Glen Loury on reparations

From Freakonomics.

"I think there’s a lot of room for maneuver, a lot more room for maneuver than people allow. The main thing I’m trying to say is the country is complicated and it’s variegated. And when we get into the racial-redistribution business, we really need to be careful about the business that we’re getting into. Because we are going to create precedents in our law and in our politics that may be difficult to live with. And in particular, this idea of deciding who’s a descendant of slaves entitled to benefit. Think about the West Indian immigrants. They’re Black. I’m talking about people who came from Jamaica, Barbados, and stuff. Think about the West African immigrants. They’re Black. I’m not talking about the guy that got off the boat or the plane. I’m talking about his son or his granddaughter. Now, we’re going to cut them out, you know?

I mean, what about the mixed-parentage person — they have to identify as Black? So, now we leave it up to a subjective? This kind of thing, it is — and I don’t mean this pejoratively, I really don’t — but it smacks of a South Africa kind of classification scheme. We don’t want that in America, I would say. Not only is the 14th Amendment a problem here, believe me, it’s not only going to be Clarence Thomas who objects to this kind of business for the U.S. government. We don’t want it for our politics. We don’t want it for the health of our society, I would say.

DUBNER: So, you want to address poverty instead of race, essentially. Is that right?

LOURY: Yeah. I mean, I address race around the margins because I don’t want to repeal the laws against discrimination. But what would it be? We’ve got 35 million or so African-Americans. And if the number is a — $50,000, $75 we’re into the trillions. We’re Social Security-magnitude social intervention if we were to go down that road. Do we in America, in the 21st Century, really want to construct a Social Security-magnitude social intervention based on race? I don’t think so.

The economist Glenn Loury has been telling us why the idea of reparations for Black Americans does not sit well with him.

LOURY: I worry about the consequences for my country of the reification of racial categorization as the basis for state action.

So, what kind of policy ideas does Loury support to help low-income populations — Black, white, or otherwise?

LOURY: Well, I’m a big fan of the kind of argument about early investment in human development. I think you’ve got a lot more malleability when you’re trying to intervene at between kindergarten and 12th grade than when you try to intervene with adult populations. The evidence seems to suggest that. The estimates of the rates of return on early investment in the best programs are really quite respectable in terms of social rate of return."