A Lecture For The University of Minnesota's Public Life Project, February 3, 2022
A Lecture For The University of Minnesota's Public Life Project, February 3, 2022
A Lecture For The University of Minnesota's Public Life Project, February 3, 2022
A Lecture for the University of Minnesota’s Public Life Project, February 3, 2022
Glenn C. Loury, Professor of Economics, Brown University
Why I ask the success of the 20th century’s civil-rights movement notwithstanding
has blacks’ unequal status in American society persisted into the 21st century? To
think clearly about this difficult problem requires us to distinguish between the role
played by anti-black discrimination, past and present, and the role of behavioral
patterns to be found among some blacks. This, I admit, puts a very sensitive issue
rather starkly. I wish to chart a middle course – acknowledging anti-black biases
and insisting they be remedied, while urging that we also identify the behavioral
patterns that may prevent some people from seizing newly opened opportunities.
Observation #2
My second observation was that what we are calling “race” in America is mainly
a social, and only indirectly a biological, phenomenon. The persistence across
generations of racial differentiation between large groups, in an open society where
people live in close proximity to one another, provides irrefutable indirect evidence
of a profound separation between the racially defined networks of social affiliation
in that society. For there would be no “races” in the steady state of any dynamic
social system unless on a daily basis, and in regard to their most intimate affairs,
people paid assiduous attention to the boundaries separating themselves from
racially distinct others. This is so because, over time, "race" would cease to exist
unless people were acting so as biologically to reproduce the variety of phenotypic
expression that constitutes the substance of racial distinction.
I cannot over-emphasize this second, sociological point. We speak casually about
“racial” equality and “racial” justice. And yet "race" is not something simply given
in nature. Rather, it is socially produced; it is something we are making. That there
exist distinct races is an equilibrium outcome; it is endogenous. It follows that, if
the goal is to understand the roots of durable racial inequalities in any society, we
must examine in some detail those processes causing "race" to persist as a fact in
that society. Almost certainly, such processes will not be unrelated to the allocation
among individuals of human developmental resources.
Here then is my second observation in a nutshell. Economists need to recognize the
limits of our tools to account for durable economic disparities by race. The creation
and reproduction of such inequality ultimately rests on cultural conceptions people
hold about identity, about the desirability and legitimacy of conducting intimate
relations with racially distinct others. (Here I do not mean only sexual relations.)
Racial inequality is not just a disparity of material resources. Most fundamentally,
it is rooted in the decisions all of us are making about with whom to associate and
with whom to identify. Such, anyway, was the gist of my argument.
The contrast I drew in my doctoral thesis all those years ago – between human and
social capital – was grounded in my conviction that such decisions determine the
access people enjoy to the informal resources they require to develop their human
potential. My argument was that “social capital” is an essential prerequisite for the
acquisition of what economists referred to as “human capital.” And we know that
human capital – a person’s skills, education, work experience and social aptitudes
– is a key determinant of a person’s earnings power and of his or her capacity to
generate and to accumulate wealth.
The resources people need for their development are not all commodities acquired
through markets as a result of formal transactions. Access to some vital resources
are imbedded in a person's social situation: for instance, the resource of a mother's
attention to her health when her child is in the womb; or, the resource of peers with
whom one associates and internalizes the things they valorize, which then become
important things shaping the choices one make about the acquisition of skills; or,
the information one has about what is possible for one to achieve that derives from
connections to others who have explored those possibilities. These are also factors,
or inputs, into skills production. But these are not commodities. A financial deficit
does not fully reflect a deficit of these things. This was the idea that I wanted to
employ to give an account of durable racial inequality, even after eliminating most
discrimination. I wrote that dissertation in the mid-1970s, a decade beyond the big
civil rights laws and quite early in this era of relatively fair market opportunities
for people irrespective of race. Now the post-civil-rights era is more than a half-
century old. Obviously, perfect equality of treatment has not been achieved. But it
is a relatively level playing field now, in terms of the valuation of skills.
