Barriers To Black Progress: Structural, Cultural, Or Both?

morning I'm Jason Riley and I'm a senior fellow at Institute I'd like to welcome you to today's conference of barriers to black progress this is my fourth year hosting conference on race related issues for the Manhattan Institute and when my colleagues and I sat down a few months ago to start planning this one I can assure you that we had no idea how much material we would have to work with based on recent events it's occurred to me that we could do an entire conference based on what's happening in Virginia this week but that's my point that's what's different about what we're attempting to do here today so much of the discussion about racial inequality gets hung up on these sorts of things a medical school yearbook page with photos of people and KKK costumes and blackface a governor and state attorney general darkening their skin to imitate black celebrities at college parties back in the 1980s a congressman from Iowa who promotes neo-nazis on Twitter and tells New York Times there's nothing wrong with using terms like white supremacy and white nationalist a president who picks fights with black athletes on social media and gratuitously uses the most disparaging language imaginable to describe illegal immigrants from south of the border of course none of this should be ignored by the media it's all legitimate news but does it explain racial inequality in America we're more specifically to what extent does it explain racial inequality do episodes like the ones I just described and countless others explain our persistent racial gaps and everything from income to homeownership to educational attainment to employment does it explain why our jails and prisons are teeming with young black and brown men well the prevailing wisdom is that they do that's the prevailing view in the media and academia and among our politicians and public policymakers among social activists it's taken as a given civil rights groups spend most of their time scouring the nation for sightings of Confederate flags and use of the n-word by white people in most of our discussions about racial inequality today the assumption is that racism by and large explains racial disparities that's the starting point many people have convinced themselves that evidence of ongoing racial bias proves beyond any doubt that racism in America today remains the major barrier to black progress whether other factors play a bigger role as a question seldom asked let alone investigated with any rigor in fact to even ask such a question is enough to earn the wrath of those who believe racism is an all-purpose explanation for bad black outcomes in America too well I don't think that's the prevailing view among the people you'll hear from today we're going to ask the questions that others don't want to consider now no one here believes that racism is a thing of the past in America most reasonable people agree that it still exists nor am i arguing that racism that the racism the blacks have endured over the centuries and continue to endure today has no bearing at all on racial inequities it's not a question of whether racial bias is a negative factor the relevant question is to what degree is it a factor the relevant question is whether the racism that does still exist adequately explains the racial gaps we see today or whether other fact namely cultural factors offer more plausible explanations of what we're experiencing another problem with too many of our discussions about racial inequality today is that they are often driven by emotion and political correctness which is understandable but not particularly helpful when trying to come up with ways to improve matters anecdotes too often substitute for facts and evidence war evidences cherry-picked in order to drive a certain narrative it's one of the best examples of this is the debate over police shootings that has gripped our country in recent years journalists these days state matter-of-factly that there is an epidemic in this country of trigger-happy cops gunning for black people protesters have marched in the streets pro athletes have refused to stand for the national anthem an entire movement the black lives matter movement has arisen from this narrative but is there any empirical data to support it well here in New York City we have the nation's largest population and largest police force the NYPD has kept detailed records on police shootings since 1971 that year in 1971 police shot 314 people 91 of them fatally two decades later the number of police shootings in New York had fallen from 314 to 108 and fatalities had fallen from 93 to 27 last night I looked up the most recent figures we have which are from 2017 in 2017 New York City police shot 19 people ten of them fatally it's the lowest number on record so we're talking about a roughly 90% reduction in police shootings and police shooting fatalities in the nation's largest city the nation's largest police force over the past four and a half decades and New York is no outlier here police shootings have fallen dramatically nationwide in other large cities over the past half century in 2017 police in Los Angeles shot 15 people police in Chicago shot 25 people which represented less than 1% of all shootings in Chicago that year meanwhile we have social activists claiming that police shootings are not only rising but have reached epidemic proportions this is just one of many examples of how a prevailing narrative can be almost completely divorced from the empirical data but if we want to begin to do something about racial inequities in this country we need to be honest with ourselves we need to correct the false narratives that so often drive the discussions and that brings me to our featured guest professor Glenn Lowry of Brown University whom I'd like to invite up here to join me now for a brief discussion professor Lowry is a is a truth-teller extraordinaire he's an economist by training who's also taught at Harvard and Boston University so he has an appreciation for facts and data and logic and empiricism he's also published several books on race including one titled the anatomy of racial inequality and another titled race incarceration and American values professor Lowry wrote a provocative paper for today's conference titled culture causation and responsibility some reflections on the persistence of racial inequality in 21st century America and I'm gonna spend a few minutes discussing some of the major themes he explores I hope you can can you all still hear me so professor let's uh let's start with that title culture causation and responsibility if we were sitting in the studio at CNN or a lecture hall at Wellesley and tried to discuss culture and responsibility at a conference on racial inequality I submit to you that armed guards would escort us to the exits do you disagree only only slightly I mean I do at Brown University where I'm a professor teach a course called race and inequality in the United States it's ongoing right now and I started with a review of some of the data that are reflected in this paper about the extent of racial inequality and I challenge people straight ahead I say you know what's the cause of this ok so they're various stories out there and one of the stories is an unrelenting overbearing white supremacist Society won't give black people a chance and I do you believe that seven and ten black children born to a woman without a husband that fact is due to an unrelenting white supremacy do you really believe that do you believe that homicide victimization and homicide perpetration at an order of magnitude higher rate amongst african-american young men as compared to similar white men is a how explain to me tell me what the causation is I think what they're saying they don't write it my point is they don't write I mean they are a little bit stunned because they're not hearing that kind of challenge in most of their classes but I'd say 60 70 percent of them are challenged by it they're they're not you know just reflexively dismissive of it now among the activists who are not in my classroom but if we were to invite you heaven forbid the come and give a lecture would be present in large numbers there's a different story there's no as it were talking to some of those people but I'd say you just draw a kid at Brown University at random it's not it's not out of the question that you can get them to take seriously some of these kinds of things well let's talk about some of the arguments they make because to be fair many of even the activists don't deny the antisocial behavior that we see among particularly low-income minorities but they say before we start talking about that before we start talking about black behavior we need to talk about white behavior we've got governors in blackface we've got congressman spouting off about white nationalism professor why are you talking to me about out of wedlock child birth that is the real problem until we can eliminate that don't talk to me about learning gaps and in the black role in that we can't get there yet until we handle this issue with white people they need to get their act together don't talk to black people about getting their act first what a horrible argument that is I understand that people are gonna make it yes that will be said that's somewhat of a caricature but not much and what a horrible argument that is you just made white people the ones whom you say are the implacable racist indifferent don't care oppressors into the sole agents of your own delivery really if they are in fact so racist what's the point talking to them III mean that there's just a straight-up logical contradiction in that posture the oppressor is going to be the agent of my delivery if only I could get him or her to respond effectively to my moral Appeals I didn't follow that at all now as a matter of fact I don't buy the hypothesis the hypothesis being that the fact that the culture of Jim Crow segregation and white domination in some parts of American society had a long long you know shadow that could be seen even in the decades of the 1960 70s and 80s in American society reflected in the fact that some prominent Democrats in Virginia would appear to have been participants in the remnant of that that's true as an African American I'm not especially you know happy about that but it's hardly a an implacable force holding you back and what I have to say is such people and I expect that there may be some here who would find this problematic but what I have to say is that's people's grow up nobody's coming and save you grow up you're just dodging your responsibilities you're just looking for an excuse and sadly too many in the establishment in the media and Khadem II and so on are willing to play along but you know what when it comes to their children and their lives they'll defend the norms of decency and civil behavior that they know are essential to the development and the success of people whom they care about but when it comes to you and your people they're willing to nod along with your nonsense grow up but we're not I mean these are people in position of authority positions of power congressmen governor's business owners yeah um and the argument is that they run the system by and large and they are in a position to hold people back to discriminate on a systemic in a systematic way and that that is what explains these racial disparities that we see I mean you're you're an economist you deal in facts and data and Pierce ISM logic we've we have persistent statistical gaps in this country they've been around for a long time is that in and of itself evidence of racism but for racism would we see more racial parity when it comes to home ownership or income or education levels because that is one of the arguments being made out there well that's why I say culture causation and responsibility because the causation question is important it's difficult question as a matter of social science analysis but it's it's really very important so the way I look at it is I mean they're basically two narratives that people concerned about persisting racial inequality can adapt can adopt one of them is a biased narrative of the sort that you're outlining here you know racism and white supremacy have done us wrong we won't be able to get ahead until they relent we have to continue to press for reform of American Society of white American society to that in but the other narrative which I take very seriously and for which I think there's a ton of evidence I'm calling the development narrative I'm saying that you have to look at the processes by which people come to acquire skills traits habits and orientations that lend themselves to success for participation in American society until the extent that african-american youngsters - many of them certainly not all are not having the experiences and being exposed to the influences and having the benefit of the resources that foster and facilitate human development so much so that the statistics that you were alluding to are what they are to that extent that they are not developed that they're not achieving their full human