Glenn Loury: 'If the black community wants change, it needs to look at itself'

 

SEE ALSO: "A NEW AMERICAN DILEMMA"

https://www.brown.edu/Departments/Economics/Faculty/Glenn_Loury/louryhomepage/The%20New%20Republic%20Articles/A%20New%20American%20Dilemma%20(1984).pdf

INTERVIEW

Glenn Loury: 'If the black community wants change, it needs to look at itself'

 

White Americans are not responsible for everything that's wrong in the African-American community, says Professor Glenn Loury. Continuing to insist on racism stands in the way of real change.

 

Esma Linnemann 21 mei 2021, 18:04

https://www.volkskrant.nl/nieuws-achtergrond/glenn-loury-als-de-zwarte-gemeenschap-verandering-wil-moet-ze-ook-naar-zichzelf-kijken~bdc55ac3/?referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F

 

Glenn Loury: 'It is ridiculous to say that the police force in the US poses the greatest danger to the physical integrity of black people.'

 

Glenn Loury  (72) doesn't like to say it either. He likes his people. And he's no longer that wise-nosed Harvard professor of the 1980s, who judged so harshly the shortcomings of the African-American community.

 

But loury - a professor of economics and social sciences at Brown University - still has to say: "African-Americans still don't take enough responsibility for their own community. That's what I thought at the time, and yes, I think so now.'

 

Furore made Loury  in the mid-1980s with his story of pathological weaving errors in African-American culture; his criticism of the lack of fathers involved, of the high level of violence and crime. That was the real enemy within the community,  coined by Loury as the enemy  within. But this enemy was hardly. All attention was focused on the  enemy  without: white racism in the US.

 

And now, to Loury's great frustration, the arrows are once again, or still, aimed at white Americans. They'd be to blame for all the problems. Since the death of George Floyd, all attention has been focused on police brutality against African-Americans. 'While it's ridiculous to say that the U.S. police force poses the greatest danger to the physical integrity of black people. It's a demagogic and explosive discourse.'

 

Loury shares his sneering political analysis on his online program The Glenn Show. There, he regularly argues with kindred spirit John  McWhorter- An African-American linguist at Columbia University. Loury  and  McWhorter  call themselves  the  wokebusters  and fillet the anti-racist discourse of the Black  Lives  Matter movement. Because yes, African-Americans are more likely to be killed by the police in relation to their share of the population. But blacks are also much more likely to be poor - and however unfair, being  poor  attracts  the  cops. In addition, African-Americans are also more likely to be criminal. Why,  Loury  and  McWhorter  wonder, doesn't anyone take these variables into the equation?'

 

In the video "The fake narrative  about  police  and  race,"  Loury raises his corona-sanded voice as he talks about Maxine Waters, the California Congresswoman who roused a crowd of protesters in early April to become "more aggressive" at a possible acquittal of police officer Derek  Chauvin. Loury- furious: "I haven't read a critical note about her demagogic incitement to violence anywhere - except in right-wing media."

 

A little over a month later, the professor's voice sounds as hoarse as we talk about the anti-racism debate in the United States via a Zoom connection. At his  rhode island home, Loury  is brooding  on a  memoir about his life. 'I'm thinking of the title:  Changing  My Mind. My son Glenn junior thinks it's a stupid title, but I've changed my mind a lot.' The other day about  Trump. 'At first I thought we should debate the content of his ideas, not his person. But then came the 2020 election and  Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat. The person  Trump turned out to be the danger to our democracy that critics feared. I was wrong.'

 

Glenn Loury  is the embodiment of the American dream: a boy from poor South Chicago who has everything in him to reach the academic top, but his girlfriend gets pregnant. An academic career seems to have been stifled.  Loury  doesn't give up, he goes on night shifts as an accountant in a printing company to support his family and takes classes at a local college during the day. His lecturer urges him to sign up at a real university: Northwestern University. There he emerges as a mathematical genius, an elegant wizard with equations. A PhD at the prestigious MIT follows.

 

And then there's the ultimate accroning to his intellectual efforts: Glenn Loury,  33, becomes the first black professor at Harvard's economics faculty. 'I experienced that as a huge pressure, I was so afraid of failing, falling through the cracks. I switched to Harvard Kennedy School, a faculty focused on public administration, not long after. That's where I really found my voice.'

 

That vote appears remarkably conservative and was shaped by Detroit, the city he frequented when he taught at the University of Michigan. Inthe 1980s, the motorcitywas in the grip of crime and decay, white families were leaving en masse. Loury: 'A social economist will rush to say: 'Detroit was the victim of globalisation, the car industry could not compete with global competition, with all the social consequences that entails.' But I also saw something else: a black community in crisis.'

 

In 1984, Professor Loury published A New American Dilemma, a polemical essay that swings him to the inner circles of america's conservative elite. In it,  Loury  argues that "social upheaps among poor blacks, lagging academic performance, the disturbingly high rate of mutual crime and the alarming rise of unmarried young mothers loom as the primary obstacles to progress."

 

You encountered a lot of resistance with your analysis. During one of your speeches, Martin Luther King's widow, Coretta Scott King, sat in the front crying.

'I think she felt very disappointed. I was a Harvard professor, the face of a new generation, and then I came up with this criticism. It was heresy to say that the African-American community also had its own responsibility. I was a traitor in their eyes. I was excluded, but actually I enjoyed being the bad boy.'

 

Elsewhere, you did impress with your argument.

'Sure, I was embraced and praised by a conservative white elite. In 1987, I was even nominated to be the second man in the Department of Education in Reagan's second term. I was on my way to becoming a kind of Clarence Thomas (African-American Supreme Court justice, ed.).'

