Two racial narratives

In 2018, Glenn Loury described what he called the bias narrative and the development narrative.

The bias narrative calls attention to racial discrimination and exclusionary practices of American institutions—black Americans not being treated fairly. So, if the gap is in incarceration, the bias narrative calls attention to the behavior of police and the discriminatory ways in which laws are enforced and attributes the over-representation of blacks in the prisons to the unfair practices of the police and the way in which laws are formulated and enforced.

The development narrative, on the other hand, calls attention to the patterns of behavior and the acquisition of skills and discipline that are characteristic of the African American population. So, in the case of incarceration, the development narrative asks about the behavior of people who find themselves in trouble with the law and calls attention to the background conditions that either do or do not foster restraint on those lawbreaking behaviors. Now, the position that I take is that whereas at the middle of the twentieth century, 50 to 75 years ago, there could be no doubt that the main culprit in accounting for the disadvantage of African Americans was bias of many different kinds (bias in the economy, social relations, and in the political sphere), that is a less credible general account of African American disadvantage in the year 2018. And the development narrative—the one that puts some responsibility on we African Americans ourselves, and the one that wants to look to the processes that people undergo as they mature and become adults and ask whether or not those processes foster people achieving their full potential—that, I think, is a much more significant dimension of the problem today relative to bias than was the case 50 years ago.

But as far as I can tell, Critical Race Theory sees the development narrative as racist.

For more Glenn Loury, along with John McWhorter, Shelby Steele, and Eli Steele, I strongly recommend this video.

27 thoughts on “Two racial narratives

  1. But as far as I can tell, Critical Race Theory sees the development narrative as racist.

    Branding has always been easier than evaluating, especially for zealots.

    • You are right. For CRT any other narrative is racist, or fascist, or whatever.

      If you are to Stalin’s right, you deserve to be canceled (including extreme forms of cancelation). The first step is to denounce you as racist, fascist, or whatever, because of anything you have said or done. Be ready for the second one, it can kill you.

  2. I’m always trying to pin people down on their beliefs. So when someone tells me racism is the reason for some people are being held back, I ask them how much is attributed to racism? 10%, 100%? What would you put that value today vs, 2000, vs 1980, vs 1960 etc… This is never a popular question. My follow up question is, what if I told you that the level of racism in this country is close to a theoretical minimum, and thus fixed, how much could African Americans improve social outcomes if a concerted effort was made that focused only internally? If 25% of African Americans could pass as South Asian, our richest demographic group, would that make a difference in social outcomes if we measured the group of passers? What is the main cause of that difference?

    These are hard questions. It’s not that the bias view is wrong, it’s just scoped wrong. They are looking at the 10% problem, because the 90% problem feels to bad to think about.

    • The Brahmins discriminate against lower castes in California, in part by actively testing other South Asians to determine their caste origins. How could black people pass as Soutn Asian?

    • That’s not a one dimensional question really. I think what I would call the informed progressive opinion is probably that most of the average outcome disparity is not due to present-day racism (but rather the proximate causes are things like upbringing, culture, socioeconomic causes, etc), but the entire disparity is caused by past racism, because the socioeconomic and cultural problems among black people are the result of past racism. So one could honestly say that in one sense almost O% is racism and in another sense almost 100% without contradicting oneself.

      • The question then becomes why so many groups that obviously had it as bad or worse than African Americans are doing so much better. Why did they overcome but not African Americans? Hell, why can mulattos overcome but not blacks, did the one drop rule not affect them?

  3. The Biden campaign didn’t seem to see them as mutually exclusive:

    “ Today, multiple, overlapping crises reinforce how far we have to go to deliver on that vision. The pandemic has shone a bright light on racial disparities in health and health care — as Black and Brown Americans have suffered and died from the coronavirus at rates far higher than white Americans. The economic crisis has hit Black and Brown communities especially hard, with Black unemployment at 15.4 percent, Latino unemployment at 14.5 percent, and businesses owned by Black, Latino, and Asian American people closing down at alarming rates. We are also seeing a national reckoning on racial justice and the tragic human costs of systemic racism in the murder of George Floyd and so many other Black men, women, and children. And through it all, the climate crisis mounts, with air and water pollution, superstorms and extreme weather, disproportionately impacting Black and Brown communities.
    Biden believes we cannot build back better without a major mobilization of effort and resources to address these challenges and to advance racial equity across the American economy.”

