Glenn Loury on race and a host of other things
Take a look and/or have a listen. The full audio interview with Bari Weiss can be found at the link, but there also are printed excerpts. Here’s a bit:
BW: The word racism has been redefined, particularly by Ibram X. Kendi. First of all, it’s no longer about personal bigotry. It’s about any system that results in disparity. So if you have any kind of disparity between racial groups in any given institution, school culture system, it is evidence in and of itself that racism is present.
GL: That is exactly what Kendi is saying. He’s not mincing words about it. What it brings to mind is George Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English Language,” in which he talks about how words and the meaning of words fall in the service of political programs. And people think they can make reality by playing with words. I don’t know why anybody takes Ibram X. Kendi seriously. That’s a silly book, “How To Be an Anti-Racist.” Kendi’s formulations are sophomoric. They don’t bear up under the least bit of serious, rigorous social scientific scrutiny. He’s not standing on any literature. He’s not citing any intellectual development that has any deep roots in anything. It’s pablum. It’s froth on the intellectual surface of our life. And it behooves us all to think pretty hard about why it is that we’re content with that kind of analysis. When civil disorder in American cities is consuming the lives of black people like a machine, our political leaders and intellectual class and journalistic representatives haven’t got a word to say about it. Black Lives Matter is almost completely irrelevant to what matters in black lives.
BW: And yet corporations and the entire elite establishment has taken up the cause of Black Lives Matter. And the cynic in me would say it’s just about the cheapest and easiest thing that they could possibly do.
GL: Nothing that Black Lives Matter is about has any intersection with the things that actually matter in black lives. What about education? The gap in the cognitive development of the human potential of African-American youngsters relative to others in this country widens. It’s a yawning chasm.
BW: Glenn, if one really cared about black lives and wanted to insist on a movement that actually fulfilled the promise of black lives mattering, what would be the top three priorities of that movement?
GL: I think self-determination and taking responsibility for our lives. I’d say education. I’m sorry this is partisan, but the public-school unions are poorly serving, on the whole, the places where black students congregate and the intellectual needs of those students. Now, there are other people to be faulted as well. But opening up that system to innovation is absolutely imperative to improving the quality of black life in this country.
And the public safety piece of this narrative, that the police are out to get black people, this contempt for law, the lawlessness of the George Floyd protests, the celebration of that lawlessness, the silence in the face of it. Patriotism. And by that I don’t mean blind loyalty to a flag salute, I mean seeing yourself as an integral part of the American project. This is our country. We don’t stand off from it.
neo,
I just put this in the Open thread for today awhile ago. More Loury.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAUZlrdFMXY
It is astonishing to me that black leaders seem content to ignore these truths. Kendi is a phony who was raised by upper middle class parents and his real name is Henry Rogers. He has hit on a successful scam by the sound of it.
The MacArthur so-called “genius” grants have been getting ever worse for years, but this year’s awards were especially egregious, having mostly to do with identity politics and “wokeness”. The ghastly Kendi (described as “dim” by John McWhorter) was one of many undeserving recipients, not that he is in any need of the money, as he normally charges twenty to twenty-five thousand per Zoom call, in addition to his large “academic” salary at BU and the many millions which his worthless book on “anti-racism” (the manifesto of an irrational cult which has infected almost the entire body politic) has brought him at a very young age.
the ghastly Kendi – or Henry Rogers – has the stink of the Nation of Islam about him. The “X” and the fake African identity are dead givaways, to my mind.
Jason Riley is another terrific thinker and writer
One of our few visitors here, our “moderate” friend trying to talk us crazies off the ledge alleged that political correctness/Wokeness was something we way exaggerated from our ignorance. He also let slip that at the annual meeting of the Thoreau Society (via Zoom this year) the keynote speaker was none other than that great Thoreau expert….Ibram X. Kendi.
“Kendi’s formulations are sophomoric. They don’t bear up under the least bit of serious, rigorous social scientific scrutiny.” GL
They’re not meant to. They’re an appeal to the emotion of victimhood for blacks and declare the sacrifice necessary for whites to obtain absolution for their racial and ancestral sins. And “serious, rigorous social scientific scrutiny” are instruments of white supremacy… so Rogers is advancing ‘irrefutable’ ‘truth’.
Sgt. Mom,
Add to the Nation of Islam “X” and the African “Kendi”, the Muslim “Ibram”. Arguably, conman extrodinaire whose scam is race hate and hate of all things American. And profiting mightily from it. Truly a servant of the Great Liar.
