics professor at Temple University from 1973 to 1980. For the 1975–76 academic year, Williams was a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. In 1980, Williams joined the economics faculty at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; Williams began writing a syndicated column, "A Minority View", for Heritage Features Syndicate, which merged with Creators Syndicate in 1991. From 1995 to 2001, Williams chaired the economics department at George Mason. Courses taught by Williams at George Mason include "Intermediate Microeconomics" for undergraduate students and "Microeconomic Theory I" for graduate students. He continued to teach at George Mason until his death in 2020.
From 1971, Williams wrote hundreds of research articles, book reviews, and commentaries for scholarly journals including American Economic Review, Policy Review, and Journal of Labor Research as well as popular journals including The American Spectator, Newsweek, Reason, and The Wall Street Journal.
Williams was awarded an honorary degree at Universidad Francisco Marroquín. He served on advisory boards including the Review Board of Economics Studies for the National Science Foundation, Reason Foundation, the National Tax Limitation Committee, and Hoover Institute.
Williams wrote ten books, beginning in 1982 with The State Against Blacks and America: A Minority Viewpoint. He wrote and hosted documentaries for PBS in 1985. The "Good Intentions" documentary was based on his book The State Against Blacks.
Economic and political views]
As an economist, Williams was a proponent of free market economics and opposed socialist systems of government intervention. Williams believed laissez-faire capitalism is the most moral, most productive system humans have ever devised.
In the mid-to-late 1970s, Williams conducted research into the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and on the impact of minimum wage laws on minority employment. His research led him to conclude the government's interventional programs are harmful. Among those state programs Williams was critical of were minimum wage and affirmative action laws, stating both practices inhibit liberty and are detrimental to the blacks they are intended to help. He published his results in his 1982 book The State Against Blacks, where he argued that laws regulating economic activity are far greater obstacles to economic progress for blacks than racial bigotry and discrimination. Subsequently, Williams spoke on the topic and penned a number of articles detailing his view that increases in the minimum wage price low skill workers out of the market, eliminating their opportunities for employment. Williams believed that racism and the legacy of slavery in the United States are overemphasized as problems faced by the black community today. He pointed to the crippling effects of a welfare state and the disintegration of the black family as more pressing concerns. "The welfare state has done to black Americans what slavery couldn't do, and that is to destroy the black family." Although in favor of equal access to government institutions such as court houses, city halls, and libraries, Williams opposed anti-discrimination laws directed at the private sector on the grounds that such laws infringe upon the people's right of freedom of association.
Williams viewed gun control laws as a governmental infringement upon the rights of individuals, and argued that they end up endangering the innocent while failing to reduce crime. Williams also made the argument that the true proof of whether or not an individual owns something is whether or not they have the right to sell it. Taking this argument to its conclusion, he supported legalization of selling one's own bodily organs He argued that government prohibiting the selling of one's bodily organs is an infringement upon one's property rights.
Williams praised the views of Thomas DiLorenzo, and wrote a foreword to DiLorenzo's anti-Abraham Lincoln book, The Real Lincoln. Williams maintained that the U.S. states are entitled to secede from the union if they wish, as the Confederate states attempted to do during the Civil War, and asserted that the Union's victory in the Civil War allowed the federal government "to run amok over states' rights, so much so that the protections of the Ninth and Tenth Amendments mean little or nothing today."
In reaction to what he viewed as inappropriate racial sensitivity that he saw hurting blacks in higher education, Williams began in the 1970s to offer colleagues a "certificate of amnesty and pardon" to all white people for Western Civilization's sins against blacks – and "thus obliged them not to act like damn fools in their relationships with Americans of African ancestry." It is still offered to anyone. The certificate can be obtained at his website.
Williams was opposed to the Federal Reserve System arguing that central banks are dangerous.
In his autobiography, Williams cited Frederick Bastiat, Ludwig von Mises, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman as influences that led him to become a libertarian. Williams praised Ayn Rand's 1967 work Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal as "one of the best defenses and explanations of capitalism one is likely to read."
