Glenn Loury on Race in America

Specter, haunts the domestic political landscape in America today. It's the specter of racial conflict growing out of the anger and alienation of many black Americans, the pundits tell us we're living in a period of racial reckoning in America. Racial disputes suffuse our public life, from school committee elections to national political contest.

This estrangement of intellectuals, politicians, journalists and activists derives in turn from the fact of persisting black disadvantage across so many fronts in our country's economic and social life. The reality here is too familiar, too widely known to require elaborate recitation, whether one is talking about health or wealth, education or income imprisonment or criminal victimization, the relatively disadvantaged status of those Americans who descend from slaves here in the third decade of the 21st century, more than 150 years after the emancipation, that deprivation is palpable.

What are we to make of this?

That question has bedeviled me for decades, indeed, ever since I began graduate studies in economics at MIT a half-century ago. So it is with heavy heart that I stand before you this morning, a black American economist in this era of racial discontent in my country, an Ivy League professor and a descendant of slaves, a beneficiary of a civil rights revolution now, over two generations in the past, which has made possible for me a life my ancestors could only have dreamed of.

But more than that, I'm a patriot who loves his country, I am a man of the West and inheritor of its great traditions. As such, I feel compelled to represent the Interests of my people here and now. But that reference is not unambiguous, invoking as it does both communal and civic antecedents, I am, after all, both a black man and an American citizen.

Could it be at this late date that these have become conflicting loyalties, I think not.

What, I ask are my responsibilities while addressing you here and now? I wish to declare for all the world to hear that no matter what the political turmoil is that may envelop us, and regardless of my racial or ethnic identification, my fundamental responsibility as an intellectual and as a citizen is to stay in touch with reality and to insist that others do as well.

As Hoover's own Thomas Sowell once put it, given a choice between rhetoric and reality, we are always best served to eschew the former, and embrace the latter, that is what I am about today. That, I believe, is what this historic moment requires of all of us, the future of our democratic experiment well may be at stake.

We Americans of all stripes have a great deal in common, those commonalities can and should be the means of building bridges undergirded by patriotism between us, blacks and the nation as a whole. At bottom, we all want the same things here, a legitimate shot at achieving the American dream where each generation can do better than the one that came before.

We all want to feel secure in our persons and property, we all want clean and orderly communities with good services. We want a government that works for us and not the other way around. We want fair and equal treatment in the broader society and by our institutions.

Connections between various groups in America could be stronger if we focus more on the things that we have in common instead of the things that divide us.

And left to their own devices, that is what Americans of all races would be inclined to pursue. However, there are some among us who make a living by focusing on our differences, by claiming that there's something fundamentally wrong with America. These people are in error, and their grave error threatens to tear us apart, they must be opposed forthrightly, and I intend to do so.

In these brief remarks, it is far too easy to overstate our problems and understate what has been achieved. The right idea here, I maintain, for we black Americans and for the country at large, is in the conduct of our public business to emphasize our common American interests and to de-emphasize our superficial racial differences.

That is the central message I wish to convey in this address, that is the stand that I wish to take right here, right now.

Racial disparities are real, of course, but inequality in America is not solely or even mainly a racial issue, there are many poor and marginalized people of all races in this country, they deserve our concern, too.

Moreover, the rate of intermarriages between races has grown dramatically over the past decades, and as a result, an increasing number of people view themselves as multiracial, including, interestingly, the first black president and vice president of this country. We talk constantly about racial identity and seldom about cultural values, but don't those things transcend race?

How, then, are we to understand the alienation that afflicts today so many prosperous black Americans? I believe this is the result of the false narratives being promulgated by demagogues in ideologues, narratives about how something called white supremacy threatens them, about how we have, in effect, reverted to Jim Crow 2.0, about how the country allegedly has its metaphorical knee on our black nets, about how racist cops are supposedly hunting us down in the streets such that it has become open season on black people.

The facts seem insufficient to stop these false narratives.

My work seeks to rebut these departures from reality, in part just by looking at what has happened over the past 75 years, a huge black middle class has emerged, there are black billionaires. Our influence, black people on American culture is stunning and has worldwide resonance.

In fact, when viewed in global, comparative perspective, we black Americans are rich and powerful, with, for example, ten times the per capita income of a typical Nigerian. The cultural barons and elites of America, the people who run the mainstream media, who give out literary prizes and foundation grants, who run the human resource departments of corporate America, the universities, and the movie studios, these powerful people have all signed on as allies with blacks in our struggle for racial justice.

They have bought into the woke racial sensibility hook, line, and sinker, all of which disproves the premise that the American dream does not apply to black people, to say that is to tell our children a lie about their country. It is a crippling lie which, when taken as gospel, robs us black people of our agency and a sense of control over our fate, and it is a patronizing lie that betrays a profound doubt about the ability of us black Americans to face up to the responsibilities and to bear the burdens of our freedom.

For this is the existential challenge that we black Americans now face in the 21st century, not to throw off the shackles of our supposed oppression, but rather to take up the burdens of our freedom. As such, it is time to clear the air and, in a spirit of love for my people, to tell some unpalatable truths, so brace yourselves.

My fundamental claim is this, we need to acknowledge and accept the fact that socially mediated behavioral issues lie at the root of today's racial inequality problem. These behavioral challenges are real, and they must be faced squarely to grasp why racial disparities persist. These are, mind you, American problems, not merely matters of communal concern to black people.

Nevertheless, downplaying these behavioral problems has become a bluff. Activists on the left claim something called white supremacy or implicit bias or old fashioned anti-black racism are by themselves enough to explain black disadvantage. While making such arguments, they are, in effect, daring you to disagree with them. You must be a racist, they say, one who thinks something is intrinsically wrong with black people, if you fail to attribute pathological behaviors to systemic forces, you must think blacks are inferior.

For how else could one explain the disparities? Calling their bluff risk being convicted of the offense of blaming the victim? But this is a dare, a debaters trick, for instance, at the end of the day, what are folks saying when they declare that mass incarceration is racism? That the high number of blacks in prison is a self evident sign of racial antipathy.

They're daring you to respond. No, it's mainly a sign of antisocial behavior by some criminals who happen to be black, to respond in this way risk being dismissed as a moral reprobate, this is so even if the speaker is black. Just ask Justice Clarence Thomas.

Nobody wants to be canceled, but we should all want to stay in touch with reality.

The overwhelming criminological evidence suggests that the incarcerated are, in the main, those who have hurt someone, who have stolen something, or have otherwise violated the basic behavioral norms that make civil society possible. The idea that mass incarceration is a product of locking up nonviolent drug offenders is a myth.

Violent criminals who are extirpating black lives on the streets of St Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Chicago are, to a person behaving despicably. That should not be hard to say, any ideology that ascribes that behavior to racism is simply not credible. So then why have so many been getting away with espousing it for so long?

Neither could any sensible person think that 70% of African American babies being born to a woman without a husband is either a good thing or is due to anti-black racism, people say this, but they don't believe it, they're bluffing. They're daring you to observe this reality, that here in the 21st century, the failures of many African Americans to take full advantage of the opportunities created by the 20th century's revolution and civil rights, those failures are palpable and damning.

These failures are being denied at every turn, but that position is not tenable. The end of Jim Crow segregation and the advent of the era of equal rights, which we now inhabit, were transformative events in the course of American history. And now, a half century down the line, we still have significant disparities, this, I agree, is a shameful blight on American society.

But the fact of the matter is that a considerable responsibility for this sorry state of affairs lies with black people ourselves. Dare we Americans acknowledge this? Dare we black Americans accept our share of responsibility for.