RACISM IS AN EMPTY THESIS.

Brown University's Glenn Loury elaborates on his response to the silly administrators (excuse the redundancy) at his university in a conversation with Neue Zürcher Zeitung's Peter Winkler, as translated for City Journal.  I commend the conversation in full, if you want it auf Deutsch, see «Rassismus existiert, aber er erklärt nicht, was hier passiert» and be sure to grasp the key to the interview.  "I am a contrarian, and I have refused to follow the mob opinion that led to the recent turmoil. And I’m also convinced that this is about more than what happened to George Floyd. That event was a catalyst, and I hope we can finally talk about the broader framework and the circumstances in which racial charges are made in the United States."

Alas, fifty years after the Kerner Commission and Moynihan reports, the root causes are still the root causes.

Yes, racism is real, but as a crucial factor that enables or prevents social advancement, it has lost a lot of force in the past half century. I am sure that there are deep-seated inequality problems in America that affect everyone, and black people in particular. Some are institutional, but many have to do with the culture and behavior of black people themselves. I’m talking about lack of educational achievement, and about the higher crime rate; I’m talking about the collapse of the black family. Seven out of ten black children are born outside of marriage. It is a plausible surmise that households where a mother is present, but no father, are more likely to produce adolescent males with behavioral problems.

People are frustrated that conventional political solutions, such as expanding anti-discrimination and welfare programs, have not worked. That’s why they take refuge in the empty thesis of racism. They speak of 1619, when the first blacks landed in America, and they speak of slavery, which was abolished more than 150 years ago. They talk of “centuries of oppression.” But, they don’t talk about how the social condition of blacks in America well may have been healthier in 1950 than it is today—the integrity of family structure, the level of the crime rate, the relationship to work of the poorly educated, and the values with which many children are raised. Summarized in one sentence: racism exists, of course, but it does not sufficiently explain what is going on here.

The American Economic Association has not yet added the 2016 Class of Distinguished Fellows to the public part of their website. Professor Loury's recognition is available in the Front Matter of the July 2017 American Economic Review, starting at page 5.

Loury’s work on affirmative action has been particularly influential. It builds on four decades of research on race and inequality, which began with his MIT doctoral dissertation in 1976. His work on the topic continues to this day, including several papers with Roland Fryer (Journal of Political Economy 2013; Journal of Economic Perspectives 2005) that examine the efficiency, incentive, and reputation effects of affirmative action. His articles apply a rigorous, theoretical framework to a contentious topic, clarifying issues that are often confused in heated public debate. The analyses distinguish between affirmative action that is race-neutral and race-conscious, as well as between policies that preferentially select candidates and those that provide preferential access to the resources that lead to social and economic success.

In his work on affirmative action, Loury asks whether a well-intentioned program that aims to compensate for past harm creates disincentives or, instead, ameliorates past injury by changing negative stereotypes. The answer provided in his American Economic Review (1993) piece with Coate is that it could go both ways. Incentives can be increased or can be decreased and create, what Loury and Coate term, a paternalistic equilibrium.

The enormous breadth and significance of Glenn Loury’s research interests was evident early in his career. In his first few years as an assistant professor, he published articles on the optimal exploitation of natural resources (Review of Economic Studies 1978), market structure and innovation (Quarterly Journal of Economics 1979), and the dynamics of inequality across generations (Econometrica 1981).  Although his work increasingly focused on race and inequality, his analyses of these topics draws on the analytic tools he successfully wielded in multiple fields of economics. Glenn’s first published paper in 1977 (“A Dynamic Theory of Racial Income Differences”) coined the term social capital and preceded James Coleman’s important work by many years.

The professor's concluding remarks ought motivate people to seek the truth. "So you’d rather be silent. And that gets us nowhere—or rather, it gets us to where we are today."

Don't be contrarian just for the seek of being contrary.  Be contrarian when you have logic and content on your side.