Besides his weekly columns, Williams acted as guest host for Rush Limbaugh's radio program when Limbaugh was away traveling. In 2009, Greg Ransom, a writer for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, ranked Williams as the third-most important "Hayekian" Public Intellectual in America, behind only Thomas Sowell and John Stossel. Reason called Williams "one of the country's leading libertarian voices."
Personal life
Williams lived in Devon, Pennsylvania, since 1973. He was married to Connie (née Taylor) from 1960 until her death on December 29, 2007. They had one daughter, Devyn. When he began teaching at George Mason, he rented a cheap hotel room in Fairfax, Virginia, where he lived from Tuesdays through Thursdays around his teaching schedule. Williams was a cousin of former NBA player Julius Erving.
Williams served on the board of directors of Media General, parent company of the Richmond Times-Dispatch, from 2001 until his retirement from the board in 2011. He was also chairman of the Audit Committee.
Williams died on December 1, 2020, at age 84, shortly after teaching a class at George Mason. His daughter said that he suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension.
Bibliography
Williams, Walter E. (1982). The State Against Blacks. New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN [login to see] 780. OCLC 15984778.
• Williams, Walter E. (1982). America: A Minority Viewpoint. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 623. OCLC 492741326.
• Williams, Walter E. (1987). All It Takes Is Guts: A Minority View. Washington: Regnery Gateway. ISBN [login to see] 696. OCLC 242317610.
• Williams, Walter E. (1989). South Africa's War Against Capitalism. New York: Praeger. ISBN [login to see] 797. OCLC 246932397.
• Williams, Walter E. (1990). South Africa's War Against Capitalism (revised ed.). Kenwyn [South Africa]: Juta. ISBN [login to see] 457. OCLC 758452218.
• Williams, Walter E. (1995). Do The Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 825. OCLC 32666686.
• Williams, Walter E. (1999). More Liberty Means Less Government: Our Founders Knew This Well. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 0-8179-9612-5. OCLC 237344402.
• Williams, Walter E. (2008). Liberty Versus the Tyranny of Socialism: Controversial Essays. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN [login to see] 129. OCLC 495418182.
• Williams, Walter E. (2010). Up From The Projects: An Autobiography. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1255-0. OCLC 670480882.
• Williams, Walter E. (2011). Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1244-4. OCLC 939069012.
• Williams, Walter E. (2015). American Contempt for Liberty. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press. ISBN 978-0-8179-1875-0. OCLC [login to see] ."
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Walter Williams Suffers No Fools
No economist of modern times has challenged and overturned more wrong-headed economic thinking than Walter Williams. For forty years he’s argued against the ...
Walter Williams Suffers No Fools
No economist of modern times has challenged and overturned more wrong-headed economic thinking than Walter Williams. For forty years he’s argued against the illogic of the minimum wage, racial quotas, occupational licensing as well as the welfare state. What drives his liberal critics crazy is his provocative argument that these government interventions hurt the very people they are designed to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzqsoM7-q4
Images:
1. Walter E. Williams speaks at Texas Tech in 2013
2. Walter E. Williams 'Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.'
3. Walter E. Williams “There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.'
4. Walter E. Williams “In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.'
Biographies:
1. economics.gmu.edu/people/wwilliam
2. encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/williams-walter-e-1936
1. Background from {[https://economics.gmu.edu/people/wwilliam]}
Eminent Scholar
Applied microeconomics, Labor economics, economics of discrimination
Walter E. Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, holds a BA degree in economics from California State University and MA and PhD degrees in economics from UCLA. In addition he holds a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Virginia Union University and Grove City College.
He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University at Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia and Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored ten books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, More Liberty Means Less Government, Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and American Contempt for Liberty.