potential that is basically the cause for the gaps that we're seeing and you know these two different crudely different orientations or predispositions point in two very different directions in terms of intervention and remedy the first is white America must reform itself we need more of this or that whatever that this or that is of the latter day agenda of the race reform as we need more of this or we need more of that white America must perform itself racism must end you see it in the New York Times every day the other however the development narrative both puts more onus on the responsibilities of African Americans to be engaged in the processes that lead to the development of full human potential and points toward solving the actual problems rather than of this kind of wishful argument if we could double the budget for this program then the homicide rate amongst young African mayor American males would go down if we can get this police officer at this Police Department under the investigation of the Department of Justice or convicted for their wrongful acts then then what then it'll be safe to walk around on the south side of Chicago at one o'clock in the in the morning well that that's wishful thinking well you made two arguments here one is that self development needs to to take place among these groups but to what extent can politicians or public policy abet that self development we've had black elected officials black police chiefs twice elected black president black school superintendents principals do these sort of problems you're describing lend themselves - political solutions or solutions that can be put forward by public policymakers is that where our focus should be well most in my mind of the public policy initiatives and activities aimed at improving life chances for disadvantaged people should not in need not be formulated and racial terms are understood as a remedy for racial inequality we need to figure out as a society what the character of our social obligations should be one to another what makes sense what does morality require what does pragmatic practical wisdom and human judgement suggest I'm talking about everything from health care to education to income support for indigenous families to indigent families and so on we need to figure out what works for America's disadvantaged people period if we get that right and you know we've been working on it for some time that is the shaping of the American welfare state consistent with our own democratic graphic realities and our own values and our fiscal capacities we get that right we'll go a very long way toward I think assisting African Americans to be able to develop our full human potential one area that I'd point to in specific in he and row is here we're going to be hearing from him is education and I think that there is a obviously very large footprint that public policy at the federal state and local level has in the provision of educational services to young people and I think it's demonstrable that on the whole for disadvantaged African Americans concentrated in large cities and largely minority majority school districts served by public employees who are on the whole some decent people doing the best that they can but based on assessment of the outcome may be not doing its best as can be done that's a huge area for policy with respect to charter schools increasing the options that parents have to avail themselves of my my son Alden who lives in Chicago has two children in the Chicago Public Schools and I can tell you he and his wife both of whom are college graduates and professional people spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about how to get their kids educated navigating the ins and outs of the of the system there and that's just one example there's plenty of room there but you know I mean I'm talking to Jason Riley I know you know that there are huge political forces standing in the way of that happening and I find it profoundly ironic that you look across African American politics you don't see any argument it's not like I expect everybody to agree with me I don't but you don't see any argument there is a virtual unit unanimous stance in the case at hand I'm talking about education in favor of the National Education Association's basic platform on these issues are hostile to charter schools couple years ago the n-double-a-cp s board meeting in Cincinnati was in effect attacked they're overwhelmed by african-american parents coming to protest the fact that the NAACP board was about to sign on to a resolution opposing funding for charter schools are exposing the expansion of funding for charter schools in the various states but you don't see any political engagement with these fundamental questions likewise on the issue of are the cops good or bad for the security and safety of African American lives in American urban environments what a profoundly important and significant question where is the debate amongst African Americans effective at the political and where's the challenge to sitting Congress person the Maxine Waters or somebody like that and you know I mean I don't mean to make this personal but really here we are now half century after the 1960s and there's no debate amongst African Americans about the lack of the effectiveness of these tried and Shop worn and ineffective stances that people are taking I thought you cared about black lives you're forcing me to the conclusion that you don't give a damn about black lives when you care about is the your Times editorial page that's what you care about you don't care about black lives if you cared about black lives you'd actually be out there arguing with people over this question of how do I secure the safety of person and property of people in places like the South Bronx or on the west side of Chicago or whatever because there's an argument to be had it is far from self-evident yeah in the paper you also talk about social media today and its ability to prey Mar conversations about race and racial inequality and the role it plays in pushing a narrative which seems to be what's most important owning the narrative regardless of whether you have the facts on your side can you talk a little bit about that yeah I'm speculating it's not as if I have this one nailed or anything like that but it seems plausible plausible to me so an incident will happen somewhere Starbucks in Philadelphia if I'm not mistaken two black men asked to leave the restaurant after getting into a dispute with the manager the incident then becomes a an event and the event becomes a cause and it's all around this idea that that incident is somehow emblematic or representative of the experience of African American it resonates with the bias narrative here we have the incident now what makes the incident even exist it's that information about it gets spread instantly and quickly among people people react to that information about it post on Facebook tweets on Twitter and so forth and so on and suddenly now we have a cause celeb now we have a larger than the actual objective you know relative frequency weather likewise police officer shoots an unarmed African American who's fleeing and shoots them in the back that then becomes the face of the experience of African Americans with police hundreds of thousands of people will now start taking their children aside and having a conversation with them about a purported threat that they face out there without any real statistical validation on the relative frequency of incidents of this kind and it seems to me that the social media does facilitate that I say in the paper that it's not that people know about the event it's not that the event happened and people know about it it's that people know about other people knowing about it so that when I come to the cocktail party it's a trope but it becomes a kind of shorthand reference to a generic phenomenon of african-american oppression suppression exclusion and so forth that people can then draw on knowing that others will understand the meaning of their reference to these it was that kind of idea I was getting at what about the role that intellectuals academics people who deal public thinkers people who deal in the world of ideas what explains their reluctance to go there in terms of talking about the role the culture plays in inequality in this country we all know about the Moynihan report what happened to him when he talked about what was going on with the black family but we are 50 years past that why is there such a hesitancy still today to talk about what is so obvious I mean you look at the the strike it's you know causation is hard to prove but the strong correlations between a father being in the home and a kid staying at a finishing school girl not getting pregnant as a teenager staying out of prison all the strong correlations between these things what explains the the reluctance of the of your colleagues to honestly have these discussions in this day and age yeah that's that's an important question I'm not sure I know I would speculate that part of it is virtue signaling one you know you're in an equilibrium we economists would say where certain kinds of speech acts have a connotation that is negative only certain kinds of people would say that thing so when they comment when the society is very polarized and where you have people whom we know are arch enemies of our interest you know at breitbart.com or what it might be who we know don't like black people saying certain things if you are an african-american or someone who wants to be thought of as very friendly to african-american interest you'd risk when you repeat things that are like what's being said by the known racist or similar to them you risk devaluation of your you know a set of the assessment people are prepared to make about you as being committed to the cause so there's a kind of that this is my theory of political correctness actually what I think political correctness is at the end of the day is a cul-de-sac a kind of cognitive and intellectual cul-de-sac where we have were trapped by the need to not seem to be on the wrong side of history and therefore saying things that we may not even believe ourselves many of us deep down but that we know are the things expected of us to be said so I think it's something like that at least for many people with something like that for other people I think it is a it is a technique and in effect it's a dare or I'm calling it a bluff in the paper that people know you know I'm sure many people who are friends of the black lives matter movement know that the cops are on the whole the principle line of defense of black lives against the depredation of a relatively few violent people they know that on the other hand they did they dare you they're in effect they're in you to disagree with them in public about it because they're relying upon being able to to smear you as a person who you know in virtue of the fact that you were point to the good that the cops are doing must not be on the right side of history this kind of they're they're counting on us backing down when confronted about calling attention to the absence of black fathers the and and by the way there are other issues besides race there is gender and so forth there there is the left-right debate about how you work in our society the economy those ultimate ah so you have ideologues of a variety of stripes who are allied together and they're kind of you know I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine I will not say anything about negative consequences of unrestricted illegal immigration coming across the southern border if you promise not to talk about how many of the black babies in Chicago don't have daddies well let me ask you I mean I have a theory as to why there's a hesitancy out there for these various groups to speak honestly about these things I think with the with the civil rights folks and the activists they become less relevant if they acknowledge that that racism is not does not play the role at once did in holding blacks back and with our politicians I don't think there's anything to be gained by having an honest discussion here if you're a politician you tell people what they want to hear if not not necessarily what they need to hear about these things and you tell them that I've got a government program here that can solve solve your problem and that's the way you win votes I I was recently I'm sorry Jason sir no what do you do I'll give you a very recent example um there are some YouTube videos out there of Kamala Harris as a prosecutor in San Francisco yeah 10 years ago yeah you should listen to the way she used to talk about some of these issues she there's there's a speech of her in Chicago talking about how she gets tired of these progressives talking about you know build fewer prisons and more schools she mocks them she says hey in principle I agree with you but you haven't addressed why I have three padlocks on my front door comma Harris doesn't talk like that anymore it's because that is not the route to the White House that it's not the route to the nomination that is that is not in her interest to