 

But things turned out differently. Because Loury  lived a double life all along. 'I was proud tobe a codeswitcher;  to hold my own on both Harvard and the streets of deprived neighborhoods. I liked to smoke marijuana and became addicted to coke and crack. I loved hitting on women on the street. Maybe I did it to blow off steam, in my life at Harvard I was under a huge pressure. But I did it anyway. There was an  enemy  within  Glenn, that's probably why I was so fierce.'

 

One of his then-girlfriends sued Loury  for domestic violence after a violent argument ("I didn't violence that woman, but I did treat her badly"). She withdrew her charges, but  Loury  had to forgo the position. Not long after, he was arrested for drug possession. 'Looking back, you might wonder if I really wanted that job. At least I did everything I could to screw it up.'

 

Loury got off, joined a church with his – forgiving – wife Linda (later he would resign and declare himself an atheist). He threw himself into his original love: microeconomy. It wasn't until 1995 that he published again on the subject of race, in a milder tone and full of self-reflection.  Loury  set his teeth into  America's  prison system, with the acclaimed book Race,  Incarceration  and  American  Values-noting that African-Americans were disproportionately represented in a merciless, inhumane prison system. Loury  was back, resurrected from the ashes as a moderate, progressive thinker.

 

But then, after 2010, came the police killings of African-Americans like Trayvon  Martin, Michael Brown and Eric  Garner. The Black  Lives Matter movement gained steam and wrote its political manifesto. The subject of race was back like never before, but Loury  was undepressed by the quality of the arguments of these new generation of thinkers and protesters.

 

You returned to your stride?

'Yes, at its core, I'm back to the same opinion I expressed in A New American Dilemma. This anti-racism movement, too, pretends that the civil rights movement has not made progress. But we had a black president for eight years. We have black billionaires. We got Oprah Winfrey, we got LeBron  James. Black athletes are gods in our country. Hip-hop is currently the most dominant music movement in our culture. Then there's a large African-American middle class, universities and big corporations are all committed to diversity. I just don't believe that inequality in the United States in 2021 is due to racism.'

 

The fact is that African-Americans are about 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white Americans.

'Yes, but African-Americans are also hugely disproportionately represented in the figures of violent crime: from rape and armed robbery to murder. Take the murder rates: about 15 thousand people are murdered every year, 8,000 of them are black victims, and in 95 percent of cases the perpetrator is also black. Then the analysis 'it's up to the police' simply falls short. There are just young, very violent men who cause destruction and suffering with their gangs.'

 

On the other hand, some people will argue that this violence is the result of racism. It is the result of social structures destroyed by a history of slavery, followed by racial segregation.

'And I agree with that, of course it is: the culture of black lives in poor areas of America is the product of a history that goes all the way back to slavery. My opinion is: all these influences do not yet relieve you of your own responsibility to take good care of your children, to take care of your own life. If we want change, we have to look at ourselves.'

 

You argue that anti-racists with their charges give white people power and instead "infantilize" black people. What do you mean by that?

"Black Lives  Matter activists appeal to the white majority: acknowledge your privileges, apologize. In doing so, they turn the white American into  moral  agents- they can decide to do theright thing. At the same time, poor black people are the product of history, willless victims of their circumstances. I wish my community more autonomy to seal their own fate and not depend on white Americans for justice.'

 

Given the strained relationship between African-Americans and the police, isn't it empathetic that people took to the streets en masse after the death of George Floyd?

'Yes, and I don't want to tell people how to feel. But in absolute numbers, far more white people are still killed by the police than black people, and there is also a white example for every George Floyd. Think of someone like Tony Timpa  (a white, mentally unstable man who was murdered by police officers, ed.).

 

'There's so much interaction between cops and civilians every day, and when something terrible happens to a person, like george floyd, people ignite in anger and take to the streets - not just to demonstrate peacefully, but also to loot and destroy. I was shocked by the crowds outside the courtroom demanding that Derek Chauvin  be sentenced. They intimidated the jurors, they undermined due process.'

 

In The Glenn Show, you even agitate against the progressive rebuke of voter suppression - Republicans who make it harder for African-Americans to vote through legislation and rules. While: that seems to be happening in Georgia at the moment, right?

'Some of the legislative changes proposed by Republicans will affect African-American voters more. But that's mostly nefarious partisan tactics from Republicans, focused on winning - black communities are more likely to vote Democratic. This is not about racist motives, for me that is an important difference.

 

'I don't think some of these new demands are unreasonable. I don't know about your country, but I don't think it's so strange that you have to identify yourself when you vote. Nor is the answer to shout "racism" very loudly. Everyone should get id, that makes life better for black Americans in other ways.'

 

Isn't this the Glenn Loury of yesteryear who enjoys being the bad boy? What do you think is at stake?""

'I'm just not optimistic about the direction of my country. There is a large group of voters - not least poor white Americans - who feel completely alienated from the Black Lives  Matter discourse. The monster is ultimately white identity politics. I'm afraid  social  justice  warriors  are overplaying their hand, resulting in anti-black sentiments.'

 

How do you think America should proceed if it's not along identity lines?

'I like to refer to my fellow economist Robert Reich, who calls for cognitive empathy. We must learn to see the world through the eyes of another. You don't have to agree, not at all! But there is so little understanding now, and that is difficult in a country that hosts both Christian fundamentalists and liberals. The point is, we have to live together. The way we talk about race now, the pro-race identity politics, increases the alienation and distance from each other.'