He has made scores of radio and television appearances which include "Nightline," "Firing Line," "Face the Nation," Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose," "Crossfire," "MacNeil/Lehrer," "Wall Street Week" and was a regular commentator for "Nightly Business Report." He is also occasional substitute host for the "Rush Limbaugh" show. In addition, Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites. His book, The State Against Blacks, was published by McGraw-Hill in the winter of 1982 and was made into a television documentary entitled, "Good Intentions." His most recent documentary is “Suffer No Fools,” shown on PBS stations Fall/Spring 2014/2015, based on Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.
Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: the 2017 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, and George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year.
2. Background from {[https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/williams-walter-e-1936]}
Walter E. Williams 1936–2020
Economist, educator
Economist Walter E. Williams lends a powerful, eloquent voice to the growing chorus of black leaders and academics determined to upset the intellectual applecart in discussions about civil rights and the plight of minorities in the United States. In books, journal articles, and newspaper columns, Williams marshals economic data and sociological observations to reach a conclusion about blacks in contemporary society—a conclusion that varies sharply from the one offered by many liberal theorists. Rather than attributing economic hardship, crime, unemployment, and other social ills to racism and bigotry, Williams, a self-described radical who abhors the subjugation of individual rights to abstract notions of a greater good, puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. government, whose programs, in his view, have unquestionably hurt the very people they were designed to help.
Whether discussing minimum wage laws, education, social security reform, or affirmative action, Williams spiritedly waves the conservative banner of a free market society, arguing that government should embrace a narrow scope of interest. He claims that politicians try to accomplish too much and inadvertently create and perpetuate poverty, immorality, and dependency, qualities which society understandably decries. According to Williams, an astonishingly high percentage of the black population has been conditioned to live on welfare and act as unwitting guinea pigs in government programs that teach them to look to others, rather than to themselves, for the means of pursuing rich and productive lives.
Walter Edward Williams was bom March 31, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised there by his mother, Catherine, a day servant, after his father deserted the family when Walter was three. Following his graduation from Philadelphia public schools, Williams drove a taxi for two years, served in the army, and enrolled at California State College in Los Angeles, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1965.
It was during the final stages of his graduate training at the University of California at Los Angeles—he received his M.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1972—that Williams first began to question the role government plays in attempting to help citizens who are both politically and economically disenfranchised. After an eight-year teaching stint at Temple University in Philadelphia, Williams moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he is currently John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and a sought-out analyst on a broad variety of issues confronting popular culture.
At a Glance…
Born Walter Edward Williams, March 31, 1936, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Walter and Catherine Williams; married, 1960. Education: California State College, Los Angeles, B.A., 1965; University of California at Los Angeles, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1972.
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, professor, 1973-81; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 1981—, became John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. Author of books and articles on economical and sociological issues. Military service: Served in the U.S. Army.
Addresses: Office—Economics Department, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030.
Books Challenged Stereotypes, Traditional Liberal Views
Studying the standard economic questions concerning minimum wage laws, laws which liberals have championed in the name of the common man and woman, Williams grew to believe that such legislation actually increases unemployment. He sees a definite danger in government’s acting to effect economic and social change. Of Williams’s four books, two—America: A Minority Viewpoint and All It Takes Is Guts —are collections of his syndicated columns on social and economic topics, which he began writing in 1978. His 1982 work The State Against Blacks was his first book-length argument that the government, with its myriad social programs, has not been a good friend to blacks and indeed has been a strident enemy to social and economic black progress. Trumpeting deregulation and hands-off government, Williams revisits the dispute over minimum wage legislation and discusses the state’s strangulation of entrepreneurial spirit and economic opportunity. He claims that an uneducated poor person in New York City in the 1920s could buy a used car and turn it into a taxi business, but that a cab license, necessary today, is prohibitively expensive.