Gee. Glenn Loury dares to criticize the public school system. I hope he doesn’t think that’s an act of bravery.
Who knows ? The next thing you know he might express tentative misgivings about fatherless households in black America.
Kendo is ‘snake oil’ salesman. He looks and sounds ‘cool’ with ideas that are laughable if they were not so dangerous. I respect Glenn Loury as a great thinker. I recommend his podcast ;
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bloggingheads-tv-the-glenn-show/id505824976
LeClerc:
Are you at all familiar with Loury’s work? Doesn’t sound as though you are, because your sarcasm is misplaced. Loury’s been noticing and criticizing things like that for many decades.
Neo – Loury and McWhorter have zero influence in the black community. I’ve been aware of both of them for a long time.
Neither has the intellectual courage of Thomas Sowell.
LeClerc:
Did I say they have a huge effect on the black community? I very much doubt they have a significant effect, but I never claimed they did and that’s not the point of the post.
And very few people have the courage of Thomas Sowell – or the intelligence, for that matter. So what?
And if you’re aware of Loury I have no idea why you would insinuate he’s not spoken up on father absence in the black family, because he certainly has.
Burgess Owens has courage – he’ll never have tenure at Brown. He’d be sneered at by the Brownies (including Brown’s alum AG Sulzberger).
Loury’s pal McWhorter (tenured at Columbia) recently dropped his Substack contract to sign exclusively with the NYT. At least Bari Weiss had the guts to resign from the NYT.
What is the courageous Loury’s position on Chauvin’s imprisonment ? How about his thoughts about the 1-6 political prisoners?
I’ll give you the fact that Loury and McWhorter are not woke – they’re just lukewarm.
Their intellectual power is a mile wide and an inch deep, it’s easy reading for people who want to feel they’re doing something. Feel important, they’re anti racist you see. It’s an ego stroke for the weak minded and fad followers, damn the consequences.
Neo – here’s some refreshing commentary from Loury. But notice: he had to get in the obligatory dig at Trump.
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/obamas-squandered-opportunity
On the superficial side I’ve been struck that Kendi and Bin Laden have kind faces, like they listen to old Cat Stevens songs when they get the chance.
Book. Cover. Don’t Judge.
LeClerc:
I read that Glenn Loury/John McWhorter substack with interest. In Loury’s account he went from seeing Obama, accurately IMO, as “a grifter and a con man and a carpetbagger” to Loury’s disappointment that Obama didn’t step up and truly lead the country. Which, given Obama’s character and background, was never on the table.
However, the context is in Loury’s favor. McWhorter was letting Obama off the hook for the misfortune of social media coming to the fore at the same time as the Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray cases:
______________________________________________
Loury: Now, you and I are going to have to agree to disagree. Rather than seeing it as a constraint on the great possibilities of Obama who was hamstrung by the unfortunate occurrence of these technological and political events, I see it as a failure of the former president Obama, having been presented with an opportunity to lead the country, not just to perform his shtick. To lead the country in a time of peril by standing up for law and order. He should have done that.
______________________________________________
Yes, Obama should have done that. And if my grandmother had wheels, she would have been a motorcar.
I would be interested to hear Loury expatiate on the culture at Brown.
I would be interested to hear Loury expatiate on the culture at Brown.
Good news, it is in the link that makes up the first sentence of this post. You don’t have to continuing opining on this topic from a place of ignorance. I mean damn, your interest is exactly the same interest of Bari Weiss in having him as a guest. They cover other topics and she didn’t specifically ask about Brown and instead the the various “elite” academies, but your interest could have been the tag line of this podcast episode.
Diversity [dogma] (i.e. color judgment), inequity, and exclusion. Can they abort the baby, cannibalize her profitable parts, sequester her carbon pollutants, and have her, too? A progressive path and grade: one step forward, two steps backward.
“Glenn, if one really cared about black lives and wanted to insist on a movement that actually fulfilled the promise of black lives mattering, what would be the top three priorities of that movement?
“I think self-determination and taking responsibility for our lives. I’d say education.”