    The Biden approach is big city machine style politics: use critical race theory to produce a steady stream of grievances that justify an endless parade of development programs with grants to race hustler tax-exempts and hundreds of thousands more minorities on the payroll. Back in the day, DC city government had about 40,000 people on the city payroll, about a third of which were “no show” jobs. “Make D.C. D.C. Again” is a plan to exploit both approaches.

  4. If the split is now 20% bias and 80% developmental, what are some solutions? Let’s stipulate the ratio leans developmental now. What’s next?

    – If a past bias-heavy ratio put in place the conditions that led to the current developmental-heavy ratio, how would one move forward? If they are independent, how would one move forward? Is it different?

    – Since developmental issues probably involve a heavy cultural component, thus probably *very* sticky, how would one move forward?

    Rather than arguing over the ratio, how about some constructive ideas?

    • A few to consider:

      -Reduce the prevalence of employment licensing laws allowing more low-skilled workers more opportunities, be they white, black, or otherwise

      -Decrease federal funding into traditional, 4-year college programs. In lieu of that, target the trades

      -Decrease minimum wage laws

      • Do you really think black Americans are dying to take sub minimum wage jobs. Is the opportunity for such jobs enough to make them vote R?

        • I had a related conversation a while back. The trouble with “outreach” efforts is that whatever the non-progressive party offers has to be incredibly attractive and salient to the median target – enough to get them to flip – but something the Democrats wouldn’t just immediately copy and, indeed, over which they’d “start a bidding war with public money” that the conservative party could never win.

          The only reasons the Democrats wouldn’t copy something like that are (1) that it would be so anathema to progressive elites that they couldn’t swallow it even at the cost of an election or two (imagine something like allowing states to place prohibitions on gay-marriage or abortion), or (2) that it would directly harm the interests of core interest groups and members of the party’s coalition.

          I haven’t thought of any plausible examples of (1), but there is some potential in (2).

          Now I personally don’t like UBI and am very much opposed to ‘reparations’ paid out of general taxes. But if they produced a durable sea change in terms of winning a substantially larger fraction of black votes, I could live with it.

          The notion of the offer is that everyone else has to deal with ordinary means-tested welfare, but as a form of reparations, only the descendants of slaves (and maybe American Indians well above the Elizabeth Warren blood quantum) would get the option to receive the value of any benefits in the form of straight cash.

          Now *that’s* potentially really attractive. But here’s the thing, for every person that elects to take the cash, the money comes right out of the budgets for the welfare programs for which they would have been eligible.

          But that would threaten the jobs and livelihoods of perhaps millions of other Democratic constituents, and perhaps be too much of a bitter or poison pill to swallow or embrace on the party platform in order to try to match the opposition. And technically, it would be budget neutral, so it wouldn’t even cost anything.

          • “Now I personally don’t like UBI and am very much opposed to ‘reparations’ paid out of general taxes. But if they produced a durable sea change in terms of winning a substantially larger fraction of black votes, I could live with it.”

            Please no. It will never ever work. The whole point of black politics is to take advantage of “white guilt.” The radical black leadership figured this out in the 1960s and they will leverage this guilt into perpetuity. Every payment that is made will be met with more demands for payments. It will never end. Just cut the welfare checks already and move on – its much cheaper.

          • Wouldn’t the Democrats be able to counter this by proposing the same program, only the UBI/reparations money doesn’t come out of the welfare budget?

            A Democrat would be able to coherently charge Republicans of relabeling food stamp money that people were already entitled to by law as ‘reparations’.

          • I actually like UBI conceptually but I’m horrified at how it would likely be implemented.

            There isn’t really a hard limit on UBI funded by progressive income taxes, and progressives would likely still want other assistance programs and could point to edge cases in support.

      • Replace the minimum wage (SNAP and TANF) with an hourly wage subsidy.

        Mandatory 1 hour a day 180 days per year, 1 on 1 tutoring for children from the bottom 20 of families by some SES measure.

        • Oh yeah and if you really want to help blacks flood poor majority black areas with police to muscle down the crime rate. Give the police wide latitude to act.

    • Depending on what your goal is, there are no solutions.

      If your goal is literally to achieve “no disparate impact” then it’s impossible. Full stop. Doomed.

      If your goal is to improve black quality of life slightly you might be able to do that on the margin, but not enough for people to care. Not enough to give up the psychological addiction of grievances. “I can make your life 15% better if you admit you’re kind of a loser” vs “You was kings and can be again!”

    • “Rather than arguing over the ratio, how about some constructive ideas?”

      Here’s one idea: how about we just acknowledge that we have a permanent underclass and that no policy idea will ever change that?