Reviewing Williams’s treatise in Commentary magazine, Michael Novak wrote: “This clear and useful book prompts a general observation. Williams is one of several black scholars who are now enriching the economic profession with fresh inquiries into culture, family, and race. Their work is bound to have an impact on future discussions of differences in ’human capital’ both in the United States and in the Third World.” Christopher Policano, writing in the Nation, also praised the book, but argued that Williams had not adequately addressed the lasting economic and psychological impact of the slave institutions that framed the historical experience of blacks brought to the United States against their will.
Consistent with his quest to debunk traditional, and in his opinion simplistic, ways of viewing the world, Williams’s 1989 book South Africa’s War Against Capitalism probes the historic, economic forces that shaped the internationally reviled and alienated apartheid regime of white minority rule there. Williams argues that contrary to popular perception, apartheid was not created as a means for white-owned businesses to exploit the work of the native black majority. He claims that in the early part of the twentieth century, business owners were inclined to hire blacks, but leaders of the communist and socialist movements decried the loss of white-worker jobs and supported the implementation of apartheid’s explicit racial separation. After World War I, when many white South Africans returned home to see that their colorblind employers had hired lower wage black workers, the call for separate worker markets was again issued.
In the larger political context, Williams berates what he views as the knee-jerk, naive, and emotional response of the international community to apartheid. Williams contends that the sanctions implemented by many countries, including the United States, merely hurt black South African workers, and the pullout of American and European corporations has enabled white South Africans to buy the companies at deeply discounted prices and operate them without regard for free market principles or racial equality. In successfully challenging the view that South Africa’s political apparatus was originally driven by greedy capitalists, and pointing out that apartheid is fundamentally a socialist-tainted system, Williams is positioned to make a larger, more theoretical point, a point which echoes throughout his writings: that capitalism and free market forces, without the intervention of government, will engender the freest and least prejudicial society.
Identified Government, not Bias, as Problem
The principal intellectual enemy that Williams fights is the belief that all the ills suffered by blacks are rooted in racism. He does not deny the existence of discrimination, only its prevalence and power in spawning so many contemporary social and economic disasters. He contends that the problems in the black community—high unemployment, crime, illiteracy, high illegitimate birth rate—are exacerbated or, at worst created, by social programs that, though well-intentioned, have not been effective.
Some economic experts believe that many leaders—both black and white—view society through the lens of bias, thereby unintentionally provoking discrimination in situations where it did not exist before. Williams contends that affirmative action—programs set up by the U.S. government in the 1970s to provide minorities with educational and employment opportunities—is one glaring example of this thesis. He attributes the disproportionately few blacks at institutions of higher learning not to discrimination, but to the fact that blacks have historically underperformed against other groups on standardized testing. Many college administrators, in an effort to bolster black presence on campus, have compromised their academic standards of admission for blacks, Williams claims. The result, he maintains, is not only a misguided policy, but a counterproductive one. “Whatever justification may be given for such a practice, it cannot help but build resentment, bitterness, and a sense of unfair play among whites, as it has already in matters of hiring, promotions, and layoffs,” Williams wrote in National Review in 1989. “Official policy calling for unequal treatment by race is morally offensive whether it is applied to favor blacks or applied to favor whites.”
Attacked Welfare System, Public School Monopoly
For Williams, the underlying reason for blacks’ poor test performance and for other problems many blacks encounter as adults is the substandard education offered in many secondary public schools, particularly inner-city schools. Again, this is an arena in which the government has woefully failed, he argues. Concurring with conservative doctrine, Williams believes that inadequate funding is not the core impediment to successful public education. The problem, as he sees it, lies in the fact that government has a monopoly on most children’s education, and where a monopoly exists, the quality of the product drops. “At the heart of the problem in public education is a system of educational delivery which creates a perverse set of incentives for all parties involved,” Williams wrote in American Education magazine in 1982. “At the core of the perverse incentives is the fact that the teachers get paid and receive raises whether or not children can read and write; administrators receive their pay whether or not children can read and write. Children (particularly minority children) receive grade promotions and diplomas whether or not they can read and write.”