talk like that it I'm not sure about that but that's easy for me to say I'm not a politician trying to get elected I'm not I remember during the primary campaign in 2016 Bill Clinton was giving a speech somewhere I think was in Philadelphia again and he got confronted by a bunch of activists who's calling him out about the omnibus crime bill of 1994 and he said to them in effect tell the truth tell the truth you weren't there okay it was a Shi t story okay we did the best that we could in retrospect we might have done a little bit differently this or that but you gonna call me a racist because I was trying to take care of my responsibilities tell the truth tell the truth now it was reported later as a gaffe Clinton once again goes off-script the campaign I'm not persuaded I mean look the way you get to be rich is you have an idea that nobody else has had and you have the balls to put your money where your idea is and you go into that niche in the market and you find out that people want what it is that you're selling if you're not willing to take a risk you're not going to get paid isn't that the rules of how how it works so likewise here with politics if you're not willing to take a risk and step out a little bit and challenge people isn't that what Donald Trump did to a certain degree in the 2016 isn't that why he's President of the United States right now he made a bet about what he thought that the electorate was gonna respond to that nobody else was willing to make I know I'm not supposed to say that but I mean if I'm wrong tell me I'm wrong last time I checked he won that election I'm not sure how much time we have left before we're gonna have questions okay well let me try and summarize can I just say I'm not endorsing everything which is what I'm endorsing is Switchfoot so what what you want you seem to be getting at in the paper is that in terms of the theme of this conference black barriers is that the the focus hasn't been on to the extent it's needed to be on on developing that's that social capital that human capital among these groups and but that that under development is a better nation of the the racial gaps we see today then is racism and and and and that there are opportunities out there for blacks today more than ever but they're unable to take advantage of them due to that under development say one thing I know our time is short in affirming your summary of where I'm coming from that's exactly where I come I want to give the school discipline example to make this point graphic so the Obama Department of Education enjoins or strongly recommends or cajoles local school districts around the country to get their racial disparity and suspension rates of students for disruptive behavior in school narrow narrow that racial disparity else you're going to have trouble with the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education along comes Betsy DeVos in the Trump administration and they rescind or walk back some of that advice to much consternation and listening to that debate I thought well you know if in fact it's the case that teachers principals and guidance counselors and school-based police officers are racially discriminating so that the same behavior amongst African Americans ends up with a tougher sanctions like suspension then that same behavior amongst whites that would be a problem it would be something the Office of Civil Rights and so forth it should should be involved in but based on all that we know like for example what's the crime participation and incarceration rate of those same populations five years later it's at least plausible that there's an objective racial disparity in the frequency of disruptive behavior that occasions the difference in the statistics now if that's right if it's not racism if it's the behavior of the kids what a disservice we're doing to those kids to cover up that disruptive behavior under the idea that we're getting civil rights what a terrible thing to be doing and not only to them but to their classmates who came into the school with the intention of learning something until the teachers were doing a very very difficult job by being in that classroom with these kids but not willing to back their play and instead rolling that up into a civil rights saying that is on the borderline of criminal if in fact the reason for the disparity is the disruptive behavior being more frequent amongst amongst these lower-class african-american students so so that's that's the kind of thing that I'm saying I'm saying if you really cared about racial equality I could go on in this vein the affirmative action debate we're now in now stop because I know our time is limited but we're now on the verge of enshrining as a permanent device achieving the inclusion and representation of African Americans in a lead in selective academic venues through an openly acknowledged use of different standards to judge their performance that's horrible it's not horrible because of the 14th amendment although the Supreme Court may yet find so it's horrible because it really isn't equality it's patronization it's african-americans embracing and the establishment adopting a set of practices that basically are rooted in the soft bigotry of low expectations yeah it's a horrible thing okay not because the Asian kids are being unfairly treated the label oh maybe it's horrible to African Americans ourselves and again I asked where's the debate other than Justice Clarence Thomas and the professor Thomas auld and a few others it's not even a debate amongst African Americans about a first-order question if the goal is equality yeah we're gonna open it up to questions if there are any out there the lights are very bright here so maybe someone can choose go ahead thank you Tim Koehler professor Loury given that you're spending most your time at in an academic institution do you feel that the students who you teach do they come out with a more thoughtful perspective do you or are we able to convince them because my experience with college students is that sir somehow come out brainwashed or do you think you're making progress and what else can we do in college to to sort of get people to give the students to think more critically about some of these issues we need more faculty who are open to considering these issues from abroad range of perspectives the ideological diversity ideological diversity of people who are in positions like my own to design these classes and put these lectures forward and invite these speakers and so on it's very one-sided left and we need more ideological diversity amongst the faculty as I said in my experience at Brown there's a broad swath of students I am gonna guess like 5060 percent who are not completely close-minded and are surprised and stimulated by hearing arguments of the sort that I'm putting in front of them and when I put those arguments in front of them I acknowledge that you know I'm voicing an opinion this is my assessment based upon you know what I've seen and and the thoughts that I've had my mouth is not a prayer book you should feel free to disagree and take issue and let's talk about it that the goal the goal of the class here is to train ourselves for a discipline fact-based reason mediated disputation not to you know you know induct you into the inner sanctum of the politically correct and not to berate and and you know from a from a right-of-center point of view if that's where I'm coming from but rather to figure out how we can engage these questions in a serious way and I'm not you know I haven't MacDonald and who I admire and respect and I don't entirely agree about this as where I understand her the diversity delusion is their most recent book and this sense that academia is a completely lost cause it's a it's a heavy-lift I'll grant you that but I don't think it's a completely lost cause because as I say I think there is a substantial plurality of students who are interested in thinking seriously and being challenged in their thought about questions that they take to be vitally important so I would not write off institutions of higher education completely but we desperately need to broaden the range of thinking amongst the people who are response before setting the stage at such institutions good morning my name is Clayton banks I'm the founder CEO of silicon Harlem but I'm speaking for my own self and I want to thank the Manhattan Institute for this great event professor Lowery I'm very impressed with your you know perspective I think I may go a little bit further than you I for one believe that racism is and that is just simply a social construct so when you where I think I would argue with you is when you identify yourself as african-american I just want to I to me I think we all have to figure out them what does that mean what do we assign to that and so my question to you is I think your point about education is much wider meaning that we really have to figure out how it we can disrupt the social construct to realize that we're all the same and I'm curious what your thoughts are around that I really Clayton I really appreciate that question and when you read my paper you'll see that we we have a lot of common ground on the question of what is race I spend some time talking about that I don't say a myth at the end of the day I say a social convention that is reinforced in society by the behaviors that people adapt and that has meaning to people notwithstanding the fact that it is not intrinsically significant color my skin my eyes shape a bones in my face the texture of my hair these are not telling us anything about the moral significance of human beings however we find ourselves socially in a situation where because of mutually reinforcing expectations that individuals have and because of ideas about identity these markers are meaningful for the way in which we interact with each other so for example look at the adoption market look at people who are willing to take children into their homes you will find that race plays a role in that in the sense that the opportunity is available their kids depend upon their race and whatnot families making decisions about how to constitute themselves there are aware of racial identity I call myself a black man from the south side of Chicago born nineteen I grew up in you know a segregated neighborhood all of my childhood was spent amongst other african-american people when I think about Who am I who do I want to spend my life with as a partner how do I want my children to identify and what causes do do they embrace that I might have a racial aspect to that in no way in no way confirms some kind of essentialist idea that you know race as a as it were real thing in no way does it do that but it is a conventional and easily understood response I mean people will adopt identities based upon the experiences that they've had through the course of their lives and the social markers that are meaningful to them and in a rais'd society that is a society in which racial conventions are an ongoing reality individual identities rooted in such practice are not inexplicable and I actually don't think they're morally problematic they needn't be morally problematic but this is an important issue because on the one hand I'm advocating that african-americans take more personal and communal responsibility for the gaps that we are that we are aware of which presupposes some kind of racial identity otherwise Who am I talking to if I say we african-americans we need to own this who am I talking to if I'm not talking to other people who share with me some sense of racial identity on the other hand I also say in this paper that I think at the end of the day the horrible of social pathology that we can observe in some quarters of American society is not black pathology its American pathology I want to insist that those people are our people I want to say for the purposes of politics policy and a sense of national purpose that we're one people here in America I'm against identity politics and it's crude manifestations and so on so on I'm in this situation where I'm trying to make a communal appeal to African American agency on the one hand but I'm also trying to make a civic appeal to the American nation on the other this is why I find so problematic and gratuitously blundering the stance of the NFL athletes visa vide is kneeling at the anthem and people would get mad at me for saying this I say this to my students and they don't ride it III say to them I say to them wait a minute I thought we wanted the structures of America's society reformed to be more accommodating of the interest of african-americans now how do we think that that was going to happen we're a democracy the only way that that happens is you get 50% plus one vote for whatever it is that you're trying to do who do you think those people are so if I'm proof I'm worried about police violence and cities and perhaps I shouldn't be so worried but if I'm worried about it and I want things to change and I want things to change how is it that assimilating my protest to a expression of contempt for national symbols how's that effective why am I making that the