So, we can ask whether the racial disparities history has produced will necessarily
wither away under this new dispensation. My answer is, No, they needn't, because
the labor, credit, housing and product markets are not the whole show. Also
important are peers, neighborhoods and communities, the structure of families, the
nature of values and norms, the notions of identity, the social resources, who you're
connected to, who you can call upon, who influences you, who informs you. These
things matter: books in the home; whether the children are read-to; when does a
parent turns off the television set. I suggest that we use this “social capital” concept
as a tool for thinking about racial inequality and its remedies. Doing so disciplines
our thinking to appreciate the limits of regulatory control when the developmental
outcomes of interest are the byproducts of non-market processes. It shifts the
conversation somewhat away from a purely redistributive focus, to a relational
focus. Please understand: I am not saying that people without money have no need
of it. I am saying that money is not the only thing they need.
Talking in this way is NOT "blaming the victim." Oppressed groups, time and
again, evolve notions of identity that cut against the mainstream. A culture can
develop among them inhibiting youngsters from taking actions needed to develop
their talent. Now, I ask: Do kids in a segregated, dysfunctional peer group simply
have the wrong utility functions? It is a mistake to attribute the dysfunctional
behavior of an historically oppressed group of people to their simply having the
wrong preferences when those their “preferences” have emerged from a set of
historical experiences that reflect the larger society’s social structures and
activities. But, by the same token, it is a grievous error to ignore the consequences
of such behavior, or to pretend it doesn’t exist, as many anti-racism advocates are
now doing. Citing “structural racism” can't plausibly account for what's going on.
For, so long as race is a meaningful part of people’s identity in a society, and when
they reproduce those meanings via their patterns of association over time, then we
must expect to see differences in the network structures in which people are
embedded. Then, if network-mediated spillovers in the processes of human capital
development are important, you’re going to get persisting racial disparity.
I’m talking here about building out the American welfare state. Were it sufficiently
robust on behalf of everybody, most of the concerns that we have about the racial
disparities would be ameliorated, and we blacks will have lent your moral capital
to a righteous cause -- not a racially defined reparation but, rather, a humanistically
defined improvement in the social contract broadly understood.
Now I want to say a word about affirmative action. We are by now 50 years down
the line with these policies. Racial preferences have been institutionalized. I have
a concern, and let me just voice it directly: equality of representation, in the most
rarified venues of competitive selection, is ultimately inconsistent with equality of
respect. I am talking about selection at the right tail, not talking about selection at
the median of the population. I’m talking about the 95th percentile. My point is
that there is going to be a post-selection difference in the performance of students
by race if one has used different pre-selection criteria when choosing them, so long
as the pre-selection criteria being used actually correlate with the post-admissions
performance. If these selection criteria – standardized test scores, earlier grades,
advance placement enrollment, quality of a writing and whatever other indicia of
qualifications one may want to use – if these are not correlated with performance,
then they should not be used when they have a disparate impact on a historically
disadvantaged group. Presumably, such criteria are being used precisely because
we all know that they are, in fact, correlated with post-admissions performance to
some degree. The context, if it’s graduate education and we’re talking about the
GREQ, it’s one thing. If it’s undergraduate education and we’re talking about the
SAT Verbal, it’s another thing. It’s not going to be the same thing everywhere, but
they are correlated. So they’re correlated.
Now you use different cut-offs. I invite you to look at the data produced by
discovery in the Harvard case, for example, to see the huge disparity in the indices
of academic preparation characteristic of applicant populations by race to Harvard
University. That’s just one window on this reality. It’s somewhat opaque because
institutions are not forthcoming with their data. We have different criteria of
selection. There’s going to be different post-selection performance if the criteria
are correlated with performance. These are large samples. That’s inescapable.
What’s the consequence of that? We’re in the right tail, remember. We’reselecting
elites. The consequence of using racial preferences to promote representation of
the disadvantage in venues of high selectivity I claim is that either we acknowledge
these difference in post-admissions performance, or we don’t. We cover them up
by flattening our assessment criteria. We pretend that they are not there. This
dishonesty can be stifling. My claim is that right-tail selection plus racially
preferential selection is, ultimately, inconsistent with true racial equality. It will
get you representation, but it will not get you to true equality, that is, to an equality
of dignity, standing and respect.
