Systemic Racism, Police Brutality and All That - Part 3

Introduction – Racial disparities and what to do about them.

Part 2 dealt mainly with why the “legacy of slavery” cannot be the cause of the significant persistent racial disparities that we observe, namely, because these disparities have dramatically worsened since the 1960’s, suggesting that the policy environment that has developed since that time is the cause. Here I want to examine that in more detail.

First, a general point. The existence of group disparities is inevitable and is not necessarily a reflection of injustice. There are a multitude of reasons why the members of any population group (gender, race, national origin, age, ethnicity) will differ in outcomes from members in any other group. History, genetics (for example athletic ability), prior education, culture (family cohesion), etc. play a huge role. And these, and other, factors interact to produce outcomes in a complex way.[1] Most disparities are simply the result of spontaneous individual “sorting” and should signal no concern or need for remedial efforts.

But, in the case of black Americans, such disparities do signal some palpable pathologies to which we should pay careful attention. Simply attributing these disparities to systemic racism and discrimination, shaming all white people, most of  whom had nothing to do with them, and looking to sensitivity training policies and state mandated preferential treatment will not diminish these disparities. By treating the symptoms rather than the causes tihs actually makes the disparities worse and is likely to fuel racist attitudes. I will explain this in Part 4. For now I turn to a brief examination of the real root causes of racial disparities.  

Racial disparities as by-product of poverty

Black Americans are disproportionately poor. Many policies affect the poor disproportionately. Rather than focusing on changing racist attitudes, surely it makes sense to first tackle those social and economic policies that have a disparate impact on the poor – on those worst off in our society. Breaking the cycle of poverty should be a top priority.

Poverty is a complex phenomenon. But, basically, people are poor because they lack productive  resources. Productive resources include physical property, real estate, but, also, importantly, human capital, that is, valuable individual abilities, attitudes, and knowledge. So, obviously, education plays a pivotal role in this. So does the family in shaping a child’s capacity to recognize and use resources and to  dedicate herself to the acquisition and use of them. So, poor schooling and family dysfunction are two prime candidates for explaining the failure of any population group to achieve prosperity. 

Education. As mentioned in Part 2, the quality of public education for black children has declined monotonically since the abolition of forced segregation and the adoption of forced integration. More fundamentally, it is the public school monopoly that is holding back black education. Public education is a system in which education is both subsidized and produced by the state (the government). There is no good reason why education should be produced by the government. It could still be subsidized. But parents could be given the power to decide where and how those subsidies are used. Parental choice in education is a bi-partisan issue. Allowing and requiring parental involvement in their children’s education would galvanize the education system overnight and produce a sea change in black education achievement, and this would, in turn, dramatically serve to break the cycle of poverty. An unfortunate culture antagonistic to educational achievement and the discipline and dedication that it requires has developed within many poor black communities, seeing the education system as an oppressive “white” institution – a culture particularly debilitating for boys and young men. Parental choice could go a long way toward combatting this culture.

Crime. Lack of education implies lack of opportunities, lack of vision and hope, and fosters an environment in which violence flourishes. Add to this the availability and profitability of hard drugs. The drug war has adversely affected black Americans disproportionately - addiction, gang violence, drug-related police corruption and brutality, are manifestations of the multiple problems produced. 

The so-called “war on drugs” has lasted more than half a century. Instead of eradicating the use of drugs it has provided organized crime with massive profits, corrupted our police forces (who cannot compete by adequately compensating the men and women on the front line for the danger they face in a futile attempt to stem the flow of drugs), violated people’s individual rights as police use the extraordinary powers and resources they have been given to pursue suspected drug offenders (and to abuse those in a corrupt was for their own advancement), commanded massive budgets at all levels of government that show no signs of diminishing and more. It is a failed policy. And one of its most devastating affects has been to perpetuate and extend the cycle of poverty and violence in the lower income black communities of America. Any serious discussion about racial disparities simply cannot ignore this. 

The two most urgent policy changes on the racial disparity agenda should be to facilitate universal school choice[2] and decriminalize drugs[ 3]. 

Though these two are the most urgent policy reforms, there are many other counterproductive policies that should be abandoned or reformed. Minimum wage laws destroy jobs mostly for those at the bottom of the income scale, throwing them onto welfare. Unemployment is generally higher for the unskilled and untrained, and minimum wages makes it worse. 

Incentives matter. Dozens of welfare policies subtly and not so subtly blunt the incentives of young black people to work and achieve, tying welfare payments to unemployment and poverty. Perhaps the most egregious is the subsidization of teenage pregnancy which has mushroomed with these subsidies. All of this should be reformed to provide welfare assistance that does not significantly diminish the incentive to be employed. A variant of such a policy is the negative income tax, proposed by Milton Friedman in the 1950’s (resurrected in a different guise as a universal basic income), though the level of income that could realistically be guaranteed is dependent on replacing all of the dozens of different existing welfare programs for this one simple program. That this is not politically possible is attributable to the dramatic loss of power and earnings that it implies for all those now working at some level in the extensive “poverty industry” who have a perverse vested interest in the continuation of dependence through poverty. Ironically, in this sense a formidable barrier to poverty eradication is current poverty policy, which, doubly ironically, works to exaggerate and perpetuate inequality.

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[1] This is a complex subject, which I have studied my whole academic career. The literature is vast. A good starting point is the comprehensive work of Thomas Sowell. A recent book is Sowell 2018.

[2] For starters requiring children to attend the school for which they zoned should be abolished. Let parents decide. The allocation of resources to schools should follow the demand. Charter schools are a first step toward this. But they are hopelessly over-demanded by low income parents. Providing parents with vouchers redeemable at accredited public or private schools would solve this. It would introduce competition leading to educator accountability, innovation, diversity of educational methods, as educational entrepreneurs entered the sector. There is widespread popular demand among low-income parents for greater school choice. The chief and likely only obstacle to its implementation is the teacher-union movement. The unions are desperately afraid that their guarantied jobs will be threatened if teachers and other educators are held accountable subject to the choices of parents who have options.

[3] Many will balk at the suggestion that hard drugs be decriminalized, as many did at the suggestion that the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920’s be lifted. As in that case, the “cure” is way worse than the “disease”. The drug trade is obnoxious and has horrible results. But the drug war is even worse. At least if trade in drugs were legal it would be visible and a fraction of the money spent on prevention could then be allocated toward education about addiction. Decriminalization would lead to less police corruption, less organized crime and gang violence, and maybe even less addiction.