site of my protests you know I have a right to protest of course you have a right to protest but it could be a really stupid thing to do you're just fortuitous ly alienated 30 or 40 percent of the people who support you need the cops are killing more white people than black people in this country on a daily basis I thought you actually wanted to change it or or or this guy tell Nazi codes that they used to write for the Atlantic he he it makes a big case about the case for the reparations they want reparations for slavery they're not talking to the World Court they're not talk to the United Nations they're talking to the American people if there were ever going to be anything in the direction of reparations it would have to be agreed upon as a national project by Americans so how is it that at one side of your mouth you can say america owes black people reparations are the other side of your mouth you can say in effect America is a gangster nation full of Voe who did supremacist for whom we have nothing but contempt you're not really interested in politics are you you're interested in performance your grandstanding your pouting I want to say to such people so so I mean yeah I've got a little bit beyond for him to the question but on the one hand on the one hand these keith kids need fathers and nobody's gonna fix that problem with african-americans on the other hand the United States of America is a nation state diverse nation state full of lots of people and the stuff that goes on even in the darkest corners of our society it's stuff that we all have to own it's not happening on the moon it they didn't import the african-americans from someplace yesterday and they come in here with all their cultural pathology born bred raised made in America hi my name is Chloe Valerie I just have a slight disagreement and then a question I disagree with the notion that there isn't a debate in the black community I mean obviously I think on a political level perhaps it's not happening but on a cultural level if you were to pull up for example The Breakfast Club you could listen to debates going on between cultural figures over this very issue including education and the importance of other things that we need in our community okay so I guess my question is to what extent is politics upstream from the culture and can that cultural moment happening right now in the black community be used to foster more of these conversations whether it's in academia or ultimately in the political space okay well I stand corrected and thank you it may be then I'm just not as aware as I should be of all the discourse that's going on amongst African Americans I have heard about the Breakfast Club but I don't spend a lot of time there I'll confess I'm kind of pessimistic and I want to be wrong about this I see pretty much what Jason has described in amongst political actors is that there's not a whole lot of room for for deviation or discussion our Hillary Clinton brings the mothers of the movement to her convention in 2016 that these are mothers of youngsters who died at the hands of the police in one way or another and it's supposed to be self-evident that that's an embrace of you know the right side of history of righteous causes and whatnot and you know maybe that's not the best example Jasper Williams the preacher who gave the the wreath of Franklin's funeral dares to call attention I had to be one of the cultural moments that right dares to call attention to you know the absence of fathers and he says you know how was a woman gonna raise an adolescent boy to be a man and so forth and without trying to get into a fight about you know single mothers who have a very tough row to hoe and their capacities to raise their sons to be to be well-functioning adults he was trying to raise a question that I thought she'd be raised the last time I looked a ton of bricks fell on him he was a it was an Uncle Tom [ __ ] in the at the root com last time I look so I'm not so optimistic but I'd like to be wrong about that so please you know tell me I'm wrong and tell me why well we're gonna wrap this up Thank You Laurie thank you very much I was told that we're gonna take a very very quick break just to set up the chair panel so uh so thank you continue in a moment good morning once again I'm Howard Hughes expres adentro Policy Research at the Manhattan Institute and it's my pleasure to welcome a panel of respondents to discuss the points that Jason Riley Glenn Lowry have just explored did that really really stimulated an interview you know professor Lowry did himself a disservice by saying that they're only a few people like Tabas Seoul who were raising the deep questions it's clear that he's doing exactly that and we were fortunate to have it with us this morning I'm joined now by a panel quite diverse political scientist an undergraduate student and an educator to think about both some of the questions that were explored of the first panel but also to think about the bigger question of what would progress look like and how do we make it to take a constructive look forward to my immediately left my immediate left dr. michael fourtner is a assistant professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate School the author of a terrific book called the black silent majority which was featured here to talk with Jason Riley he's received his PhD from Harvard and political science undergraduate degree from Emory Coleman Hughes is an undergraduate student at Columbia right now who is writing prominently in a number of national outlets including the Wall Street Journal he asked me were the most provocative questions that was ever asked me at a recent event so I'm sure that he'll be provocative today okay and Ian Rowe is the is the head CEO founder public prep a group of charter schools here in New York City which has have predominantly African American populations and they dared to have single gender charter schools and he himself as a graduate of Brooklyn Tech because the computer science engineering from Cornell and an MBA from the Harvard Business School so it's a great group and I want to start Michael with a point that was raised somewhat in passing by Glenn and Jason about black political leadership you explored that question in the black silent majority I know you're continuing to think about it Glenn made the point that there's not enough debate where is the debate in the black political leadership how do you assess the state of that political leadership so I adore Lori and agree with almost everything that he said today you know and usually says but I there's a bit of a disagreement on this issue that came up earlier and that is I do think there is a huge debate among African Americans about this about these issues if you look at survey data or a host of policy questions most African Americans are where Glenn Lowery's paper sort of has outlined the problem I think we have is that black political elites for some reason are not responsive to the will of black folk for example if you look at the question single parents right and you look to cultural elites political elites there's a very different discourse that than the one going on in african-american communities if you go to any black church most black churches on a Sunday morning you will hear men ought to be fathers we need fathers in the home now that's not part of the discourse of african-american political elites but it is part of the discourse in communities the same about crime and this is what I this is what I wrote about African Americans obviously opposed police brutality but they also support public safety they realize that violence drug addiction drug trafficking in their communities poses a threat to their safety to the safety of their children and they support a robust police response that's not what black political elites are talking about right now that's not what whites on the Left are talking about right now for example I was at a conference on policing and there was a session where this theater group talked about activities in which they tried to bring members of the black community in the police department together through acting and there was a middle-aged black woman in the audience from the Bronx who said we've been doing these kind of things these things are amazing we need more of it a few minutes later a young white woman on the left she stood up as she was angry and she said wait a second why are we here promoting a relationship between black folk and their oppressors and I'm sitting there like sister did you not hear the black lady because there you know like where are you getting this and and you know it's this intellectual stream where everybody's read the new Jim Crow where everyone you know loves worships brother tongue Coates and a black leadership that fills that it must follow the lead of the of that ideological direction that consistently I would argue fails by communities who are constantly embracing sort of the good sense sort of pragmatic policies at a pragmatic middle ground right and you like to make the point that you talk about the racialized nature of black leadership what does that do to the black community well in part what it does well first I think there are and again this may be the difference between economists and political scientists Glenn made the point or propose the question don't you think they would be incentives to sort of go against the grain I'm not sure that's the case in African American politics where you need to sort of stand out and how do you stand out how do you compete with each other how do you compete with white politicians well you use race and you try to be more authentic and so you go to the extreme and there is I would argue a huge incentive to a type of racial politics that's not representative of the views of dispositions of everyday black folk I promise I'm going to get to democracy in and a public prep and and all that because that's where we really want a concept that I got to bring in Coleman here because we had that really interesting question for the back of the room about debate among young people so there you are you're in the middle of it is it isolating to be someone who has culturally based concern shall we say Allah Glenn Lowery's in the hot house of Columbia well yeah I mean yeah yes it's isolating I said yes it's isolating very matter-of-factly yeah I did because I don't as a matter of personal psychology I find that bad to dwell in the stance of isolated I'm going against the grain it the more I think about it the more it depresses me and makes me want to not speak so I try to not complain but no but but most of what you hear I mean it's like but the young woman in the back was saying well no there there is a robust breakfast club debate all of that there's there's there's green shoots of change you're you're you're not you're not giving her any help I mean I'm an I'm an N of one so a sample of one so in my experience at columbia is that almost anytime if I'm meeting a person you know stranger the typical Columbia student by the way most kids don't think about politics most kids think about the internship they're trying to get this summer the date they went on last week or whatever but when the conversation does turn into politics the the the received view the framing of the conversation is that Americas are racist patriarchy and you can make a nuance point points from that starting place but you can't challenge the fundamental premise and if you do as I have done it in in many a room it can derail the whole night it can make what was a fun social yeah I've ruined nights like this so so that that is true obviously I think all of this one filter through social media looks worse than it actually is because you get the worst versions and face to face interactions tend to go better not not always but yeah and yes yes it's isolating Ian Rowe we're dwelling in barriers the title of this talk of this event is barriers to black progress you are it's I think it's fair to say about overcoming barriers to black progress are you optimistic about that occurring well one point I want to make no I want to ask things are I'm curious what you think but because I run schools I'm optimistic so the network I run you know we are single sex Network element elementary and middle public schools in the heart of the South Bronx and in the Lower East Side of Manhattan so our kids you know join us at four years old and leave us at 12 or 13 years old so we have an opportunity to build the foundation for how our students think about their future and that their future is not destiny that these bleak outcomes that they're hearing over and over and over again aren't necessarily in their future because they actually have the power to change that course and that's what I always find amazing that there is this obsession with the bleak outcomes particularly in the black community and you see it in the charts in Glens paper but there's a story so the paper will be available at shortly after this event we promise right that's the website right so there is a story of success so you know last year I did an event focused on the economic success of