Up From the Projects: An Autobiography
I have long admired Dr. Walter E Williams and his defense of free market capitalism, which spanned his entire life, from when he first entered an economics class, until his death on December 2, 2020, and so I read his autobiography, Up From the Projects early in my book reviewing journey.
Dr. Williams was born March 31, 1936 in Philadelphia, PA, and was raised by a single mother, his father having left right after his younger sister was born. His mother always believed in education and very early on he was a weekly attendee at the local library, adding to his own education on top of the public education.
Dr. Williams credits his success in life to having received honest feedback from his teachers and bosses. And he’s sure it was honest because the feedback he got was during a time before it popular to like black people…meaning it wasn’t affirmative action based, and it wasn’t tempered to ease his hurt feelings. This made it possible for him to actually self-correct when advised he was doing something wrong, instead of having smoke blown up his ass that everything he did was right all the time. Versus the kid gloves used today with the current academic clients.
He was a huge critic of affirmative action, believing that it destroyed meritocracy and the minds of a generation.
He met his wife before being drafted to the US Army, and he used his sharp wit and sarcasm to fight against the segregation and racism in the army during his tenure. He was drafted in 1959 and spent his first year in Georgia…so, yeah. Georgia in 1959/60 was a rough time to be black.
And he called out the obvious racism in such a clever way that he never got in trouble for pointing out the blatant hypocrisy. I had not laughed that hard in at least two weeks…since I had just spent two weeks reading about fascism and communism. But still! His sharp wit was as targeted as ever and proved his point quite handily.
One time he did receive a UCMJ violation, he was able to prove it was a set up, and was going to file counter charges, but was convinced to take a leave instead, and when he returned from leave, they shipped him to Korea for the remainder of his term. When he returned from Korea, he was transferred to an active reserve unit from the active-duty army, and his unit was in Los Angeles, where he wanted to be to enroll in college. By happy accident, he enrolled in an economics class. Ah, the vagaries of fate.
He was initially going to go into sociology programs, and he almost failed that economics class and was going to drop it entirely, when his wife Connie convinced him to try one more. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Throughout the book, you can hear his wisdom, which permeated his nationally syndicated column which he wrote for forty years. It was not always a comfortable book to read, which it should not be. Racism is an uncomfortable topic, and he certainly experienced it in his lifetime and pulled no punches in recounting the racism he did experience.
Racism is a dark chapter in our country but his writing on the topic is wholly honest. Where he believes racism was a factor in an incident, he says so. And where he thinks the other party was just an asshole, he says that too. And that honesty lends credence to his writing.
He was an outspoken opponent of minimum wage laws, affirmative action, and socialism, using the economics he received his doctorate in, and fought against them actively, proving conclusively that all three cause more harm than good in the communities where they were adopted. In return, he was vilified by the liberals to whom these ideals are cherished ideas. He as called an Uncle Tom as early as the 1960s/70s. Because they couldn’t disprove his mathematics or economics. And when they couldn’t disprove his logic, they attacked him personally. Which attacks he handled with grace and dignity.
If you are unfamiliar with his writing, his website still has his writing archived. He published several books, the earliest of which are collector’s items that sell for hundreds of dollars used on Amazon. There have been no reprints, so I don’t have them…yet.
This was not a long book, to encompass 84 years of living, but he didn’t need a lot of words to tell his story. He had 40 plus years of writing experience which helped him learn how to get to the point. Entertaining. It was so much fun to read through, and I highly recommend this one. Watch it on YouTube or Rumble or listen to it on PodBean.