Also contributing to the deterioration of black youth, according to Williams, is the breakdown of the black family—another condition fostered by well-meaning government programs, such as welfare. He argues that state handouts and unearned benefits subsidize behavior that society finds deplorable. He criticizes, for example, the provision of entitlements to women who give birth out of wedlock, claiming that the government is implicitly sanctioning an activity that contributes to the collapse of the black community.
In general, Williams claims the welfare state stymies the development of values that are essential if parents are to properly rear moral, law abiding children who can succeed in school and ultimately, as adults, contribute meaningfully to society. “We don’t have the decency to treat poor people the right way,” Williams was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor in 1991. “We do to them what we would never do to someone that we loved. We want to give the poor money without demanding responsibility. Would you do that to your children? If we love our children, we teach them responsibility.”
Leery of the “politically correct” movement, which emphasizes racial and gender sensitivity, Williams goes against the liberal grain on a broad variety of issues. He argues, for instance, against the term “African American” for blacks, claiming that the term is really meaningless. “Africa[n] refers neither to a civilization, a culture, or even a specific country,” he wrote in Society. “Instead, Africa is a continent consisting of many countries, cultures, ethnic groups, and races. Referring to Africa as a culture reflects near inexcusable ignorance.” He claims that American blacks have an ancestral but not a cultural tie to Africa, and, if they are serious in adopting a new name, should look to terms such as Nigerian-American, Ugandan-American, Senegalese-American, etc.
In questioning the far-reaching effects of discrimination, Williams wonders why contemporary black society is in tatters, while the same group of people 30 or 40 years ago, when prejudice was perhaps more widespread, succeeded in building a more cohesive, safe, and morally intact community. His answer lies in government, which, he believes, has strayed from its more legitimate function of law enforcement and entered the arena of social activism. He argues that black Americans, the supposed beneficiaries of this shift in policy direction, have not fully realized the damage that has been done to them and have been blinded to the cause of many of their most disabling troubles. Black people have bought the “siren song of promises,” he said on the television program Wall Street Week in 1991. “All Americans in general, but black Americans in particular, have to recognize that government has always been the enemy; that is, blacks were enslaved because government did not do its job.”
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No economist of modern times has challenged and overturned more wrong-headed economic thinking than Walter Williams. For forty years he’s argued against the illogic of the minimum wage, racial quotas, occupational licensing as well as the welfare state. What drives his liberal critics crazy is his provocative argument that these government interventions hurt the very people they are designed to help.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtzqsoM7-q4
Images:
1. Walter E. Williams speaks at Texas Tech in 2013
2. Walter E. Williams 'Democracy and liberty are not the same. Democracy is little more than mob rule, while liberty refers to the sovereignty of the individual.'
3. Walter E. Williams “There are people in need of help. Charity is one of the nobler human motivations. The act of reaching into one's own pockets to help a fellow man in need is praiseworthy and laudable. Reaching into someone else's pocket is despicable and worthy of condemnation.'
4. Walter E. Williams “In keeping Americans ill-educated, ill-informed and constitutionally ignorant, the education establishment has been the politician's major and most faithful partner. It is in this sense that American education can be deemed a success.'
Biographies:
1. economics.gmu.edu/people/wwilliam
2. encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/williams-walter-e-1936
1. Background from {[https://economics.gmu.edu/people/wwilliam]}
Eminent Scholar
Applied microeconomics, Labor economics, economics of discrimination
Walter E. Williams, John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics, holds a BA degree in economics from California State University and MA and PhD degrees in economics from UCLA. In addition he holds a Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Virginia Union University and Grove City College.
He has also served on the faculties of Los Angeles City College, California State University at Los Angeles, and Temple University in Philadelphia and Grove City College, Grove City, Pennsylvania.
