Walter Williams

Standing in long lines to pass through airport security, I thought: Where's racial and sexual profiling now when it can benefit most, if not all, passengers? You say: "What's wrong with you, Williams? Everybody knows that profiling has been declared racist and sex...

When the NAACP, Urban League and black politicians talk about civil rights, they talk mostly about how many blacks are in college, the racial composition of schools and neighborhoods or the number of blacks employed in what positions. The Institute for Justice has...

College campuses are home to elitists who are out of touch with and have contempt for American values. Let's look at some of their statements after the recent terrorist attacks. Hours after the terrorist attacks, University of New Mexico History Professor Richard...

Here are some test questions. Question 1: Which of the following is equal to a quarter of a million? (a) 40,000 (b) 250,000 (c) 2,500,000 (d) 1/4,000,000 or (e) 4/1,000,000? Question 2: Martin Luther King Jr. (insert the correct choice) for the poor of all races. (a)...

Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, published "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776. His laissez faire economics played a significant role in the market philosophy surrounding the founding of our nation. Leftist professors have taught generations of students that...

Vultures and looters can always be expected in the wake of tragedies; they take advantage of increased opportunities to steal. Looters were arrested in New York -- caught stealing from shops in the rubble of the World Trade Center. The losses caused by these vultures...

While people might be motivated by non-economic factors, from a strictly economic point of view it simply doesn't pay individual voters to learn about and take action against the myriad assaults emanating from the political area. That's what my colleagues at George...

Aren't you a bit perplexed at how rapidly our FBI and CIA identified, arrested or detained so many people involved in the terrorist attack? The answer's easy. The FBI and CIA had a lot of information about terrorists and their organizations before the attack, but they...

Each semester, I spend a few minutes explaining to my students, both graduate and undergraduate, the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Why? Mother Nature permits us to do many things, but she prohibits the construction of machines of the first and second kinds....

John McWhorter, linguistics professor at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, has written a compelling essay in the summer 2001 issue of City Journal titled, "Toward a Usable Black History." Last year, he wrote "Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black...

There's the old admonition: It's better to be safe than sorry. The fact of life is that one can be both safe and sorry -- that's if we acknowledge the consequences of having too much safety. Let's look at it. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigators...

A Seattle policeman explained de-policing as: "Parking under a shady tree to work on a crossword puzzle is a great alternative to being labeled a racist and being dragged through an inquest, a review board, an FBI and U.S. attorney investigation, and a lawsuit."...

Time magazine: "Scientists no longer doubt that global warming is happening, and almost nobody questions the fact that humans are at least partly responsible." U.S. News & World Report chimed in, referring to the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate...

Language is never static because in the process of progress, new words emerge for new tools and concepts. Some of today's new language, like cosmetics, conceal and confuse. Since I've been on earth a sufficient interval of time to see some of this, let's look at it....

June 30 marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Frederic Bastiat. If one were to list the top 10 advocates of liberty, French philosopher-economist Bastiat would rank high on that list. He'd easily outrank any one of the founders of our nation. I'm honored to...

A measure of accommodation is accorded children because they are not adults and thus not to be held to the same accountability standards. But should that same accommodation be accorded to a race of people? In the March 2001 edition of The American Enterprise magazine,...

I buy more from my grocer than he buys from me. I buy more from my auto dealer than he buys from me. The trade imbalance doesn't stop there. My grocer and auto dealer both buy more from their wholesaler than the wholesaler buys from them. These are examples of trade...