As much as I applaud the anti-“hate-whitey”-narrative stance of men like Loury… that’s pretty weak sauce. It’s almost too clever by half…like an intellectual’s tap-dance to avoid saying “I don’t know.” It’d be interesting to create an “open thread” simply around a “What 3 things would you do in relation to _______?” But I don’t own a blog. 😉
But if a black person wanted to capture my attention and unwavering support, they’d start using the language of “devotion to family, the Christian faith & the future.” Those are pretty universal in my book…but any person who wanted to change the course of black America would do well to start there.
LeClerc:
Yes, I know he’s no Trump fan. Interesting that he agrees with him on so much and yet can’t make that leap. McWhorter’s even worse, but McWhorter is a much less rigorous thinker in general than Loury.
Josh:
Oh, really? Are you familiar with Loury’s work in economics, and with his math skills?
And very few people have the courage of Thomas Sowell – or the intelligence, for that matter. So what?
Sowell is quite penetrating and he remains lucid at 91. At his most scholarly, he is an intellectual historian, and his original scholarly work was in the history of economic thought. He teaches economics, but he’s never contributed much to the discipline apart from white papers he produced when he was at the Urban Institute. The thing is, he can work at several different levels of discourse: topical commentary, syntheses from secondary sources &c. An no one does it better. You’re forever saying ‘why didn’t I think of that’? in reading his columns.
Loury has published quite a bit for general audiences, but he also has produced a stack of scholarly papers. Last time I checked (about a dozen years ago) he’d produced 19 papers – some in urban economics, some in resource economics, and some in labor economics. He’s maintained a teaching schedule (Sowell’s not taught in 40 years) and has an ant heap of kids (his oldest is 55).
but McWhorter is a much less rigorous thinker in general than Loury.
One’s in linguistics and the other’s in economics. Just the way it is.
Well, if we’re going to argue about Glenn Loury, I’ll say that I’ve enjoyed – or maybe that’s not quite the right word, since it becomes clear on many occasions that he’s angry about what African-America has done and is continuing to do to itself, in general terms, and I feel for him over it – anyway, I’ve… *appreciated* a number of his podcasts or whatever you want to call them with McWhorter over the last couple of years. I wish I could get to hear Loury talk about economics more.
I think Loury thinks that Chauvin got a raw deal because he was quite insistent one time that I was listening in on the fact that Chauvin should have the same rights as anybody else, and in the context of that whole discussion around criminal justice, it was plain that Loury thought that Chauvin had not gotten that and he, Loury, was getting a little hot about it. (This by way of addressing one of LeClerc’s questions above.)
Anyway, I noticed the other day that Kendi’s book is back in play on the free lending-library list of the DEI interest group at work, along with many other titles, a few of which I recognized but most of which I didn’t.
[I just tried out the preview function on this post; got the error message “Preview error”. That was a bit of a letdown.]
Glenn Loury’s own videos:
https://bloggingheads.tv/programs/glenn-show
The Bari Weiss video is not among them
Art Deco:
By the way, here’s a list of Sowell’s writings.
John Guilfoyle,
You label as “weak sauce” Loury’s prescription of “self-determination and taking responsibility for our lives. I’d say education.”
You then stated that, “if a black person wanted to capture my attention and unwavering support, they’d start using the language of “devotion to family, the Christian faith & the future.”
Is not “devotion to family” part of “taking responsibility for our lives” as, can one take responsibility for our lives without accepting familial responsibilities?
Unfortunately, “Christian faith” is a non-starter for the secularly inclined. “To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” Thomas Aquinas
BTW, IMO the great barrier to faith in people is an inability to fully trust. Secularists tend to be mistrustful of strangers. The more hostile to faith, the more likely to tell themselves faith is but a childish need for a daddy and mommy.
You may recall Christ’s admonition that, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” (New International Version)
It’s all about trust because our virus* infected ‘operating system’ cannot be cleansed without our ego allowing a “higher power” to intervene. God may not be a “respecter of persons” but he will not force conversion upon us.
* otherwise known as “original sin” i.e. the knowledge of good and evil without the ability to perfectly discern between the two
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” KJB Rev. 3:20 [my emphasis]
And I think it likely you’ll agree that the best assurance for a prosperous future for most blacks is Loury’s admonition to obtain a solid education. And ‘education’ includes learning a needed skill. Plumbers do alright.
I know of no more succinct path for black success than Walter Williams’ Roadmap Out of Poverty: “Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.” Walter E. Williams.
“Complete high school; get a job, any kind of a job; get married before having children; and be a law-abiding citizen. Among both black and white Americans so described, the poverty rate is in the single digits.”
