AfErmative Scholarshipnby Murray N. Rothbardn”An excellent scholar! One that hath a head Hlled with calves’ brains without any sage in it.”nPreferential Policies: AnnInternational Perspectivenby Thomas SowellnNew York: William Morrow;n221 pp., $17.95nThomas Sowell has become a virtualnone-man publishing industry,nand Preferential Policies is his latestncontribution to the Sowell book-of-theyearnclub. It is not surprising to findnthat this scattered and woefully disorganizednpotboiler is part of a “muchnlarger international study of racial andnethnic groups — a study still in progress.”nUnfortunately, the wrongheadednessnSowell displays even in the fewncases where he seems to have donensubstantial work (as in Ceylon/SrinLanka) gives us little reason to thinknthat his major work will be much of annimprovement.nAn example of his scholarship: in hisnfew brief references to blacks in thenUnited States, Sowell does not seem tonMurray N. Rothbard is a professornof economics at the University ofnLas Vegas.n32/CHRONICLESnrealize that his accounts contradictneach other. He portrays the conditionnof blacks (at least outside of governmentnemployment) as pretty much ansteady march upward from the CivilnWar until the counterproductive apparatusnof affirmative action arrived in then1960’s; yet he writes of the pervasivenJim Crow streetcar laws passed betweenn1900 and 1903, laws whichnclearly marked a worsening of thenposition of Southern blacks. This casenalso offers a good example of Sowell’snlack of historical curiosity. If he hadnlooked a bit deeper, he would havendiscovered the reason for the wave ofnJim Crow in the South: the Progressivenmovement, which disenfranchisednblack voters. In short. Southern Bourbonsn(laissez-faire conservatives), whonhad ruled since Reconstruction, werenreplaced by Progressives, who intervenednin issues of race as well asneconomics. Ironically, attention to thisnpoint would have strengthened Sowell’snfree-market approach.nTo impose some sort of order on hisnsmattering of countries and examples,nSowell unfortunately chose to separatenhis cases into three categories: “Major­nnn— John Websternity Preferences [Political Privileges] innMajority Economies,” “Majority Preferencesnin Minority Economies,” i.e.nwhere minorities are economicallyndominant, and “Minority Preferencesnin Majority Economies” (roughly,nmodern affirmative action policies fornchosen minorities). But these organizingnprinciples make little difference innthe analysis, nor do they hold up wellnas distinctions under investigation.nSowell; for example, finds only twonmodern cases of Category 1: thenAmerican South and South Africa.nAnd yet whites in South Africa arenclearly a minority of the population, sonthat this case should be placed in anfourth category curiously absent fromnSowell’s book: “Minority Preferencesnin Minority Economies.” Furthermore,nthe argument could be madenthat whites were a minority in much ofnthe South, so that the U.S. case mightncome under the fourth category asnwell. In fact, the only clear-cut existingncase of Category 1 is glaringly absent:ngovernmental disabilities (such as prohibitionnof the ownership of land)nplaced by the state of Israel on its Arabnminority. (Israel is only mentioned inn