Word: racially
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Glenn C. Loury, who sets out his philosophies on race in America in his new book The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, has established himself firmly in the gray areas of the discussion about race. An economist by training, he is currently a professor and the founding director of the Institute on Race and Social Division at Boston University. Early in his career, his work in economics led him to the idea of “social capital”: that “family and community backgrounds can play an important role...in determining individual achievement...
...notion of fictive kinship among African-Americans.” Referring to Loury’s negative reception by the black community, she explains, “One is considered to be a transgressor because he or she doesn’t hold to the racial party line. Blackness is equated with a certain political and social orientation. Anyone outside of the dominant conceptualization of it will find themselves sanctioned...
...Anatomy of Racial Inequality is based upon a series of talks Loury gave at Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute in 2000. The book’s palpable reluctance to discuss issues in terms of their real-world connotations speaks to Loury’s personal experience of the messy debate on racial inequality in America. His confidence often seems to falter when he talks about “hot” topics. On the issue of affirmative action, for example, he couches his debate in a theoretical “thought experiment” (a real-world...
...Loury’s most useful contributions in this book is his identification of the practice of racial discrimination as another red herring in the discourse on race. He contrasts racial discrimination—treating people unequally because of their race—with a phenomenon he defines and presents as more important: “racial stigma...
What causes racial stigma? Professor of Government Jennifer Hochschild says that America’s racial history makes it “difficult [for white Americans] to fully see blacks as equivalently human.” Loury argues that this racial stigma restricts the social interactions and opportunities available to blacks. This “social divide,” Loury says, leads to “racial differences in the acquisition of productive skills” that thwart African-Americans before they even enter areas of public life where racial discrimination is illegal. Add this to the material disadvantages...