black men in America because low and behold there's actually a growing class of successful black men and this the study tried to reverse integrate well what's what was common about these men and their experiences that their outcomes are so vastly different from the general narrative and the the outcomes were not that surprising probably to most people in the room that for the most part these men followed what is often recite Rita referred to as the success sequence right so they finished their education they got a full-time job which you know they learn the dignity and discipline of work they got married and then they had children in that order and their studies it shows if a kid grows up in a low-income family and follows those steps only six percent will end up in poverty that's critical information that kids need to know about the power that they could have over their own lives what's also interesting about that study of the economic success of black men in America there are a couple other points in addition to the success sequence which is that military involvement was sometimes correlated to sex to success as well as having a faith commitment but one of the number-one elements was that these men had a sense of personal agency that they felt that their decisions actually had the greatest influence over their personal destiny that's extraordinary and so if you're a kid and you keep hearing over and over and over it over and over and over that because of your race these are the outcomes that you're gonna have in your life it's really hard to feel a sense of personal agency so it's really critical that people eight schools counter that force and remind you of the personal agency the control that you have is enough it does essage enough right so you're you're on the frontlines in the schools we'd be talking about and and Glenn talked about the overwhelming nature and the failure of public schools right I'm guessing that message is just the foundation you can do it what about how you actually conduct class yep do school makes your outcomes better because they are then what happens in neighboring public schools in the South Bronx well I mean first of all it does start with a mindset that you can do it that you can't keep reiterating the failure of public schools there's some public schools that are doing great right with the very communities that we're talking about and we do need to understand why so so for example in our schools we now have a class for our exiting eighth graders calls pathways to power and pathways to power particularly for and this is now for our girls because our boys aren't yet up through eighth grade but they will but we'll have the same content for them is that we teach a class on the outcomes that are associated with different series of life choices right so for example our school in the South Bronx or schools in the South Bronx it's a community where for women 24 and under who are having children somewhere between 80 to 90% of those births are to our outside of marriage I was 80 to 90% correct for women 20 for another and to go we've been one step further about 41 percent of those young women 24 and under who are having children in a given year it's their second through their eighth child right so it's a very large population of very young single mothers raising very young children often multiple children under the age of five that's a path that if our kids are surrounded by that they may not necessarily know that there are other paths that have a much greater likelihood of success so we have to embed that in the curriculum for what we teach our kids we're not moralizing we're not blaming the victim we're just sharing realistic data that's usually a counterbalance to what they may be seeing personally in their lives in other words as important as it is to teach algebra well it's you got to do this other stuff too in your situation I don't see what other choice in my view it's actually irresponsible for schools not to teach this kind of information because it's almost sentencing our kids to the same reality that they're seeing across and by the way this is not just for black kids this is for with skyrocketing non-marital birth rates in the white community Hispanic community the issues we're seeing with the opioid crisis and others these issues are now more universal not sensor just in the black community and it's really important we stress that these are human behaviors these are elements of human development that I think are really critical to underscore you talked about how pernicious it is to get a message that failure is preordained or I'm guessing you would assume you agree that racism is is a insurmountable barrier that that would not be a message you want your kids to get either well the the that's why we talk about things like the economics right but in America I want to bring on a point in Glenn's paper that struck me as very original and we haven't talked about yet which is cultural complicity right and so in a sense the way I understood the point was not only is racism not a thing but a reverse kind of soft bigotry patronize ation and Glenn used that word it is a problem so it's okay for rappers to use the n-word it's okay for that kind of those kind of cultural displays to be norms in a coma I wonder how you experience that kind of white tolerance so do you see it as linked to dysfunction in the black community yeah well I think it's a kind of doublethink and Glenn pointed this out and others have pointed this out that there are many progressive whites in this country that will say well I'll have the raw values middle-class values for my kids middle-class norms for my kids but we will we will send the social media mob after anyone who like Aimee wax points out that it's just those values that are most needed in in in the low-income minority communities that are having these bad economic and social outcomes so it's a kind of double think and I think Glenn was also right to point out that all the social incentives facing them are to not talk about the problem to not talk about the problem of culture and like as you mentioned wouldn't you know like when I brought when I brought this up at the debate you had with with Richard Ross thing we can't summarize that whole debate it was about it's on YouTube because that'll be another another panel but the point I made was that Martin Luther King in his interview for Playboy magazine back when Playboy magazine was doing more important work than it is now he outlined the the SCLC's five goals four of which had to do with ending political oppression of blacks the fifth goal was what he called addressing the quote cultural lag in the black community and I think a good way to frame this conversation is as one that that is evaluating the status of dr. King and the SCLC s fifth goal and it's not I'm not all that optimistic about how much progress has that has been made like Glenn I'm not optimistic about the state of the discourse I think that people are terrified to say the wrong thing terrified to think out loud about this problem and I think we should emphasize that it is a problem that dr. King brought up several times it is is a problem that ironically sometimes the more radical you get in terms of Malcolm X and Nation of Islam were more even even even more willing to talk about these kinds of problems and more coherent about it in a way they obviously have an explanation in terms of the slave mentality that is what that that is what is holding by people back and that's why we're going to go to Africa or whatever it is so that there but there's a there's more there's something more coherent about that more willing to talk about cultural problems and also more coherence in in the contradiction that Glenn pointed out namely that if these are the the white oppressors that they're so oppressive and so callous why is it that you're petitioning them you don't you don't see that cognitive dissonance among the black nationalist types they'll say no they are the oppressors and that is why we're not petitioning them it's up to us so we're gonna leave obviously I don't agree with those conclusions but it's more internally coherent Michael how did this kind of racialized politics in which I mean let's take else Sharpton as a kind of a quintessential [ __ ] right how does he come to be and I know you're thinking about this specifically in the context of the history of New York if black leadership is doing a disservice to black people how did that come about so I would like to if I can please just briefly address this issue about the discourse and and white liberals because I've spent the last three years with my book getting beat up by white liberals and and and and I could and I could and I love them dearly there are some of my best friends but you don't pass right right but in the entire time right I would I would be talking about black agency right and so of course it's a structured agency but black folks have power they can make decisions and and I mentioned this the last time I was here and and white liberals will just come up to me and tell me I'm wrong then I don't know black folks you know and they would they would sort of say you don't understand how awful white people can be and am I thinking I'm starting to sort of patronizing is just sort of patronizing like I for some reason know the truth right and this is sort of the gospel that I'm embracing and you are offensive to it and I need to not disagree with you but I need to discredit you I need to sort of undermine the whole enterprise that you're attached to and so I think if we're going to move beyond the barriers we're going to need for sort of the intellectual elites white intellectual elites to be more pluralistic in their approach to knowledge and to these questions right and so getting back to my Al chapter question which is not unrelated I think do you really want me to talk about brother no you can talk about okay we can depersonalized okay right but but is white liberalism a foundation of that politics well it's supportive of that I mean one of the things that amazes me as someone who grew up in New York is he grew up in Brownsville Brownsville Brooklyn right in the nature project thank you that is that accounts for the brain dam No so in New York and and to sort of think about how far al Sharpton has come on the left is amazing you know he was an extremely controversial figure in the city of New York even among african-americans but I think his recent success show appearances on MSNBC is a testament to the content of contemporary White's liberalism and thus which they embrace that type of identity politics in the way that they had not done 20 or 30 years let me turn to to Ian Rowe charter schools are in the headlines these days there they were reducing the growth of charter schools it was one of the demands of the Los Angeles striking teachers there's a proposed charter school cap in Albany Glenn Lowry referred to this protest at the n-double-a-cp convention by black parents about the n-double a-c-p N double AC PS opposition to charter schools would you talk about why is there that opposition and why the heck do we need charter schools in the context of overcoming barriers if they are the only way right so great question so in New York State and New York City right now there are only seven remaining charter charters available new potential produced potential for new schools we are applying to open our second all-girls charter school in the Bronx last year we had about 4,600 applications for only about 200 open seats before let's just repeat that would you about 4,600 applications for about 200 open seats through a random lottery I believe that's more competitive at Harvard it's it's unfortunately pretty tough to get into our schools and it is it's an incredible joy to call two families to say that you know your child has gotten golden lottery ticket but it is heartbreaking to call 4400 families Wow to say that the best we can do is to put your child on an excruciatingly long wait list to get into our school and that's not just our school and you know these are parents that they don't want anything as radical is just the opportunity to send their son or daughter to a great school why folks would be in opposition to that as is mired probably in Union politics and perception of who's behind someone like me that runs a charter network that seems to be doing great things for kids by the way just bracket this how great are you doing then that was an easy question you know I you know what I like to say about our work is that we have a track record of continuous improvement right we are constantly trying to be better for our kids in our first our first school opened in 2005 is the first all-girls public charter school in New York City that cohort and we and we have more graduates and started which is very important are now attending some of the finest colleges and universities in the country as freshmen and sophomores Yale Cornell Tufts and I could go on are they following the success sequence I didn't come to that realization until later so now we're embedding that content so they can be