The destruction in Ferguson, Missouri, from riots, looting and burning will "adversely affect blacks yet unborn who will still be paying the price for it 10-20 years from now," says Thomas Sowell, a respected African-American economist and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
Speaking on Fox News' "Hannity," Sowell, citing the examples of Detroit and Harlem, told Sean Hannity, "They're not going to have businesses there that you had before. I've seen this happen in other cities."
"A city doesn't get over this kind of stuff in a few years."
Sowell, author of "Basic Economics," particularly blasted members of the
Congressional Black Caucus who spoke on the House floor with their hands raised in a "hands up, don't shoot" posture, despite witness testimony, forensics and autopsy reports that indicate Michael Brown did not have his hands up when he was shot by former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson, the Daily Caller reports.
Sowell told Hannity the legislators were doing it for "political reasons," the
Washington Times reports.
"I thought of [Nazi propagandist] Joseph Goebbels' doctrine: People will believe any lie if it's repeated often enough and loud enough. They're repeating it often enough and loud enough, and it will pay off for them personally and politically," he told Hannity.
"People who are out to forward their political careers say and do things that have no relationship whatever to reality or to anybody else's interests but their own."
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Writing in
National Review, Sowell said, "What are the consequences to be expected from an orgy of anarchy that started in Ferguson, Missouri, and has spread around the country?"
"The first victims of the mob rampages in Ferguson have been people who had nothing to do with Michael Brown or the police. These include people — many of them black or members of other minorities — who have seen the businesses they worked to build destroyed, perhaps never to be revived.
"But these are only the first victims. If the history of other communities ravaged by riots in years past is any indication, there are blacks yet unborn who will be paying the price of these riots for years to come."
Using Detroit as an example, Sowell wrote, "Sometimes it is a particular neighborhood that never recovers, and sometimes it is a whole city. Detroit is a classic example. It had the worst riot of the 1960s, with 43 deaths — 33 of them black people.
"Businesses left Detroit, taking with them jobs and taxes that were very much needed to keep the city viable. Middle-class people — both black and white — also fled."
Meanwhile, Sowell wrote, "Who benefits from the Ferguson riots? The biggest beneficiaries are politicians and racial demagogues."
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