Used to be less than 1% of those who 1) simply finished HS, 2) waited to be married before kids and 3) waited until 18 to have kids.
Seems apropos of the topic.
https://notthebee.com/article/western-washington-university-has-created-segregated-housing-for-black-students-and-can-someone-please-explain-to-me-how-this-is-considered-progress
^^^ Only Whites are not permitted Freedom of Association. We are by all accounts the most terrible of all peoples, but strangely enough everybody else wants to barge in on our things when it suits them and exclude us when it doesn’t suit them.
I’m not surprised to hear McWhorter bailed out of Substack and went with the NYTimes. Their readership is the class he identifies with.
I read his series about ‘The Elect’ on Substack and was struck by his committed secularism. He knows that something is very wrong – and even understands some of the mechanics of it – but he’s trapped in that worldview and absent a road to Damascus moment he’ll never find his way out. The very nomenclature he used – The Elect – to describe the problem is an assignation of the problem to, and a rejection of, faith.
This distain of faith is the great failing of the ‘educated class’. Their Achilles heel. They can’t even go there.
Interesting that before fakebook shut it down, there were a number of ‘yoga teachers’ who posted on the Walkaway page. The same expression came up repeatedly in these posts; ‘This is a great spiritual battle.’
They have way more understanding of what we are dealing with than those NYTimes folk.
GB – you & I don’t really disagree. And I’m appreciative of your correctives.
While education is certainly part of “taking responsibility for one’s life” I’d say that education is not an end in itself. We’re familiar with educated idiots & educated fascists who happen to hold the levers of power at the moment in many places. So…to educatio I would also add vocatio or a sense of purposefulness & usefulness (calling) to one’s living. Dr Williams’ admonition fits well here.
I separate “devotion to family” out as a single piece because fatherlessness is a bellwether for all manner of social & spiritual ills. That it is the norm not the exception for black families in the 21st century and that few black cultural role models are making that a centrepiece of their trend-setting…I depressed myself when I “ran the numbers” on black athletes with the most children from the most “baby-mommas.” But it’s not just the hyper-millionaires with bad hair & goofy tats, it’s endemic and getting worse.
Was it Kotter who also suggested a “purpose larger than one’s own life” was necessary if one is to find fulfilment? That to me is where Christian faith becomes an essential. I’d argue it is the foundational worldview that brought Western civilisation to the fore. It set the stage for the historical advancements we enjoy to this day (although sadly we are losing much to the secularists). This world can’t just be about me & mine…MollyBrown above notes, “This distain of faith is the great failing of the ‘educated class’.”
If “they won’t even go there,” well…then I guess things just get worse until they get really bad. And we’ve agreed on that too before. Pax.
“…host of other things…”
Looks like Taiwan may well have decided that “Biden” is, um, less than reliable.
(And justifiably so.)
In that case who’s left?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/taiwan-informs-australia-its-preparing-war-china-sends-record-52-pla-jets-toward
(Oz? Well…maybe Taipei is really impressed by those lockdowns…)
Related?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/next-lehman-moment-will-china-try-create-dangerous-diversion
GB — And after a good night’s sleep…let me add to my stumbling thoughts on the question of faith vis-a-vis “identity.”
Since the Civil Rights Era in the US…I’d argue the vast majority of white people tried desperately to live toward the vision of “content of character not color of skin” when dealing with others. It seems that non-whites were, on the other hand, encouraged (mostly by white leftists & black grifting race hustlers) to see race as “the” defining marker of identity. (Sex tribalists act similarly now…where one’s sexual identity is the “uber alles” thing…another similar discussion could be had there)
The very essence of Christian faith involves a transformed identity (John 1:12-13) that transcends the historical accidents of birth (race, nationality, class, sex etc…). If one insists on seeing their identity as something other than “child of God,” one never escapes the perpetual rat’s wheel rut of self-justification & tribal competition.
Thank you again.
@ Molly Brown > “Interesting that before fakebook shut it down, there were a number of ‘yoga teachers’ who posted on the Walkaway page. The same expression came up repeatedly in these posts; ‘This is a great spiritual battle.’”
Also interesting that FB (and the rest of the Techquisition) believes that shutting people out of the Swamp’s internet sandbox somehow means they either disappear (back into the Holodeck computer, perhaps?) or revert to their prior ideological worldview despite just having Walked Away from it.
I suspect quite a few of them are among the identity-renegades voting for Trump.