doing even better looking once they have that content but the bottom line is our kids certainly relative to the very low standards of the existing system which by the way is no great hurdle in the in where are all boys school is we just built in beautiful 85,000 square foot building in the heart of the South Bronx in that district only 2% of boys who start ninth grade graduate from high school ready for college meaning to that they start ninth grade and either drop out or they do graduate from high school but can't do college-level reading or math without remediation and so I asked Glenn if I told him the stat like which is worse the dropout rate or actually finishing your high school degree but you're still not able to do college-level work so that is embedded low it's low expectations within the actual curriculum that the school is delivering so why do charter schools exist because we should give to parents better options than what has existed for them in the past but why are they so resistant is it a shear the narrative is it's you'd-you'd self-interest is it that simple that's not the narrative of the 4,600 families that are flying right so yes that yes there is a narrative and and you know Glen talked about social media and you know the power of the anecdote you know you can have one negative story about a charter school that may or may not be true and by the way not all charter schools are great there's some fantastic traditional district schools so so charter schools don't have a monopoly on quality right and we as charter leaders should acknowledge that but you take one example and it can be exploded to then fall into someone's narrative about how charter schools are somehow you know making money off the backs of poor kids or somehow have some other evil intent right and just and just one quick story about the power of anecdotes because I think this is just a great example if I were to ask most people in this room because I've been doing this recently I decided to write an essay about it who is Michael Brown most people would probably respond Michael Brown isn't that that kid that was shot in Ferguson right that's how most people know that name and one thing that's interesting there's another Michael Brown who's also you know it was about the same age as that that might grow to memoir I said no no this Michael Brown is a kid in Texas that no one knows about Oh black kid who applied and got into 20 different universities from Stanford almost all the Ivy League's just incredible story and you watch this you watch the video of him getting his application I think they were acceptance from Stanford and it's infectious it's in its joyous it's wonderful and yet no one knows about this Michael Brown and yet his story is much more representative of the more than 1 million black men there in college versus the story of Michael Brown who from Ferguson which is a tragedy but in terms of what they represent they're far different but the power of the anecdote and what social media can do it can create this this perception of an outsize perception of the this is my reality my reality is going to be much more like this Michael Brown than the one who got into twenty different uses of her university is now in the first leg of the success sequence and the likely greater choices he's going to have in his life you've talked about successive black males and you've written about it there's also assets that black males are particularly falling behind black women even within the success relative success of black women black men are trailing is that something that you think about in your school and I'd like to ask the other panelists to respond to the the general question as well again I think these are universal human issues of course I think if we think about it all the time I have an all-boys School in the heart of the South Bronx you know and oftentimes they are being raised in families families of which there may not be a father present and again let me say let me stipulate that being the child of a single parent is not a guarantee of failure we have extraordinary single moms and single dads in our schools who are doing incredible things to try and get their kid to be successful and also if you were a child of a married you know two-parent household that doesn't guarantee success however the odds are overwhelming that if you are a child in that situation that we see typically in South Bronx the odds are stacked against you and so which is why we think it's so incumbent to not reduce our expectations of that child because of the situation that they might be and we have to look right what about boys right so there's a there's a narrative out there that the economic opportunities for men that they used to have in the labor market have declined that there's all sorts of things that are stacked against men right and I think that only are the are the tail of that even more disadvantaged that's undeniable that the question again is again I'm an educator so I focus on what can we deal with the next generation who haven't yet encountered these issues right that is a reality the question is what are you gonna do about it right right are you going to succumb to the pressure and say you see that did you see I'm a seven year old did you see that chart that shows that I'm you know my my outcomes are destined to be worse why bother even trying right so you need a counterbalance to say that it's going to be hard because of your race because you're because of whatever you might have cancer like your life life what if life has adversity of which maybe being in a certain racial group might give you certain other barriers but you're the greatest decider within your though the the course of your own life and for me that is I feel a very privileged in the Honorable position to be running schools because that's the message we've got to give despite all of those real statistics I don't think anyone is denying the outcomes the bleak outcomes that do exist the question is what are we preparing our the next generation for how they think about how to tackle those who shows up in your classes do you have African American students and how are they making it to the CUNY Graduate Center I don't have many CUNY Graduate Center most of the students at the grad center are white on the left and so it's not an extremely diverse crowd although we're trying to make inroads minority communities right now I didn't mean to put your other defense in and I'll try to figure out like why they want to get a call from my department chair what the hell are you talking about no but if I can I'll go back to the please the other question about what do we what do we do about it although CUNY is working hard to do with this problem so President Obama had this initiative my brother's keeper right that try to tackle some of this by building mentoring relationships and other opportunities for young back mill a lot of black intellectuals took him to task they did the task for that now again it's a it's a de pere aquestion and whether or not these things work but my concern as a political scientist is sort of where where are black folks on this issue and then where is the political system on this issue and the political system right in terms of white and black elites are not where black folks were there were Obama was and black folks are constantly craving more opportunities for their son for mentoring for better sort of educational institutions and there is a discourse among black and white elites on the left that this is somehow fundamentally problematic that's sexist what sexist but also that it focuses too much on behavior and not enough for unstructured and structural racism structural racism right and the Obama President Obama's response was that look it's he believes it's you know some proportion of structure some proportion of culture why don't we try everything including this and whether that's right or wrong that's where most black folk are but that's not where the sort of the democratic policy establishment is right and you're just constantly making that point between what we might call the black working class black he leaves see yes could add to that I so you're pointing out this disjunction between what black people when polled actually believe which is far more socially conservative than is generally expected and what political elites say and asking why aren't they reflecting the opinions of the political elite John McWhorter the writer John McWhorter he had a book called authentically black from maybe 16 years ago roughly where he one of the threads of the book is that there's a sense among black people that what you say around black people versus when you're around white people you should not be sending the same message around black people it's okay to say we need fathers in the home what is this crazy business about if you if you're into math and into reading that you're acting white what you're allowed to say that encouraged to say those in church or around black people but the moment white people can hear we need to feel that we need to keep them feeling that they are on the hook to us from a policy perspective and that's a huge that this is the sense this is not something I agree with but if that is the attitude then it would make sense for for it's not just that the political elites are ignoring necessarily the black constituency it could be that they're being penalized for not obeying that double standard and the last one I would make about that is and so they're reluctant to do it because of that yeah and in to the extent that they do do it like my brother's keeper they are penalized for not obeying the law about what you're the dirty of any rule but I'll say one thing implicit to the extent that that attitude is pervasive among black people which seems plausible I guess I wonder what what the rest of you think it's it's an implicit recognition of the fact that as Professor Lowry would say nobody is coming to save us well it's an implicit recognition that the reason we can't we can't talk about fatherless homes when white people can hear is because they can't do anything about it because it would it would it would make sense to talk about it around white people if they could do about it do something about it but we know somehow deep down that it's up to us and the things that they can do are perhaps related to other policies right I think well I was saying that gets back to to to Jason's questions should we look to public policy in any in any way it may go ahead with what you were gonna say so I think for some time there was even with my book there was some people who thought you know this is dirty laundry we know this but the rest of the world right the book was the basically working class black people push for trough tough okay Lauren and created conditions for the passage of the Rockefeller drug laws and and I think that's somewhat true but but but me but there's also a group of very important black intellectuals who don't embrace that argument at all who fundamentally thinks that who have different opinions from sort of working-class middle-class African Americans and then ascribe their views on to this population there was a there was a someone who was writing about criminal justice I'm not gonna mention the book but they went after me in the footnote and the point that this person made was that instead of going to police she said we know that blacks and Latinos turned to gangs for their protection and I thought why would you write something like that that's the craziest thing I've ever heard right imagine a white conservative said that black folk hate the police and instead turned to gangs we would be riding over something like that we would be protesting over something like that but you could have this argument in which the the racial order white supremacy is so overwhelming to make ordinary black folk do things that we might think are sort of strange but make sense within this theory and I think there's a devotion to this theory now to this approach to this structure argument that I've never seen you know over you know over the last twenty years and it forgives all sorts of this behavior if you will and ignores it or endure it completely sort of just says sort of it's the structure everything but again and it's and for me and I love black folk I know sort of race is a social construction but but I'm black as could be and and and I'm happy about that but what's so weird is that a lot of the structural arguments sort of force black folk to be either extraordinary or crazy you know I'm just sort of like my work is about how black folk are just like everybody else we make mistakes like everybody else we believe certain things like everybody else we may be wrong or right but we need to be understood within I think theoretical frameworks and tools that allows the individual allow sort of our own sort of cultural heritage to to breathe through and not have these structural arguments that sort of dismisses everything that's interesting about black folk and and that's what the structural argument that we're now seeing does and I think that's dangerous right I