THE WRIGHT STUFF: Thomas Sowell

THE WRIGHT STUFF: Thomas Sowell uses the upcoming 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers’ first flight as a jumping off point for an essay on the dangers of “diversity” in education:

This mania for “diversity” has spread far and wide. When I looked through my nieces’ high school math book, I saw many pictures of noted mathematicians but — judging by those pictures — you would never dream that anything worth noting had ever been done in mathematics by any white males.

This petty-minded falsification of history is less disturbing than the indoctrination-minded “educators” who are twisting reality to fit their vision. Those who cannot tell the difference between education and brainwashing do not belong in our schools.

History is what happened, not what we wish had happened or what a theory says should have happened. One of the reasons for the great value of history is that it allows us to check our current beliefs against hard facts from around the world and across the centuries.

But history cannot be a reality check for today’s fashionable visions when history is itself shaped by those visions. When that happens, we are sealing ourselves up in a closed world of assumptions.

There is no evidence that the Wright brothers intended the airplane to be flown, or ridden in, only by white people. Many of the great breakthroughs in science and technology were gifts to the whole human race. Those whose efforts created these breakthroughs were exalted because of their contributions to mankind, not to their particular tribe or sex.

Sowell concludes, “In trying to cheapen those people as ‘dead white males’, we only cheapen ourselves and do nothing to promote similar achievements by people of every description. When the Wright brothers rose off the ground, we all rose off the ground.”