Dr. Williams is the author of over 150 publications which have appeared in scholarly journals such as Economic Inquiry, American Economic Review, Georgia Law Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy and popular publications such as Newsweek, Ideas on Liberty, National Review, Reader's Digest, Cato Journal, and Policy Review. He has authored ten books: America: A Minority Viewpoint, The State Against Blacks, which was later made into the PBS documentary "Good Intentions," All It Takes Is Guts, South Africa's War Against Capitalism, which was later revised for South African publication, Do the Right Thing: The People's Economist Speaks, More Liberty Means Less Government, Liberty vs. the Tyranny of Socialism, Up From The Projects: An Autobiography, Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination? and American Contempt for Liberty.
He has made scores of radio and television appearances which include "Nightline," "Firing Line," "Face the Nation," Milton Friedman's "Free To Choose," "Crossfire," "MacNeil/Lehrer," "Wall Street Week" and was a regular commentator for "Nightly Business Report." He is also occasional substitute host for the "Rush Limbaugh" show. In addition, Dr. Williams writes a nationally syndicated weekly column that is carried by approximately 140 newspapers and several web sites. His book, The State Against Blacks, was published by McGraw-Hill in the winter of 1982 and was made into a television documentary entitled, "Good Intentions." His most recent documentary is “Suffer No Fools,” shown on PBS stations Fall/Spring 2014/2015, based on Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.
Dr. Williams has received numerous fellowships and awards including: the 2017 Bradley Prize from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, California State University Distinguished Alumnus Award, and George Mason University Faculty Member of the Year.
2. Background from {[https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/williams-walter-e-1936]}
Walter E. Williams 1936–2020
Economist, educator
Economist Walter E. Williams lends a powerful, eloquent voice to the growing chorus of black leaders and academics determined to upset the intellectual applecart in discussions about civil rights and the plight of minorities in the United States. In books, journal articles, and newspaper columns, Williams marshals economic data and sociological observations to reach a conclusion about blacks in contemporary society—a conclusion that varies sharply from the one offered by many liberal theorists. Rather than attributing economic hardship, crime, unemployment, and other social ills to racism and bigotry, Williams, a self-described radical who abhors the subjugation of individual rights to abstract notions of a greater good, puts the blame squarely on the shoulders of the U.S. government, whose programs, in his view, have unquestionably hurt the very people they were designed to help.
Whether discussing minimum wage laws, education, social security reform, or affirmative action, Williams spiritedly waves the conservative banner of a free market society, arguing that government should embrace a narrow scope of interest. He claims that politicians try to accomplish too much and inadvertently create and perpetuate poverty, immorality, and dependency, qualities which society understandably decries. According to Williams, an astonishingly high percentage of the black population has been conditioned to live on welfare and act as unwitting guinea pigs in government programs that teach them to look to others, rather than to themselves, for the means of pursuing rich and productive lives.
Walter Edward Williams was bom March 31, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and was raised there by his mother, Catherine, a day servant, after his father deserted the family when Walter was three. Following his graduation from Philadelphia public schools, Williams drove a taxi for two years, served in the army, and enrolled at California State College in Los Angeles, where he received his undergraduate degree in 1965.
It was during the final stages of his graduate training at the University of California at Los Angeles—he received his M.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1972—that Williams first began to question the role government plays in attempting to help citizens who are both politically and economically disenfranchised. After an eight-year teaching stint at Temple University in Philadelphia, Williams moved to George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where he is currently John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and a sought-out analyst on a broad variety of issues confronting popular culture.
At a Glance…
Born Walter Edward Williams, March 31, 1936, in Philadelphia, PA; son of Walter and Catherine Williams; married, 1960. Education: California State College, Los Angeles, B.A., 1965; University of California at Los Angeles, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1972.
Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, professor, 1973-81; George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, 1981—, became John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics. Author of books and articles on economical and sociological issues. Military service: Served in the U.S. Army.
Addresses: Office—Economics Department, George Mason University, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax, VA 22030.