got one last question I'm getting the time signal here but Ian had this public policy point what do we look for for publicly the permission to operate a charter school is a public policy issue but when we spoke on the phone you said something that really caught my attention Norm's swamp policy you said could you elaborate on that well it's just this idea that culture I think someone you know culture cultural norms they do overwhelm policy I mean you can you can shower an entire community with public dollars but if there's a fundamental disconnect of the responsibilities of men within that same community it's really hard to see how that is going to overturn and and you cannot look at the last 50 years you know since the Moynihan report or the Coleman report in education or you worry bronfenbrenner in the late 60s or urban development who were saying these things that public policy matters but we've got some other issues here particular on family structure the role of men that will become its own pathology regardless of how the structural racism may have caused these conditions now but the power of fatherless homes unto itself becomes the perpetuator and I think our history has shown we've made enormous investments in trying to turn around the outcomes and again not just the black folks but low income folks across race and we have still not seen the desired outcomes and so this recognition is not to repudiate whatever structural barriers do still exist but we have to be honest and recognize that these cultural forces particular on the formation and the timing of family structure is critical to achieve the outcomes I know that we're all committed to achieve I've got a book coming out so the government really can't set the norms how do you feel about that well that's not true I mean I think the president sorry brother I mean nor norms do norms do come from a lot of places you know Urie bronfenbrenner the father headstart and his eco biological theory you know has this idea of human development where a child it you know exists within a series of concentric circles right and their view on the world is shaped by their most micro system which is primarily their family and the strength of that unit then allows them to buffer from other forces whether it be media popular culture of government but if that is not strong then how norms are shaped can go in all sorts of negative ways and so there is a role for a president who can be a bully pulpit and talk about family you know you can policymakers can talk about things that are not policy and still advance the causes of policy right I think an ideology that seems that every solution be wrapped up in the Albany or Washington Roy is is a failed one I guess I've seen the charter school as a civil society kind of a thing too because you got philanthropic support and you're in the norm shaping business I mean we just built a 30 million dollar you know building in the Bronx and it was a very unique example of public and private financing so it's a great example of how public policy can be a lever but not the only lever we got a couple minutes for questions and then I'm going to invite Glenn Lowry to come back and be a respondent to the respondents and I'm trying to see somebody if you asked a question last time I'm not okay David ma sure I have a question for a fellow Brooklyn Tech alum go engineers okay there is a curriculums that comes out of Chapel Hill that can be applied to schools across the board in various studies where there are instances of chronic maybe hereditary congenital unemployment we've taken that curriculum to Israel where it's been very successful and you have you talked about a course which is called pathways of power my question to you is is there such a curriculum for personal agency that can be applied in a mathematics course an English Composition course a history course in other words instead of having an independent course on an individual agency is there a curriculum that can be applied across the board that's a great that's a great question so the reason I talk about pathways to power a it's so unique and and we're still evolving it trying to make it better but that's the goal by by demonstrating that there's a school brave enough to even take on these issues I'm hoping to inspire other charter leaders district leaders private school leaders to say how could we incorporate those these same elements that we're talking about in what we call pathways to power but embed that throughout the curriculum right because the whole idea is to infuse this idea that whether it's mathematics or science there there are pathways there is history of human development and that there's certain pathways that are better than others there's certain pathways that lead to chronic unemployment and there are others that lead to chronic employment and shouldn't our kids know the difference and by the way great Brooklyn Tech I loved my time at Brooklyn Tech you know it's one of the specialized high schools in New York which right now are under assault in terms of the criteria that could be utilized to get into these great schools and why not just build more specialized high schools and increase the quality of education that kids are receiving pre-k through eighth grade so that all kids are better prepared to get into more great high schools ok one more question that I'm gonna bring Glenn then we okay right in the middle there I apologize but I did want to ask a question and you pointed to me and someone gave him the microphone but let me let me ask my question which is I want to try to tie together the success model and no one's coming here to help us or who is coming here to save us save us the success model I think becomes intuitively obvious and a lot of the conversation today has been how do you get the bottom of the funnel to really improve I think there's another way to think about it is how do you get the top of the model to be more visible and more widespread so make it in the form of a question no no Bolton are the most successful be a model for the least successful well yes but let me go a little further because I wanted to looking for this come on this is a democracy so what I what I think is from my own experience there is a massive amount of support for that success model that exists in corporate America and I think there are widespread amounts of funds that are available to invest in that I've experienced that in many places and I just think that that is a profitable way to look at this question also it's not dispositive from your lips to God's ears there there is a it is quite controversial to talk about the things that I'm talking about within a public education setting to talk about these series of life decisions education work marriage then children as a suggested order that more likely leads to success is highly controversial and I encourage philanthropists foundations to invest to make it okay versus more of a victimization kind of ideology that seems to attract more funds okay so I'm gonna invite Glenn Loury to come back why don't you just stay here please so idea thank you got power yeah and what we'll just stay here to make it easy if you know by taking the podium glad that'd be great speech thanks to the excellent panel I mean there were many I think important things said let me review the bidding I've got a note here urgency agency and honesty and that's how I'd like to frame my reaction to this entire experience this morning this is urgent these things that we talk about are absolutely fundamentally important to the health of American democracy we can't let this fester unaddressed it's only gonna get worse you saw what happened in Ferguson it's gonna get worse you saw what happened in Baltimore it's going to get worse if we don't find a way effectively as a polity to address ourselves to these matters we're in deep doo-doo as George Herbert Walker Bush once so that's point number one point number two I heard Barack Hussein Obama's name mentioned only once in reference to my brother's keeper up here I blame Barack Hussein Obama for Al Sharpton Barack Hussein Obama created al Sharpton as a national figure with the reach and the influence that he has I'm sorry can we be honest about the former president whom I admire as a human being greatly fondling of the race portfolio during his eight years in office he was elected and celebrated as the first african-american president nobody could have changed that narrative any more than he might have done he elected not to do that when civil disorder broke out in Ferguson Missouri and in Baltimore Maryland he basically winked and nodded at it rather than standing up for law and order as the President of the United States ought to have done having done so as an African American would have made a huge difference in the tenor of the discourse on this issue I'm sorry I know that this is not necessarily a universally shared view but if you want to talk about politics and political leadership on racial issues and you elect a black man president of the United States and he puts out Sharpton in charge of the race portfolio for our country he has not done his job correctly in my opinion okay so I think that that needed to be said I wished that when the black lives matter issues had broken out that the president had been more willing I wish that two more willing to stand up for the universal values that are that are at stake when people go into the streets on nonsense hands up don't shoot we all know that that was not actually what happened there Roland fryer and his analysis is careful analysis of the data on police violence finds what he finds which is that does with respect to lethal violence there isn't any evidence at least in the city of Houston that systematics after systematic study or in the stop-and-frisk data that he got from New York City that there was this epidemic of lethal violence against African Americans you don't go into the streets and barrett-dunne you don't you don't mass in front of courthouses and demand that juries produce results suppose that that was done every time an African American sellin murderer or criminal had victimized somebody that you had mobs in front of courthouses demanding quote-unquote justice close quote etc I won't go on I wanna I wanna I'm gonna raise a couple of other points where's the church in this discussion my luther king's name got mentioned morality used to actually mean something you used to be able to say to young women three four or five babies by the time you're 30 years old with three different fathers is no way to live it's wrong not just counterproductive not just inconsistent with success it's wrong when I say cultural complicity in my paper what I'm talking about is the fact that the plight of low-income African American communities is in part the consequence of American societies structures the contempt for religious devotion that is characteristic of political elites running op-ed pages and running political campaigns in this country I'm not just talking about the anti-catholic bias that you seen recently because Trump wants to robots appoint some Catholics to the Supreme Court I'm talking about the fact that Malcolm X is a more celebrated figure than Martin Luther King as a matter of fact on the streets of many African American communities in this country that's an abomination King's leadership was rooted in his commitment to Christian ministry that's why there's a monument to him on the Washington Mall that's why there's a national holiday to him what he managed to accomplish in the 15 years or so that he was a leader was rooted in his faith where am I saying that being voiced amongst african-american leaders John Lewis where are you what about religion what about morality what about appealing to people's duties as well as their responsibilities as well as their entitlements and their victimization I think that the intellectual framework for discussing these issues is in trouble I think the only way to correct that is to be honest about the nature of the difficulties African American youngsters are not underrepresented at the exam schools in New York City because the test is biased they're not underrepresented at Caltech and MIT because those are racist institutions they're underrepresented because they have not acquired the human function and capacities that allows them to compete in those kinds of selective rarefied competitive venues if we don't address that problem again as I say we're destined to be living in a universe of patronizing soft bigotry of low expectations and excuse making for African Americans I'm mad about this me Glenn Lowry personally I'm pissed off about it it's a travesty [Applause] [Music] thank you Thank You professor Lowery I also want to thank our our panelists for the wonderful job Howard I want to thank my Manhattan Institute colleagues for helping put this together particularly Michael Hendrix and thank you all for coming today I appreciate it I wish our discussions of race were as comprehensive as the one we had today unfortunately they're not but let's start somewhere so thank you again for coming and have a good day [Applause]

