Archived Columns From 2014

by Walter Williams

2014 January

Parting CompanyJanuary 01, 2014

Here’s a question that I’ve asked in the past that needs to be revisited. Unless one wishes to obfuscate, it has a simple yes or no answer. If one group of p...

Politics and Minimum WageJanuary 08, 2014

There’s little debate among academic economists about the effect of minimum wages. University of California, Irvine economist David Neumark has examined more...

Income InequalityJanuary 15, 2014

Democrats plan to demagogue income inequality and the wealth gap for political gain in this year’s elections. Most of what’s said about income inequality is ...

OK to Feel SorryJanuary 22, 2014

At one time in our nation’s history, blacks feeling sorry for whites was verboten. That was portrayed in Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “To Kill ...

Politics of Hate and EnvyJanuary 29, 2014

Part of the progressive agenda is to create hate and envy. One component of that agenda is to attack the large differences between a corporation’s chief exec...

2014 February

Schoolteacher CheatingFebruary 05, 2014

Philadelphia’s public school system has joined several other big-city school systems, such as those in Atlanta, Detroit and Washington, D.C., in widespread t...

Dependency, Not PovertyFebruary 12, 2014

There is no material poverty in the U.S. Here are a few facts about people whom the Census Bureau labels as poor. Dr. Robert Rector and Rachel Sheffield, in ...

Concealing EvilFebruary 19, 2014

Evil acts are given an aura of moral legitimacy by noble-sounding socialistic expressions, such as spreading the wealth, income redistribution, caring for th...

Solutions to Black EducationFebruary 26, 2014

A fortnight ago, my column focused on how Philadelphia’s schoolteachers have joined public-school teachers in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, C...

2014 March

Black People DupedMarch 05, 2014

People in the media and academia are mostly leftists hellbent on growing government and controlling our lives. Black people, their politicians and civil righ...

Governed by Rules, Not MenMarch 12, 2014

What kind of rules should govern our lives? I’d argue that the best rules are those that we’d be satisfied with if our very worst enemy were in charge of dec...

Is There Wage Stagnation?March 19, 2014

Many economists, politicians and pundits assert that median wages have stagnated since the 1970s. That’s a call for government to do something about it. But ...

Bizarre Arguments and BehaviorMarch 26, 2014

Some statements and arguments are so asinine that you’d have to be an academic or a leftist to take them seriously. Take the accusation that Republicans and ...

2014 April

Sex and Race EqualityApril 02, 2014

There are several race and sex issues that need addressing. Let’s look at a few of them with an ear to these questions: Should we insist upon equal treatment...

How to Assist EvilApril 09, 2014

“Engineering Evil” is a documentary recently shown on the Military History channel. It’s a story of Nazi Germany’s murder campaign before and during World Wa...

Equality in DisciplineApril 16, 2014

George Leef, director of research for the North Carolina-based John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, authored a Forbes op-ed article titled “...

Wage DiscriminationApril 23, 2014

“President Obama Vows Zero Tolerance on Gender Wage Gap,” read one headline. Another read, “Women Still Earned 77 Cents On Men’s Dollar In 2012.” It’s presum...

The Constitution or Good Ideas?April 30, 2014

Let me run through a few good ideas. I think it’s a good idea for children to eat healthful, wholesome foods. In the raising of our daughter, before-dinner t...

2014 May

Coming End to Racial PreferencesMay 07, 2014

Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court 6-2 ruling in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al. upheld Michigan’s constitutional amendment that bans r...

A Lesson on Racial DiscriminationMay 14, 2014

Donald Sterling, Los Angeles Clippers owner, was recorded by his mistress making some crude racist remarks. Since then, Sterling’s racist comments have domin...

America's Budding TyrantsMay 21, 2014

From the Nazis to the Stalinists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, and why is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization ...

White PrivilegeMay 28, 2014

What would you think if your 8-year-old came home and told you that “white privilege is something that white people have, meaning they have an advantage in a...

2014 June

Petty AnnoyancesJune 04, 2014

Most who read my columns think that I’m only annoyed by politicians, growing government and Americans who have little respect or love for liberty and our Con...

Who Owns You?June 11, 2014

Darcy Olsen, president of the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, and Richard Garr, president of Neuralstem, a biotech company, wrote “Right to Try experiment...

Slavery ReparationsJune 18, 2014

Calls for slavery reparations have returned with the publication of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic magazine (May 21, 2014). In ...

The Education Establishment's SuccessJune 25, 2014

Many view America’s education as a failure, but in at least one important way, it’s been a success — a success in dumbing down the nation so that we fall eas...

2014 July

Economic FreedomJuly 02, 2014

A couple of years ago, President Barack Obama, speaking on the economy, told an audience in Osawatomie, Kansas: “‘The market will take care of everything,’ t...