Books Challenged Stereotypes, Traditional Liberal Views
Studying the standard economic questions concerning minimum wage laws, laws which liberals have championed in the name of the common man and woman, Williams grew to believe that such legislation actually increases unemployment. He sees a definite danger in government’s acting to effect economic and social change. Of Williams’s four books, two—America: A Minority Viewpoint and All It Takes Is Guts —are collections of his syndicated columns on social and economic topics, which he began writing in 1978. His 1982 work The State Against Blacks was his first book-length argument that the government, with its myriad social programs, has not been a good friend to blacks and indeed has been a strident enemy to social and economic black progress. Trumpeting deregulation and hands-off government, Williams revisits the dispute over minimum wage legislation and discusses the state’s strangulation of entrepreneurial spirit and economic opportunity. He claims that an uneducated poor person in New York City in the 1920s could buy a used car and turn it into a taxi business, but that a cab license, necessary today, is prohibitively expensive.
Reviewing Williams’s treatise in Commentary magazine, Michael Novak wrote: “This clear and useful book prompts a general observation. Williams is one of several black scholars who are now enriching the economic profession with fresh inquiries into culture, family, and race. Their work is bound to have an impact on future discussions of differences in ’human capital’ both in the United States and in the Third World.” Christopher Policano, writing in the Nation, also praised the book, but argued that Williams had not adequately addressed the lasting economic and psychological impact of the slave institutions that framed the historical experience of blacks brought to the United States against their will.
Consistent with his quest to debunk traditional, and in his opinion simplistic, ways of viewing the world, Williams’s 1989 book South Africa’s War Against Capitalism probes the historic, economic forces that shaped the internationally reviled and alienated apartheid regime of white minority rule there. Williams argues that contrary to popular perception, apartheid was not created as a means for white-owned businesses to exploit the work of the native black majority. He claims that in the early part of the twentieth century, business owners were inclined to hire blacks, but leaders of the communist and socialist movements decried the loss of white-worker jobs and supported the implementation of apartheid’s explicit racial separation. After World War I, when many white South Africans returned home to see that their colorblind employers had hired lower wage black workers, the call for separate worker markets was again issued.
In the larger political context, Williams berates what he views as the knee-jerk, naive, and emotional response of the international community to apartheid. Williams contends that the sanctions implemented by many countries, including the United States, merely hurt black South African workers, and the pullout of American and European corporations has enabled white South Africans to buy the companies at deeply discounted prices and operate them without regard for free market principles or racial equality. In successfully challenging the view that South Africa’s political apparatus was originally driven by greedy capitalists, and pointing out that apartheid is fundamentally a socialist-tainted system, Williams is positioned to make a larger, more theoretical point, a point which echoes throughout his writings: that capitalism and free market forces, without the intervention of government, will engender the freest and least prejudicial society.
Identified Government, not Bias, as Problem
The principal intellectual enemy that Williams fights is the belief that all the ills suffered by blacks are rooted in racism. He does not deny the existence of discrimination, only its prevalence and power in spawning so many contemporary social and economic disasters. He contends that the problems in the black community—high unemployment, crime, illiteracy, high illegitimate birth rate—are exacerbated or, at worst created, by social programs that, though well-intentioned, have not been effective.
Some economic experts believe that many leaders—both black and white—view society through the lens of bias, thereby unintentionally provoking discrimination in situations where it did not exist before. Williams contends that affirmative action—programs set up by the U.S. government in the 1970s to provide minorities with educational and employment opportunities—is one glaring example of this thesis. He attributes the disproportionately few blacks at institutions of higher learning not to discrimination, but to the fact that blacks have historically underperformed against other groups on standardized testing. Many college administrators, in an effort to bolster black presence on campus, have compromised their academic standards of admission for blacks, Williams claims. The result, he maintains, is not only a misguided policy, but a counterproductive one. “Whatever justification may be given for such a practice, it cannot help but build resentment, bitterness, and a sense of unfair play among whites, as it has already in matters of hiring, promotions, and layoffs,” Williams wrote in National Review in 1989. “Official policy calling for unequal treatment by race is morally offensive whether it is applied to favor blacks or applied to favor whites.”