Channel: Manhattan Institute

Views: 184,075

Rating: 4.8515501 out of 5

Keywords: manhattan institute, Jason Riley, Glenn Loury, Michael Fortner, Howard Husock, Ian Rowe, black progress, Black America

Id: rzOApVTfT48

Length: 108min 29sec (6509 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/ohisuppose]

A huge barrier is the bigotry of low expectations. The pernicious effect of lowering the standards via the explanation of structural racism hurts black kids in high school and college and sets them up for failure and resentment in the real world.

[u/Dr-No-]

Short answer: Both.

[u/SuccessfulOperation]

The Manhattan insitute?

REALLY?

And even Sam is signal boosting this clear right. wing. propaganda. think tank? https://twitter.com/SamHarrisOrg/status/1095429998456885249

Sam is turning into Dave Rubin with better sentence structure at this point. Next he'll be the "last liberal"

And Coleman Hughes? Why does he get to be on stage with actual PhDs??? He hasn't even graduated undergrad yet! and you can look up his columbia university info if you don't believe me.

[u/BloodsVsCrips]

You'll never get me to take Loury seriously after he argued with McWhorter about Trump being smart.

[u/Dr-Slay]

Yeah I'm not sure what people expect, most of the black culture in America is built on uprooted slaves.

You traumatize already frail biological systems with fucking slavery and see how well that goes.

Personally, I grew up in a violent, abusive home, and as soon as I could I ended it with as much force as necessary. (Nobody died, but if it would have come to it...)

The way right-wing people in this psychotic country try to sweep all this under the rug as if it's "all OK now" boils my blood. There's something vampiric and narcissistic about "Western Culture."

My deal with slavery is: forgive, but as in all things, where you have bayesian priors, never forget.

[u/Tsegen]

Great stuff from @GlennLoury, @coldxman, and others

[u/AceFlashheart]

Genetic?

[u/Maser16253647]

How does the social mobility of AAs relate to a group of white people in a similar socioeconomic stratum?

Hasn't social mobility been falling for everyone since the Reagan revolution?

How big are the residuals here?

[u/Dr-No-]

I know Hughes is a big fan of Sowell, who is an incredibly tendentious hack. I am very suspicious of Sowell as he excels at cherry-picking and hacking at data to fit his conclusions.

​

Loury also frequently talks about out-of-wedlock births while blaming the government for it. It is a poor explanation...access to contraception and cultural changes are a much bigger reason, and he doesn't explain how whites also have a much higher degree of out-of-wedlock births without the resultant aggregate poverty.