Glenn Loury on the irony of ‘systemic racism’ (America has basically achieved equal opportunity in terms of race)

From Mark Perry. 

"Glenn Loury is the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. His article below “A Bluff and a Bludgeon” appeared on Bari Weiss’s Substack website in her collection of essays on “What is Systemic Racism (bold added).”

The invocation of “systemic racism” in political arguments is both a bluff and a bludgeon. 

When a person says, for example, “over-representation of black Americans in prison in the United States is due to systemic racism,” he is daring the listener to say: “No. It’s really because there are so many blacks who are breaking the laws (see chart above).” And who would risk responding that way these days? The phrase effectively bullies the listener into silence.

Users of the phrase seldom offer any evidence beyond citing a fact about racial disparity while asserting shadowy structural causes that are never fully specified. We are all simply supposed to know how “systemic racism,” abetted by “white privilege” and furthered by “white supremacy,” conspire to leave blacks lagging behind.

American history is rather more subtle and more interesting. Such disparities have multiple, interacting causes, ranging from culture to politics to economics and, yes, to nefarious doings of institutions and individuals who may well have been racist. But acknowledging this complexity is too much nuance for those alleging “systemic racism.”

They ignore the following truth: that America has basically achieved equal opportunity in terms of race. We have chased away the Jim Crow bugaboo, not just with laws but also by widespread social customs, practices, and norms. When Democrats call a Georgia voter integrity law a resurgence of Jim Crow, it is nothing more than a lie. Everybody knows there is no real Jim Crow to be found anywhere in America. 

The phrase also does a grave disservice to blacks and to the country. Here we are now, well into the 21st century. (Have you heard of China?) Our lives are being remade every decade by technology, globalization, communication, and innovation, and yet all we seem to hear about is race.

My deep suspicion is that these charges of “systemic racism” have proliferated and grown so hysterical because black people — with full citizenship and equal opportunity in the most dynamic country on Earth — are failing to measure up. Violent crime is one dimension of this (see chart above). The disorder and chaos in our family lives is another. Denouncing “systemic racism” and invoking “white supremacy,” and shouting “black lives matter,” while 8,000 black homicides a year go unmentioned — these are maneuvers of avoidance and blame-shifting. 

The irony is that so many of us decry “systemic racism,” even as we simultaneously demand that this very same “system” deliver us. 
 

MP: The related chart above shows that relative to their share of the US population (13.4%) blacks are disproportionately shot by police in fatal encounters (23.8%). But blacks are also disproportionately and significantly overrepresented for arrest shares for violent crimes (murder at 51.3%, robbery at 50.3%, assault at 32.7%, and rape at 26.8%) and weapons violations (41.9%) relative to their shares of fatal police shootings (23.8%) and the general population (13.4%). So while it’s true that blacks are killed by police at a rate higher than their share of the national population (23.8% vs. 13.4%) that comparison lacks context without taking into account the fact that blacks commit violent crimes and weapons violations at rates much higher than their shares of the population and fatal police shootings.

Updates: In response to an email with several concerns:

1. The data source for fatal police shootings by ethnic group is based on Washington Post data via the BBC showing that blacks represent 23.8% of fatal police shootings from 2015 to 2021. The black population share (13.4%) came from the Census Bureau via the BBC article (I did check and confirm that with the Census Bureau).

2. “Police Shootings” in the original chart has been replaced in the updated chart above with “Fatal Shooting by Police” to clarify that blacks represent 23.8% of the shootings by police from 2015 to 2021.

3. The FBI data for arrest rates by ethnic group are available here.

4. The reason I used the black shares of arrests for violent crimes and weapons violations is because those interactions involving law enforcement officials arresting criminals/suspects for violent crimes (who could be violent and/or armed) and suspects for weapons violations (who could be violent and/or armed) could typically be the interactions when police shootings are most likely to happen. Recent examples include George Floyd and Trayvon Martin. What happens in the legal system after the arrests – plea deals, trials, exonerations, charges dropped, etc. – wouldn’t usually result in police shootings, which is why I looked at arrest rates/shares for violent crimes and weapons violations.

5. My main point was that to compare the 13.4% black share of the population to the 23.8% black share of fatal police shootings is meaningless by itself. We have to look at some measure of the black share of interactions with law enforcement that might lead to violence (police getting shot or police shootings) to provide context to the apparent disparity between the 13.4% and the 23.8% black shares for population and shootings by police. One measure of interactions with law officers is the arrest rates/shares."