New Essay Suggests Framework for Analyzing U.S. Racial Inequality

Brown University’s Loury reflects on the complex causes and solutions to persistent inequality

NEW YORK, NY — Measured by data across the board—wealth, home ownership, college completion, and incarceration rates, among others—racial inequality clearly persists in the United States. In a new essay for the Manhattan Institute, Glenn C. Loury of Brown University reflects upon the varied causes of this reality and proposes a conceptual framework through which to study it.

While much of the discussion of racial inequality divides itself along the question of whether it is due to systemic discrimination or problematic patterns of behavior, Loury charts a middle course. He acknowledges the real discrimination faced by black Americans, while simultaneously emphasizing their need to take responsibility for the behaviors that keep them from fully exploiting the opportunities presented by the end of Jim Crow segregation and the advent of equal rights.

This analysis concludes with the point that “these problems are a quintessentially American affair, not simply a measure of the inadequacy of ‘black culture.’” Furthermore, given that persistent racial inequality is fundamentally a social failing, “changing the definition of the American ‘we’ is a first step toward rectifying the relational discrimination that afflicts our society.” In other words, racial inequality is an issue of responsibility—personal, communal, and national.

Click here to read the full essay.