Indeed, there is a fatal contradiction at the heart of the argument for group
equality of social outcomes. In my considered opinion we ought not to expect this,
and we ought not to make achieving it our goal. Equality of opportunity, not
equality of results, is the only defensible public policy goal in my view. The
dogged pursuit of equal results between racial groups across all venues of human
endeavor is a formula for tyranny and yet more racism. Here is why.
Identitarian arguments for group equality posit that we have different groups --
Jews, South Asians, East Asians, Blacks, Latinos, etc. -- and that these groups have
identities which deserve to be acknowledged and respected. When someone tells
me, “I identify as a member of group X,” I am given to understand that this is a
part of their personhood which warrants to be respected and given credence. So,
groups are fundamental building blocks of society in this identity-focused view of
the world. It is not a matter of indifference. We are in these various boxes. Groups
matter. A group’s culture and heritage matter to its members – the music they listen
to, the food they eat, the literature they read, the stories they tell their children – all
these things for the identitarians are important and they all vary across groups.
On the other hand, group-egalitarians presuppose that – absent injustice – there
would be equality of groups across every human enterprise. But how can that be?
Because if groups matter, some people are going to bounce a basketball 100,000
times a month and other people are going to bounce it 10,000 times a month. Some
people are going to be drawn to books as a way of experiencing human culture and
other people are going to be more verbal or more spontaneous or whatever it might
be. There are differences between groups. Groups matter after all. They’re not all
the same. They don’t do the same things, they don’t believe the same things, they
don’t think the same things, they don’t spend their time in the same ways. So now I
have population groups that have their own integrity, expressing themselves in how
they live their lives, how they raise their children, how they spend their time. This
will inevitably result in different representations of the groups’ members across
various human activities. The various groups’ members will not all be involved in
academic pursuits, in the business world, in the professions, or in sports and
entertainment to the same extent. They will not all have the same occupational or
professional profiles. If “groupness” matters for the identitarians, then this
groupness must be reflected to some degree in how people choose to live their
lives. How, then, can egalitarians insist that society is unfair unless it yields an
equal proportionate representation of these groups in every human enterprise? That
is simply a logical contradiction. Acting in a determined way on that
contradiction can only to lead to tyranny, to disappointment, to conflict and to
more racism.
For, if we try to erase those cultural and behavioral distinctions that constitute the
substance of groupness – putting everybody into one social milieu, overriding the
autonomy of parents, socializing child-rearing, and so on – then we might be able
to flatten the social terrain enough to achieve group equality. But to do this would
be tyrannical. It would extinguish our freedom as individual persons to associate
with each other, to believe and to live as we please. And, should such a draconian
policy fail to produce group equality – as seems more than likely – we would end-
up with the question: How come there are so many Jews (or Asians, or “whites” or
whatever) in medical school, with PhDs in electrical engineering, at the top of the
income distribution? That is where identity-based group egalitarianism ultimately
leads. There is no end to the quest for group equality if, indeed, group identities are
meaningful and persistent. The presumption of group equality in the face of group
distinctions of social organization, culture and values leads either to the tyrannical
imposition of uniform standards in an vain attempt to tamp down the authentic
expression of groupness, or to endless finger-pointing and suspicion whenever
some group of people moves ahead of or falls behind the pack in this or that arena
of achievement. A treacherous presumption will haunt society: that any group
disparity must reflect some systemic unfairness . That is a formula for perpetual
conflict, not for “social justice”. And it is a temptation which should be resisted.
Yes, we black Americans have been dealth a bad hand by history. However, that
undeniable fact does not tell us how to move forward. Life is full of tragedy and
atrocity and barbarity, and so on. Life is not fair. The hard truth of the matter, I
have argued here, is that we black Americans have no alternative but to take-up
responsibility for our lives and to embrace the burdens of our freedom. No one is
coming to save us. This is not fair, but it true nonetheless. If we want to walk with
dignity, if we want to be truly equal we must realize that white people cannot give
us equality. We actually must earn equal status. Please don’t get angry with me,
because I’m on the side of black people here. Still, I must insist that equality of
dignity, standing and respect, of security in our position within society, of the
ability to command the recognition of others -- these are not things that can be
handed over to a group of people in response to political protests. These things
must be wrested with one's bare hands from a cruel and indifferent world. We have
to make ourselves equal. No one can do it for us.
Thank You.