The real issue is not whether inequality exists. It is whether government should be given the power to engineer results.
Sowell argues that once the state starts assigning status to groups, freedom shrinks for everyone. The process itself is the danger, regardless of the noble intentions behind it.
He rejects the claim that Black people demanded equality of results through quotas. The data, he says, shows otherwise. What is presented as “the black position” is often just the position of certain intellectuals and activists speaking on their behalf.
Freedom to achieve unequal outcomes has historically done more for the poor than government programs that try to assign them a place.