Walter Williams

The New York Times willfully suffered on Thursday what could only be referred to as its “austere religious scholar” moment (as a callback to The Washington Post’s obituary of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi) as it touted the retirement of the editor in chief for the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece the Global Times, trumpeting Hu Xijin as having helmed “some have called…

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 stuff. If we look only at the benefits of an action, policy, or program, then we will do anything because there is a benefit to any action, policy, or program. Think about one simple…

Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore's school system. What they found was an utter disgrace. In 19 of Baltimore's 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math. In 13 of Baltimore's high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math. In five Baltimore City high schools, not a single student scored…

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 behavioral phenomenon with another.

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 apply antibiotics to your feet. Still no relief. Then the physician suggests that you wear sandals instead of…

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

I was a teenager, growing up in the Richard Allen housing project of North Philadelphia, when Emmett Till was lynched in Money, Mississippi, 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 3,446, were black people, and 27%, or 1,297, were white people. Many…

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 could be friends. Once, when Reagan confronted O'Neill about nasty things that he said about…

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, College Reform and College Fix, report on the despicable teachings on college campuses across the nation. Let us look at some of it.

During slavery, many black women, often in a forcible union with a white man, bore mixed-race children. Based on their percentage of white blood, they were deemed "mulattos," "quadroons," "octoroons" or even "hexadecaroons." Depending on skin color, they could pass as white and avoid the gross racial discrimination suffered by their darker skinned brothers and sisters. This was portrayed in a…

The violence, looting and mayhem that 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 commonsense and the principles of liberty. Chief among their lessons is a need to attack free speech in the form of prohibitions against so-called hate speech and microaggressions.…

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 United States." President Donald Trump has nominated Amy Coney Barrett as U.S. Supreme Court…

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 saying: "As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate." Sloppy language permits…

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 and racial discrimination. Such poverty and discrimination is all but nonexistent today…