Spending and MoralityJuly 09, 2014

During last year’s budget negotiation meetings, President Barack Obama told House Speaker John Boehner, “We don’t have a spending problem.” When Boehner resp...

Our Unwillingness to Defend OurselvesJuly 16, 2014

The U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 2012 losses because of personal identity theft totaled $24.7 billion (http://tinyurl....

Do Blacks Need Favors?July 23, 2014

Earlier this month, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act was celebrated. During the act’s legislative debate, then-Sen. Hubert Humphrey, responding t...

Please Stop Helping UsJuly 30, 2014

While reading the first chapter of Jason Riley’s new book, “Please Stop Helping Us,” I thought about Will Rogers’ Prohibition-era observation that “Oklahoman...

2014 August

Western Anti-SemitismAugust 06, 2014

Navi Pillay, U.N. high commissioner for human rights, has accused both Israel and Hamas militants of committing war crimes in the Gaza conflict. Her harshest...

Get Ready for DenialsAugust 13, 2014

Fox News correspondent Geraldo Rivera accused Matt Drudge’s website of “the worst kind of jingoistic rhetoric ever” for carrying news stories about the dange...

Tuition Pays for ThisAugust 20, 2014

According to College Board, average tuition and fees for the 2013-14 school year totaled $30,094 at private colleges, $8,893 for in-state residents at public...

Blacks Must Confront RealityAugust 27, 2014

Though racial discrimination exists, it is nowhere near the barrier it once was. The relevant question is: How much of what we see today can be explained by ...

2014 September

Things I Don't UnderstandSeptember 03, 2014

There are things that really puzzle me. Some life insurance companies charge lower premiums if you haven’t made a life-shortening lifestyle choice. Being a n...

Favors and Loot for SaleSeptember 10, 2014

At a July fundraising event in Chicago, Mrs. Michelle Obama remarked, “So, yeah, there’s too much money in politics. There’s (sic) special interests that hav...

Multiculturalism Is a FailureSeptember 17, 2014

German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has “utterly failed.” Both Australia’s ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain’s e...

Do Statistical Disparities Mean Injustice?September 24, 2014

How many times have we heard laments such as “women are 50 percent of the population but only 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs” and, as the Justice Department r...

2014 October

Will the West Defend Itself?October 01, 2014

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), sometimes called ISIS or IS, is a Sunni extremist group that follows al-Qaida’s anti-West ideology and sees ...

Teacher IndoctrinationOctober 08, 2014

Students at several Jefferson County, Colorado, high schools walked out to protest the school board’s recently proposed curriculum review committee that seek...

Officially Killing AmericansOctober 15, 2014

The Food and Drug Administration can make two types of errors. It can approve a drug that has dangerous unanticipated side effects, or it can reject or delay...

Embarrassing EconomistsOctober 22, 2014

So as to give some perspective, I’m going to ask readers for their guesses about human behavior before explaining my embarrassment by some of my fellow econo...

Africa: A Tragic ContinentOctober 29, 2014

Here’s how my Aug. 11, 2003, column began: “Anyone who believes President Bush’s Africa initiative, including sending U.S. troops to Liberia, will amount to ...

2014 November

Scholar-Athlete CharadeNovember 05, 2014

Last year’s column “Dishonest Educators” (1/9/2013) reported on the largest school cheating scandal in U.S. history. In more than three-quarters of the 56 At...

Educational FraudNovember 12, 2014

It would be unreasonable to expect a student with the reading, writing and computing abilities of an eighth-grader to do well in college. If such a student w...

Obama vs. UsNovember 19, 2014

Suppose you saw a person driving his car on the wrong side of a highway, against the traffic. Would you call him a stupid and/or incompetent driver? You say,...

Elite Contempt for Ordinary AmericansNovember 26, 2014

Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and paid architect of Obamacare, has shocked and disgusted many Americans. In 2013, he explained to a University of Pennsylvan...

2014 December

Can Racial Discrimination Explain Much?December 03, 2014

In the medical profession, there is the admonition primum non nocere, the Latin expression for “first, do no harm.” In order not to do harm, at the minimum, ...

What's Rule of Law?December 10, 2014

President Barack Obama said just before the recent Ferguson, Missouri, riots, “First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.” Most Americans ...

Should Profiling Be Banned?December 17, 2014

Last week, the Obama administration announced new curbs on racial profiling by federal law enforcement. Before deciding whether this is good or bad policy, w...

Black Progression and RetrogressionDecember 24, 2014

There is no question, though it’s not acknowledged enough, that black Americans have made greater gains, over some of the highest hurdles and in a very short...

Liberals' Use of Black PeopleDecember 31, 2014

Back in the day, when hunting was the major source of food, hunters often used stalking horses as a means of sneaking up on their quarry. They would walk on ...