Should we conceal negative facts about specific groups, such as minorities? This is a growing question in a time where we are desperate to report everything bad about certain groups and nothing bad about others, while trumpeting everything good about some groups and saying nothing good about others.

   I think Thomas Sowell put it best. Ignoring reality doesn’t help you avoid it, and it sure doesn’t help you fix if. And focusing on your pride can often get in the way of making use of the tools others have used to improve their own lives. 

   As hard as it is to face certain realities about ourselves or about whole groups, just because you decide to accept them as real doesn’t mean you can’t do something about them. It doesn’t make them destiny for a particular individual, or even for a whole group. As he once said, there isn’t a predetermined amount of criminality or lack of education or illegitimacy. My own family had virtually no education two generations ago, and by the next generation had educations ranging from high school to doctorate degrees. That’s a pretty big leap, from nothing ever to the maximum possible in the space of just fifty years. 

    We have far more control over many things about ourselves than we think, because we aren’t groups, we are individuals. And we can choose to think and act as individuals and take control of our own lives. And we can choose what group behaviors to follow and imitate. 

   Although we will always be ourselves, we do get to decide what to do with that and how we will use what we are given. And that’s an immense amount of power. Even whole cultures can be transformed radically in relatively short amount of time, if the cultural passion for it is strong enough. I believe Sowell pointed to the Scottish enlightenment and the acquisition of literacy by black Americans after the Civil war as quite shocking examples of rapid cultural change. And there have been many other rapid cultural transformations. 
   Of course you can also lose an enormous amount in a short amount of time too. And I believe Charles Murray has argued elsewhere that that’s something that’s happening rapidly to large sectors of white America. You can have a rapid negative transformation as well as a positive one. 
    It’s useful to face reality. If you can see it, you can do something about it. The real question is, to what degree can you address the problem, and how quickly, and by what means?
    Liberals generally would argue the answer is: yes, now, and through government policy and the application of legislative, regulatory, social, and legal force. Conservatives would generally argue the answer is: possibly if you’re really committed to it, slowly and steadily, and by working at it diligently and investing in it and making wise choices in your own life. I think there’s merit in both approaches. The second is more likely to succeed if it has the support of the first, but the first will achieve nothing if it does not have the support of the second.