#42 — Racism and Violence in America

Today I'll be speaking with Glenn Lowry. Glenn is the Merton P. Stolz professor of social sciences and professor of economics at Brown University. He's taught previously at Boston and Harvard and Northwestern and the University of Michigan. He holds a BA in mathematics from Northwestern and a PhD in economics from MIT. He's a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A former Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, he has published widely and has written several books that I will link to on my blog. I discovered Glenn through his blogging Heads TV podcast, where he's been having some extraordinarily candid and clarifying conversations about race and racism with the linguist John McWhorter from Columbia, and I highly recommend you check out Glenn's podcast on blogging Heads TV. And again, I'll provide a link to.

That on my website.

And the purpose of my conversation with him today was to dive headlong into these controversial waters of race and racism and violence in America, as though my work weren't controversial enough already. But I've been wanting to do this for a while because these issues are just so consequential and politically divisive. But I've been worried about doing this for obvious reasons. I raised the topic in my podcast with Neil degrasse Tyson, if you recall, but he didn't want to touch it, which I understand. He didn't feel the time was right to weigh in on these issues personally. But for some reason, I've been feeling like the time is right for me. It's just really been bothering me that so much of what I hear about race and violence in America doesn't make any sense. And the fact that I've been worried about speaking about these issues in public was also bothering me. In fact, the implications of speaking about race in particular caused me to cancel a book contract I had last year. It just seemed like too much of a liability, but I have since stiffened my spine, and I was left wondering who I could talk to about these things. My goal has been to find an african american intellectual who could really get into the details with me, but who I could also trust to have a truly rational conversation that wouldn't be contaminated by identity politics, as you probably intuit. I think identity politics are just poison, unless your identity at this point is homo sapiens. But I certainly found what I was looking for in Glenn. He is just so good on these topics, and as you'll hear, he spends.

A fair amount of time giving a.

Counterpoint to his positions on each topic. Steel Manning, rather than straw manning the views of his opponents. Anyway, I found this conversation extremely helpful. I felt like Glenn and I could have gone on for much longer. And many thanks to Glenn for being so generous with his time. If you find this conversation as useful as I did, I encourage you to spread it around and follow Glenn on Twitter at Glen Lowry Glennloury and please tell him that you appreciate what he's doing. And again, check out his podcast on bloggingheads tv. And now I give you Glenn Lowry.

Well, I'm here with Glenn Lowry. Glenn, thanks for coming on the podcast, Sam.

My pleasure.

Well, listen, I've really been excited about having this conversation, I think probably irrationally so, because the topics we're going to.

Cover, race and racism and police violence.

Really can't help but bring us some measure of grief. So thank you for doing this, and I think most of the grief will come my way, probably. But first, I want to say that your podcasts that you do on blogging.

Heads tv, especially the ones I've seen.

That you've done with John McWhorter, whom.

I also greatly admire, I've got to.

Say, those have just been fantastic. And you guys, it's so rare to hear two people talk about these topics honestly.

So I just want to point people.

In the direction of those podcasts.

Great.

Stan, can I tell your audience that.

That'S the Glenn show at Bloggingheads TV.

That you're referring to and all viewers or listeners are.

Yeah, yeah. And I'll put a link to your page where I embed this on my.

Blog so people can find that link.

Just to kind of start us off. What I'm noticing now, and it's really as though for the first time it's.

Really been in the last year or so, is that there's a culture of.

Censorship and identity politics and a kind of addiction to being outraged and a resort to outrage in the place of.

Reasoned argument, especially among young people.

That is just making it impossible to have productive conversations on important topics. And this is happening on topics other than race. Of course, it happens on religion and terrorism and gender, but race is obviously one of those hotspots.

And from what I've seen, you've been illuminating this topic on your show in.

A way that's really unusual and just.

Cutting through confusion like a laser.

So it really is great to be talking to you.

That's good to hear.

I appreciate it. Yeah. I think one of my motivations, and John McWorthy can speak for himself, but I think this would apply to him.

Too, is that in the face of.

This situation that you just got through describing, of addiction to outrage, that's an artful way of putting it. Of a kind of, I don't know, moral certitude and intolerance of argument that doesn't check the right boxes and all of that. In the face of that, because I.

Care so much about these questions of.

Race and equality and justice, I felt.

Really compelled in the face of a.

Lot of pushback and vitriol and contempt expressed toward me for doing so, I've.

Just kind of felt compelled to keep challenging, keep raising questions, keep asking questions. I don't know. I don't think I'm doing any kind.

Of heroic celebration for doing it. It just seems like the right thing to. That's. That's a big part of my.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So before we dive into this topic, perhaps you can just say a few.

Words about your background and just your.

Areas of focus intellectually. How do you describe what you do in general?

Okay, so I'm a professor of economics here at Brown University in Providence, Rhode island. I've been here for ten years. I've taught economics at a number of other universities, Harvard in the 1980s, Boston University in the 1990s. I'm a quantitative social scientist. I was trained at MIT in the 70s, took a PhD in economics there, and for much of my early career focused on mathematical modeling of various economic processes in the labor market and industrial organization firms, competition, research and development, natural resource economics, economics of invention and exploration, things of this kind, game theory, information economics, this kind of thing. I became a professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and got very much interested in public policy after taking up that post and began writing essays and reviews and commentaries on issues of race in the United States particularly, and was a Reagan conservative during the.

1980S, quite rare for an African American. Moved away from that political identity toward the center of the spectrum a bit.

And think of myself now as a kind of centrist, or maybe mildly right of center Democrat, though that's not an identity that I cling to with any particular intensity.

Yeah, and obviously your background, both in mathematics and statistics and social science, makes you really perfectly well placed to have.

The kind of conversation we're going to have.

I've been wanting to talk about race and racism for a while because it's a topic of just such huge consequence.

And it's a topic that, again, attracts.

A fair amount of logical and moral confusion, which renders people unable to reason with each other. And this is not a problem just across racial lines. And it's not just a problem in public.

Frankly, I have white friends who I.

Find I can't have this conversation with because they've become so emotionally hijacked and.