From: jimruttshow8596
Early Life and the Great Migration
Glenn Loury grew up in Park Manor, a pleasant residential district on the south side of Chicago [00:06:23]. This neighborhood, previously all white in the 1950s, rapidly became 95% Black by the early 1960s when Loury was a teenager [00:07:16]. His family was part of the Great Migration, where Black individuals, then known as Negroes, moved from the South to the North to escape racism [00:08:01]. Loury’s maternal grandmother’s generation, the Goodins, migrated in stages from Brook Haven, Mississippi, to Memphis, and then to Chicago after World War I [00:08:27]. This large family, including 12 siblings, all settled in Chicago [00:08:43].
The Social Construction of Race and the “One-Drop Rule”
Loury discusses the peculiar American concept of “blackness” and the “one-drop rule” [00:16:31]. He describes it as “one of the most interesting things going on… the inner workings of the social construction of race” [00:16:57]. He asserts that race is not a biological category but a “fiction” [00:17:06], a complex social phenomenon involving perception, presumption, categorization, stereotyping, and projection [00:17:18].
Loury attributes this unique American racial definition to the institution of slavery [00:17:42]. He questions how a liberal democracy, enshrining Jeffersonian liberty, could simultaneously practice human chattel [00:17:51]. The only way, he suggests, was to “other” those enslaved, making them “not quite fully us” [00:18:09]. This included “devices” like the prohibition on “intermixing,” or miscegenation, despite widespread sexual relations between white slave owners and Black individuals [00:18:23]. He notes the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision in Loving v. Virginia which finally struck down anti-miscegenation laws [00:19:26].
Academic Trajectory and Identity Struggles
As a young Black man pursuing academics, Loury did not feel dissonance, nor did he believe in limiting the inheritance of human culture based on racial identity, which he viewed as a “very small move” or “infantalism” [00:38:03]. However, he acknowledges the lack of Black role models in his field [00:38:51].
At MIT, Loury received conflicting advice on how to navigate his identity as a Black academic. His mentor, Richard Eckaus, advised him to prepare to speak on issues like poverty, inequality, racism, discrimination, and slavery, recognizing the “demands on you as a black person and doing economics” [01:02:50]. This stemmed from the prevailing sentiment during the Black Power era (1970s), questioning whether one was “an economist who just happens to be black or are you a black Economist” [01:04:14].
Conversely, two Jewish classmates advised him to “be like David Blackwell,” a distinguished African-American statistician, by focusing on being “the best technical Economist that you can be” and not letting research be “driven by your desire to do something for black people” [01:10:49]. Loury notes that his doctoral dissertation ultimately reflected this internal tug-of-war, with chapters ostensibly about inequality but formally about complex mathematical processes like Markov chains, and introducing the term “social capital” to model how historical discrimination and social processes could perpetuate economic inequality even with equal economic opportunity [01:04:51].
Shifting Political Perspectives on Race
Loury’s political views on race and social policy have evolved over time:
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Early Years (soft left): Growing up in Chicago, he was a “Centrist Democrat, a black Democrat” without a deeply defined politics [01:47:25].
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Reagan Years (neoconservative): Coming out of MIT and through the early 1980s, he moved right, embracing economic liberty, cultural conservatism (though initially resistant to some feminist ideas), and a critique of what he saw as the “mournful recitation of the wrongs of America’s past” [01:31:32]. He felt the Civil Rights Movement was “over” and emphasized self-help and personal responsibility over historical victimization and dependence on “white people to save your bacon” [01:36:06]. This aligned him with the conservative side of the spectrum, leading him to identify as a “black conservative” [01:36:45].
"the glass is way more than half full here in the United States of America under Democratic capitalism at the end of the 20th century we had better man up and woman up we better take responsibility for building our communities for raising our families for kiding the trash off the front of our street and stop this mournful recitation of historic victimization" [01:35:36]
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1990s and 2000s (moved left): Loury moved left again, partly in reaction to conservative books like The Bell Curve, America in Black and White, and Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism [01:49:03]. He found D’Souza’s book “glib, it was snide, it was storic, it was insulting, it was irrational” [01:49:48]. Another significant factor in this shift was his alarm at mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on African Americans [01:50:51]. His lectures, published as The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, expressed views against “blindness” (race-neutrality) and in favor of affirmative action [01:52:19]. He also advocated from a left perspective against the “inhumanity of America’s criminal justice system” in his 2007 book Race, Incarceration, and American Values [01:51:50]. During this period, he was considered a “Social Democrat” [01:51:28].
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Current Stance (moved right again): Loury has since moved right again on race questions [01:52:02]. This recent shift is largely a “reaction against the reactions against the reactions” related to police killings of Black men, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the surge in anti-racism discourse following events like Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and George Floyd [01:52:11]. He expresses deep concerns about these developments being “bad for the country and bad for black communities ourselves” [01:52:41]. He explicitly states that he finds figures like Ibram X. Kendi to be “an empty suit” with “no there there” [01:53:43].
Personal Struggles and the “Enemy Within”
Loury’s personal life heavily influenced his views on race and identity. During his academic rise, he struggled with what he calls “the Enemy Within” [01:25:08]. This psychological challenge manifested as a “double life” of “running the streets,” using substances, and engaging in extramarital affairs [01:24:22]. He used this lifestyle as a way of “proving to myself that I hadn’t lost touch with my roots” [01:26:26], fearing becoming “snobbish,” “alienated from the ghetto,” or one of the “Negro cognoscenti” who knew about fine dining but not about the “gritty authenticity of the thing” [01:25:35].
This culminated in a public scandal in the late 1980s when he was accused of assault by a former mistress, which led to a public humiliation and withdrawal from a potential political appointment [01:28:49]. Subsequently, he developed a cocaine addiction, which also led to a second public scandal when he was caught in possession of marijuana and crack cocaine by the Boston police [01:37:20].
He entered treatment, relapsed, and eventually found recovery through a halfway house and, crucially, a renewed commitment to his Christian faith [01:39:19]. He describes a period of intense focus on staying sober, taking it “one day at a time” [01:40:56]. His marriage was restored, and he had two more children with his second wife, Linda [01:41:41]. However, he later admits to relapsing into his “double life” ways after his children grew older, even as Linda battled metastatic breast cancer [01:44:53]. He acknowledges that Linda, who passed away in 2011, was a “wonderful person” who deserved better than she received from him [01:45:51]. This raw honesty about his personal failings is part of the “meta” preface to his book, “Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative,” which promises to tell “discrediting things about myself” to earn the reader’s trust [00:59:02].
Loury’s journey through addiction and recovery also led to a re-evaluation of his religious beliefs. While he became a devout Christian, he later shifted to an agnostic stance, unable to reconcile the resurrection of Jesus with his “reasonable assessment of what can and can’t happen in the world” [01:42:24]. However, he retains respect for the “quest” of religious communities to find meaning in an “existential condition of meaninglessness” [01:43:17]. This exploration of faith and meaning ties into the broader theme of personal integrity amidst societal pressures.