Glenn Loury on the Enemy Within
By Kevin Lavery
Glenn Loury is a Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Loury is also a Fellow of the Econometric Society, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the author of many books including The Anatomy of Racial Inequality, Race, Incarceration, and American Values, and the title of this EconTalk episode, Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative.

In their conversation, Russ Roberts and Glenn Loury explore the latter’s successes and struggles, how Loury’s experience with “the enemy within” compares with the economic situation of many Black Americans, and the importance of nuance in finding truth.
Glenn Loury’s story is one of triumph and rigor, despite the flaws he openly discusses in his memoir. Loury was one of three Black students at MIT, where he earned his Ph.D., and he received tenure at Harvard University when he was 34 years old, making him the first Black professor to be tenured in the Economics department. Early in his career as a Professor, Loury was published numerous times in the most renowned economics journals, such as Econometrica, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics. However, Loury felt like he was failing to meet the standards of himself, his peers, many of whom were Nobel Laureates, and the professors who recommended him to Harvard. Upon reflection, Loury diagnoses the cause of his mental strife as the fear of failure, and his struggle to reconcile his upbringing with his life in academia.
Throughout the conversation, Roberts allows Loury to tell all. He discusses his affairs and conflicts with the law while as a member of the faculty at Harvard, and concurrent with an invitation to become the Undersecretary of Education in the Reagan Administration. Loury was arrested twice in one year, and battled drug addiction, with multiple relapses. However, Loury recovered from these challenges, which he notes was significantly aided by the support of his wife and his Christian faith.
Loury and Roberts draw several parallels between Loury’s struggles and the challenges disproportionately facing the Black community, such as drug addiction, criminality, and the lack of a stable father figure, which Loury dubs, “the enemy within.” To Loury, there are significant cultural challenges within the Black community which must be addressed in order to eliminate socioeconomic racial inequality. In Roberts’ paraphrasing, the Black community must take responsibility for their own actions, simply eliminating discrimination is not sufficient.
Loury came to this conclusion because of his own research on racial inequality. In particular, in his dissertation he found that historical inequality caused by racial discrimination would not necessarily decline due to an end to racial discrimination.
Through his research, Loury argues against both those who believe anti-discrimination measures would be effective in producing racial equality, and those who think the market will eventually solve the problem. To Loury, the answer does not come from policymakers, the concrete change must come from the Black community itself. Loury argues for Black people to take command over their own lives and rise up against the enemy within. Loury wishes to see progress in the Black community at large, akin to his own recovery.
Although Loury’s book labels himself as a conservative, Roberts says he’s more a pursuer of nuance than he is married to a particular ideology. For instance, he objects to color-blind solutions to the educational attainment gap, but also to those who argue that racial disparities in the criminal justice system can simply be put down to systemic racism, such as works like The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander. Loury’s work as a social critic largely began from an anti-incarceration liberal lens, but the Black Lives Matter era turned him back towards critiquing works and attitudes stemming from left-wing scholarly work on racial inequality.
Loury pokes holes in the current popular opinion on American racial issues, but this is because he finds critique and complexity as a necessity of pursuing truth. Loury is not a blind contrarian; he critiques conservatives as well. Though he befriended conservative figures and identified as a conservative, in the late 1990’s Loury found it difficult to be the Black figurehead of a movement lauding works like Charles Murray and David Hernstein’s The Bell Curve. Loury found mainstream conservative opinion to be unempathetic towards Black Americans, and reluctant to care about the struggles of the impoverished.
Loury and Roberts trace Loury’s criticism of both progressivism and conservatism, and the importance he places on nuance and self-command back to his own life. Loury finds it crucial to include every detail when analyzing his past mistakes, and in addressing socioeconomic inequality. The difference between Loury and his past self is that his past self didn’t reveal his faults, he didn’t tell the truth about his life. Loury goes into such a high level of detail throughout his memoir, and during the podcast because of the importance of being honest. In his words, if you don’t tell it all, you lose credibility. And in Russ Roberts’ words,
Related EconTalk Episodes:
Roland Fryer on Race, Diversity, and Affirmative Action
Bryan Caplan on Discrimination and Labor Markets
Glenn Loury on Race, Inequality, and America
Thomas Sowell on Economic Facts and Fallacies
Related Liberty Fund Network Content:
Systemic Racism in Crime and Housing, a Liberty Matters symposium at the Online Library of Liberty.
Systemic Racism in Education and Healthcare, a Liberty Matters symposium at the Online Library of Liberty.
Forced or Forbidden Discrimination: Why Not Laissez-Faire?, by Pierre Lemieux at Econlib
Racism is No Longer America’s Biggest Problem, by Wilfred Reilly at Law & Liberty
The Great Antidote: Scott Winship on Poverty and Welfare, at Adam Smith Works
On Justice and Equality of Outcomes, by Kevin Corcoran at Econlib