      I’d sooner just send off the welfare checks as opposed to investing billions/trillions in policy ideas that will never work.

    • Kind of telling that in a bunch of replies and a bunch of words, only one respondent actually came up with anything. The rest was just rants against Democrats.

      If I was Black and the only choice given was to accept my place as an underclass or fight for as much welfare as possible, the choice is pretty easy.

      • It’s also telling that you haven’t provided any policy solutions either.

        70%+ non-marital birthdate.

        13% of the population, but 50% of all homicides and 60% of all robberies.

        These seem to be the top 2 problems. So, what solutions you got for us?

        • I’m not an economist. I’m an IT and healthcare guy. But I’ve been reading Mr. Kling among many other libertarian-leaning blogs lately, and let me tell you, the ranting and lack of constructive discussion does not impress me in the least. Maybe it is an artifact of this format, but my impression of this profession has gone down a few notches.

          • I’m not an economist either (just a silly accountant).

            The economists tend to get the big picture stuff pretty much correct. Their problem is that they endlessly delude themselves into believing that they can get the more narrow stuff correct and that they can export those findings into other environments with the same results. It’s social science vs. hard science.

            However, to their defense on this particular topic, we’ve been trying to solve these issues since at least the 1960s with limited success and perhaps with a lot of regression. At this point, you’re probably expecting way too much if you’re thinking that there are magical policy solutions just waiting to be adopted. There probably aren’t any and those that might be viable are just too unpalatable politically.

        • Essentially no chance of this happening, but incentive-wise I think this would work:

          1. Welfare benefits only for (or much higher for) households with married parents and their biological children living under the same roof.

          2. No child support payments except from formerly married men who were at fault from the divorce.

          3. Recriminalize abortion.

          In essence, recreate the incentives which prevailed a century ago, in which people who had children out of wedlock were financially shipwrecked. If there’s ice on the road, a lot fewer people will speed.

          • I like the idea of “sticks” – but no Republican can stay elected promising to use them. So “carrots” only.

            Modified #1 is likely to be the best possible. I support an Anniversary subsidy, and suggest $1000 on the first year, increasing by $100 each year (2k at 10, 3k at 20).

            If one wants to target it “at the poor”, it should go those married parents who are in gov’t school districts with the most kids of non-married parents. The bottom 20 or 30% getting the full subsidy, with it slowly dropping over the next 20-40% of higher marriage rates.

            Kids in areas with low marriage rates are especially in need of more local examples.

    • Thx for the challenge of constructive criticism, Bob. While I, too, can complain about the Dems, and do, I’m very aware of the need to have an “alternate” program.

      1) As above in my reply to Justin, create an Anniversary subsidy for those who are married with one or more kids, and living in a school district full of kids whose parents are not married.

      2) Job guarantee – voluntary National Service. If you don’t, or can’t, or won’t find a job, the gov’t gives you one. And pays you to show up and do minimum work. Doing road maintenance, construction; janitorial service, orderly support in hospital, teacher assistant, old age care assistant.

      There will be some who, despite being offered a job, fail. Fail to show up; or fail to do the work when they do show up — making more mistakes can cost an employer more than they’re paying the worker. Showing up too late; or too drunk; or too high (then I got high, then I got high, then I got high…)

      Many Libbers are following Murray and supporting some UBI – but that’s terrible.

      3) Big HS grad – GSE test success award. Some $1000 for those who graduate from HS in any of the worst high schools, with the reward slowly going down to … minimum $100 in the best gov’t HS.

      4) 21 & no kids award – $1000 on your birthday if you turn 21 and you haven’t been the parent of any child nor aborted fetus.

      5) For those who finish HS and get a job – First “Job for a year” anniversary . For those who don’t go to college, have the gov’t give you $1000 job gift on the anniversary of your “first day on the job” for any full time job that you keep for a year.

      6) No arrests reward – $100 – $1000 for not getting arrested based on age and location (more in more crime-riddent areas)

      How to be poor in America?
      1) Fail to graduate from HS; 2) fail to keep a job for a year; 3) have a child outside of wedlock; 4) get convicted of a crime.

      So let’s have more rewards for NOT making these mistakes, especially in the high crime/ high mistake school districts.

  5. The conversation between Mr. Loury and the other gentlemen is very deep and deserves attention. Part of it is their attack on “white guilt” and how it enables the travesty of black people looking for “salvation” from outside, instead of looking into their own community. My understanding is that they believe that common (nonblack) America has undermined the black community in two ways: historically through overt racism and, more recently, by taking agency from the black community through “white guilt” and “wokeism”.

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