We noted Brown Prof. Glenn Loury last week when he protested Brown’s pandering message of support for the protests/riots for containing no actual content, just unsupported generalities, much like the annoying virtue-signaling PR posts you are seeing from the marketing departments of BestBuy, PetSmart, and the NFL. (Aside: EA has received enough submissions of such grovels to do its promised awards, once I have the time to sift through them.) Now he is interviewed in the City-Journal, and stating what I think is the most inconvenient truth of them all regarding the George Floyd Freakout. Fortunately he’s an African American, so nobody will try to call him a racist. (There is a lively debate about whether Brown will be pressured to fire him, however, since we are in a “no dissenting from the mob” free speech lockdown.)
It is fair to assume that his well-reasoned position won’t get any publicity outside of conservative news sources, and that he won’t be given a chance to be on a CNN panel where he would be likely to demonstrate that his debating Don Lemon or Chris Cuomo is like me debating an avocado.
Read the whole interview, please, but Loury says in part,
This is a kind of collective hysteria. I am aware that millions of people are horrified by what they see as systemic racism in this case. But I repeat: I am waiting for the investigation to be completed. This applies to all such incidents. That they happen is nothing to dismiss, but I deny that these incidents are representative of the everyday experience of African-Americans.
I am a contrarian, and I have refused to follow the mob opinion that led to the recent turmoil. And I’m also convinced that this is about more than what happened to George Floyd. That event was a catalyst, and I hope we can finally talk about the broader framework and the circumstances in which racial charges are made in the United States…I am sure that there are deep-seated inequality problems in America that affect everyone, and black people in particular. Some are institutional, but many have to do with the culture and behavior of black people themselves. I’m talking about lack of educational achievement, and about the higher crime rate; I’m talking about the collapse of the black family. Seven out of ten black children are born outside of marriage. It is a plausible surmise that households where a mother is present, but no father, are more likely to produce adolescent males with behavioral problems. People are frustrated that conventional political solutions, such as expanding anti-discrimination and welfare programs, have not worked. That’s why they take refuge in the empty thesis of racism. They speak of 1619, when the first blacks landed in America, and they speak of slavery, which was abolished more than 150 years ago. They talk of ‘centuries of oppression.’ But, they don’t talk about how the social condition of blacks in America well may have been healthier in 1950 than it is today—the integrity of family structure, the level of the crime rate, the relationship to work of the poorly educated, and the values with which many children are raised…. I think we do not live in a really free space where we can discuss these questions. Pressure to conform is intense because nobody wants to give the impression that they stand on the wrong side of the great moral questions of our time…. Because racists say that black crime is terrible, you are afraid even to address the issue and admit that it may be part of the problem…. So you’d rather be silent. And that gets us nowhere—or rather, it gets us to where we are today.”
To which I reply, trenchantly,
Bingo.
Ethics Alarms 
You speak avocado?
If the debate is on Food Network, I’m betting on the avocado!
I’m sorry: I meant abogado.
Dios mio! You can debate in Spanish? In your spare time? Sheesh.
The professor is singing my song: the continued failure to thrive of the black underclass despite the War on Poverty having raged since the Johnson administration has driven social scientists and policy makers literally insane. They keep looking for sophisticated explanations for the continued failure to thrive of the black underclass everywhere but the behaviors of that group. It’s flabbergasting.
OB
The very policies of the Great Society programs laid the foundation for the behavioral issues today.
For comparison, look at the attitudinal behaviors of adult whites who live with mommy and sometimes daddy well into their thirties. The systems that are created to help people get a stringer start and advance actually made people dependent on the resource provider.
Social welfare programs need to be reformed to include mandatory weaning off the system. One long term method would be to create a half life term on public assistance and a fixed amount like social security or a paycheck. If mom recieves assistance she gets the same for 2 or 3 children whether she has 1 or 20. Further, children of a parent that recieved assistance is limited in duration to 1/2 the number of years the parents recieved should they apply for assistance.
Stronger not stringer
Certainly, Chris. Sadly, the reigning theory on this seems to be the War on Poverty has failed because it hasn’t done enough! The solution is MORE money and MORE programs. The problem is nothing more government programs (i.e., give aways– cash payments, subsidized housing, free health care, food stamps, cell phones, you name it). The problem is seen to be merely not enough money has been thrown at the problem, since there isn’t a problem government programs and money can’t fix. Just need more money and fine tuning. Then it will work! The Manhattan Contrarian is really good on public housing and public schools and Medicaid not really accomplishing much, particularly in NYC.
Except, of course, when the problem is perceived to be a conservative institution like enforcement of law and order, then the solution is to defund and abolish it!
Jack, I been wondering for days now (have not noticed anyone asking the question) …so maybe you can provide an answer from a more legal perspective than an ethics one …or both.
If police departments were to be defunded, thus effectively abolished, how shall our courts function? Police officers must follow the law in arresting criminal wrongdoers in order to ensure due process. If social workers, or Antifa, or the likes were to make a citizen’s arrest of a bad actor burglarizing a jewelry store (times hundreds of arrests per day, e.g., drugs, assaults, rapes, domestic violence, etc.), will the court’s likely dismiss most cases for violating the “rights” of the accused? The rot we are witnessing will never bring back law and order as we have known it. Just think of the thousands of families (black and white) wanting justice for the seven plus thousands of murdered victims in 2019 alone if the arrests are all botched by the up-and-coming non-police. Our courts will become completely impotent and useless. Your thoughts?
Most states allow for citizen’s arrests. Many confine that authority to felonies committed in the arresting citizen’s presence, but others allow for lesser crimes and some even consider probable cause sufficient.
A citizens arrest for a felony would probably be prosecuted by the local or state attorney if the arrest was lawfully made. I’m not sure about federal crimes, though — I am not aware of a citizen’s authority when it comes to a federal offense. Obviously, if the citizen fails to properly Mirandize the culprit, any confession would be thrown out under Miranda v. Arizona but otherwise, a lawful citizen’s arrest for felony could and probably would be prosecuted.
His faculty web page is still up as of this afternoon and has some other interesting material. Why do economics profs have a better understanding of human nature than SJWs? Is it all about the money? 😉
Johnny
Economics is not about money per se, it is about choices humans make based on expected values of return.
Money is merely the units of satisfaction that can be measured cardinally. For individuals satisfation or utility is ordinal because it routinely changes based on factors outside the choosen thing or event.
If you have the time and want to listen to something really interesting, the Glenn Loury & John McWhorter chats (bloggingheads.tv) are a must.