Attacked Welfare System, Public School Monopoly
For Williams, the underlying reason for blacks’ poor test performance and for other problems many blacks encounter as adults is the substandard education offered in many secondary public schools, particularly inner-city schools. Again, this is an arena in which the government has woefully failed, he argues. Concurring with conservative doctrine, Williams believes that inadequate funding is not the core impediment to successful public education. The problem, as he sees it, lies in the fact that government has a monopoly on most children’s education, and where a monopoly exists, the quality of the product drops. “At the heart of the problem in public education is a system of educational delivery which creates a perverse set of incentives for all parties involved,” Williams wrote in American Education magazine in 1982. “At the core of the perverse incentives is the fact that the teachers get paid and receive raises whether or not children can read and write; administrators receive their pay whether or not children can read and write. Children (particularly minority children) receive grade promotions and diplomas whether or not they can read and write.”
Also contributing to the deterioration of black youth, according to Williams, is the breakdown of the black family—another condition fostered by well-meaning government programs, such as welfare. He argues that state handouts and unearned benefits subsidize behavior that society finds deplorable. He criticizes, for example, the provision of entitlements to women who give birth out of wedlock, claiming that the government is implicitly sanctioning an activity that contributes to the collapse of the black community.
In general, Williams claims the welfare state stymies the development of values that are essential if parents are to properly rear moral, law abiding children who can succeed in school and ultimately, as adults, contribute meaningfully to society. “We don’t have the decency to treat poor people the right way,” Williams was quoted as saying in the Christian Science Monitor in 1991. “We do to them what we would never do to someone that we loved. We want to give the poor money without demanding responsibility. Would you do that to your children? If we love our children, we teach them responsibility.”
Leery of the “politically correct” movement, which emphasizes racial and gender sensitivity, Williams goes against the liberal grain on a broad variety of issues. He argues, for instance, against the term “African American” for blacks, claiming that the term is really meaningless. “Africa[n] refers neither to a civilization, a culture, or even a specific country,” he wrote in Society. “Instead, Africa is a continent consisting of many countries, cultures, ethnic groups, and races. Referring to Africa as a culture reflects near inexcusable ignorance.” He claims that American blacks have an ancestral but not a cultural tie to Africa, and, if they are serious in adopting a new name, should look to terms such as Nigerian-American, Ugandan-American, Senegalese-American, etc.
In questioning the far-reaching effects of discrimination, Williams wonders why contemporary black society is in tatters, while the same group of people 30 or 40 years ago, when prejudice was perhaps more widespread, succeeded in building a more cohesive, safe, and morally intact community. His answer lies in government, which, he believes, has strayed from its more legitimate function of law enforcement and entered the arena of social activism. He argues that black Americans, the supposed beneficiaries of this shift in policy direction, have not fully realized the damage that has been done to them and have been blinded to the cause of many of their most disabling troubles. Black people have bought the “siren song of promises,” he said on the television program Wall Street Week in 1991. “All Americans in general, but black Americans in particular, have to recognize that government has always been the enemy; that is, blacks were enslaved because government did not do its job.”
FYI Sgt John H. SGM Bill FrazerCSM (Join to see)SSG Jeffrey LeakeSSG Paul HeadleeSGM Major StroupeCPL Michael PeckSSG Jeff Furgerson]Sgt (Join to see)PO1 Steve Ditto SPC Michael Terrell CPL Douglas ChryslerSP5 Geoffrey Vannerson LTC John Shaw MSgt Paul Connors SPC Matthew Lamb GySgt John Hudson SPC(P) (Join to see) SSG Robert WebsterSFC Bernard Walko
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Rest in Peace Mr Williams, sad news to share MAJ Dale E. Wilson, Ph.D. . He was a very professional columnist.
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I've complained of this for years, the school system itself is dumming down our children and have been since the 60's. RIP Mr. Williams it's happening to all of our children.
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