Thomas Sowell: Is Truth Irrelevant?

Thomas Sowell: Is Truth Irrelevant?  Thomas Sowell notes how many noticed the riots which took place January 5, but paid so little attention to the riots that took place in various cities across the country last year. For too many people, especially in the media, what is right and wrong, true or false, depends on who it helps or hurts politically. Too many media people who are supposed to be reporters act as if they are combatants in political wars. The following in italics are quotes from Sowell's article.

Someone once said that, in a war, truth is the first casualty. That has certainly been so in the media — and in much of academia as well. 

Unfortunately, too many American educational institutions — from elementary schools to universities — have become indoctrination centers. The riots that swept across the country last year are fruits of that indoctrination and the utter disregard for other people's rights that accompanied those riots.

At the heart of that indoctrination is a sense of grievance and victimhood when others have better outcomes — which are automatically called "privileges" and never called "achievements," regardless of what the actual facts are.

Facts don't matter in such issues, any more than facts mattered when smearing [Abraham] Lincoln.

Any "under-representation" of any group in any endeavor can be taken as evidence or proof of discriminatory bias. But those who argue this way cannot show us any society — anywhere in the world, or at any time during thousands of years of recorded history — that had all groups represented proportionally in all endeavors. 

Whites are "under-represented" in the NBA and NFL. About 80% of players in both organizations  are black. Is that due to discriminatory bias?