There are no Solutions, only Trade-offs.

The conversation between Jason Riley and Russ Roberts is EconTalk at its best. All light, no heat — on the thorniest, most contentious issue in America. Riley does justice to the whole ball of wax, in the sprit of Thomas Sowell. A riveting moment: Roberts eloquently steel-mans the case for reparations. Many insights and much wisdom in an hour. There is hope!

Amy, Thank you for the latest batch of stimulating, probing questions.

1. Homicide by civilians and by police officers in the USA.

In 2019, the number of killings by civilians (19,141) was 20 times greater than the number of killings by police (999).

Roland G. Fryer’s groundbreaking research (2017), “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” finds that police, in context, do stop and frisk racial minorities more than whites, but don’t use lethal force disproportionately against racial minorities:

“Using data on police interactions from NYC’s Stop and Frisk program, we demonstrate that on non-lethal uses of force – putting hands on civilians (which includes slapping or grabbing) or pushing individuals into a wall or onto the ground, there are large racial differences. In the raw data, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to have an interaction with police which involves any use of force. Accounting for 125 variables that represent baseline characteristics, encounter characteristics, civilian behavior, precinct and year fixed effects, the odds-ratio on black (resp. Hispanic) is 1.178 (resp. 1.122). [… .]

In stark contrast to non-lethal uses of force, we find that, conditional on a police interaction, there are no racial differences in officer-involved shootings on either the extensive or intensive margins. Using data from Houston, Texas – where we have both officer-involved shootings and a randomly chosen set of potential interactions with police where lethal force may have been justified – we find, after controlling for suspect demographics, officer demographics, encounter characteristics, suspect weapon and year fixed effects, that blacks are 27.4 percent less likely to be shot at by police relative to non-black, non-Hispanics. This coefficient is measured with considerable error and not statistically significant. This result is remarkably robust across alternative empirical specifications and subsets of the data. Partitioning the data in myriad ways, we find no evidence of racial discrimination in officer-involved shootings. Investigating the intensive margin – the timing of shootings or how many bullets were discharged in the endeavor – there are no detectable racial differences.” (pp. 3-5)

Riley reminds us that the number of killings by police officers has decreased by an order of magnitude in the past half century. In order to make further progress, we need perspective, accurate data, careful analysis of mechanisms (cause and effect), and rigorous experiments in ‘keyhole solutions’ and constructive reforms. Vivid, disturbing instances of lethal force by police officers should prompt us to do our level best, rather than to abandon numeracy. Mainstream media didn’t rise to the occasion!

2. Trends in Black life from emancipation to the Civil Rights movement.

Riley is impressed by two trends in Black life before the Great Society reforms: high marriage rates and emergence from extreme poverty. A lesson that he draws is, Please stop helping us. He reasons that Black academic and political elites — who espouse critical race theory, and who advocate reparations and racial preferences in education and in employment — pander and mislead. He observes that immigrants continue to pull themselves up from nothing, and infers that Blacks would do better to emulate immigrants, instead of heeding Black elites. Riley’s message is conservative: self-improvement, marriage, self-reliance, dignity.

I would add that government should stop getting in the way of Blacks. Deregulate occupational licensing. Allow open school choice and radical vouchers for alternative paths (apprenticeships, training programs, internships) to the labor market. Take pragmatic steps to reduce regulation in housing construction.

[I will try and get to Questions 3, 4, and 5 later …]

4. Racism and human nature.

I would distinguish animus and statistical discrimination. See Bryan Caplan’s lucid slide deck about economics of discrimination.

Racial animus has an emotional grip on the mind and clouds judgment. Psychologically, it invites confirmation bias. Sustained, positive interracial interactions would change hearts, but animus forestalls interactions. It’s a bad equilibrium.

Racial statistical discrimination is insidious. In many contexts, it’s hard to judge individual character and competence before interacting.

Consider, for example, decision-making by taxi drivers a generation ago, before the advent of platforms like Uber or Lyft. The taxi driver wants to avoid robbery. She can’t gather information about individual character when she decides whether to pick up a person hailing a taxi. She relies on statistical discrimination — salient group identity based on features that correlate with crime. She hesitates to pick up a young, Black, male. (Note the intersection of 3 dimensions of statistical discrimination: age, race, sex.) Law-abiding young, Black, men suffer loss of service — and don’t find comfort in the distinction between animus and statistical discrimination. It’s a bad equilibrium.

By contrast, recently, entrepreneurial, technological innovation has undermined racial stereotyping in car ride service. Ride-sharing platforms greatly reduce uncertainty about individual character before interaction. The Uber or Lyft driver efficiently checks the prospective client’s individual reputation score.