Glenn Loury is a professor of economics and social sciences at Brown University, and a prominent podcaster and social critic who speaks and writes about race, inequality, and social policy. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:10 - Martin Luther King Jr.
9:58 - History of slavery
24:36 - Equality of outcome
40:59 - Math and economics
57:15 - Racial groups
1:10:31 - Black patriotism
1:20:24 - MLK and Malcolm X
1:34:04 - Joe Rogan controversy
1:53:21 - Accusation of racism
2:01:05 - Elon Musk and Twitter
2:06:39 - Universities
2:15:16 - Cognitive inequality
2:27:42 - Politics
2:47:08 - Ketanji Brown Jackson
2:53:11 - Thomas Sowell
2:58:26 - Barack Obama
3:17:03 - Mortality
3:29:17 - Meaning of life

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She was Kamala Harris, raised up largely in Canada,

Barack Obama is, as I've said, of mixed ancestry and neither of his parents are the descendants of American descendants of African slaves.

It's something that you can put on or you can take off to a certain degree for some people and so be it.

You talked about, I mean, to me a Jew is a Jew.

When it matters, when you're talking to a white supremacist, when you're talking to, if you're a slave owner, he's black.

Just like you said, when Hitler comes around, A Jew is a Jew, it doesn't matter how you identify, doesn't matter what.

So in that sense, don't you think that Barack Obama is black in the most powerful of ways?

Which is designating how far the MLK, the Dr.

And look, I said it a little bit tongue in cheek.

But I think Obama has been very careful about manufacturing a kind of public persona that is intended to position him in the most effective way.

And that the racial identity piece is an aspect of that.

I mean, anything I say here would only be speculation because I have no facts about the personal history of Barack Obama and I accept Barack Hussein Obama as Hillary Clinton would say, I take him at his word about whatever she was talking about.

Well, was he a Christian, I think is what the question was.

And there was some right-wing attack on Obama for having been raised for some years in the Philippines and all of that, or Indonesia, I beg your pardon, and Indonesia and his stepfather and all of that.

But she took him at his word and I take him at his word about his racial identity.

But you were captivated by the power of his words and you regret to the degree you were captivated?

Well, I mean, I think in retrospect, that whole campaign looks like a pie in the sky kind of fairy tale.

I can't quote exactly that speech that he gave in Grant Park in Chicago when he was announced as the winner of the election, but today is the day that the rise of the ocean stopped, or words to this effect.

I mean, Those who doubted that we could do it, that tonight is your answer, this was gonna be a new day, it was gonna be a new regime.

Well, it wasn't a new day and it wasn't a new regime.

It was American politics more or less as usual.

Barack Obama turns out not to be the Messiah.

Maybe there should be no surprise in that.

Race relations got set back during Obama's tenure.

My beef with Obama is that, okay, you're black.

You can do stuff that nobody else could do.

You could tell the people burning down the city to get their butts back in their houses and to stop it.

You know, you could tell the race hustlers, the Al Sharptons of the world, not only has our time come for those who supported my campaign, your time is over for those who want to carry on an advocacy rooted in racial grievance.

The election of myself to this highest office proves that the institutions of this state are legitimate and open to all comers.

I think Barack Obama, when the SHIT hit the fan, if I had a son he'd look like Trayvon.

The color of his skin and the color of Trayvon's skin, the correlation between those 2 things, if I had a son he'd look like Trayvon.

Now he says when he said it, he only meant to sympathize with the parents.

But in fact, when he said it from the highest office in the land, and then sent his Attorney General Eric Holder out to enforce this narrative, he doubled down on a racial narrative that I think is actually false.

I think the story that systemic racism in America as reflected in policing that terrorizes Black people because of the color of their skin is demonstrably false.

I think that the central threat to Black lives is violent crime perpetrated largely by Black people against other Black people.

I think there is such a thing as police brutality, and I think there are reasons to have regulations of police, but I think it is a second-order issue in terms of the quality of life of African-Americans.

I think Obama could have told the people who after Freddie Gray died in police custody in a van in Baltimore and who undertook to burn that city down to get their asses off the street and go back to their apartments and stop it.

I think he could have said in the aftermath of Michael Brown being shot dead by Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, and there was a grand jury deliberation that elected not to indict Officer Wilson.

And people took to streets in that city and stood on top of vehicles and so forth and so on.

He could have told them, we don't mob around courthouses in this country.

Get your butts off the streets and back into your apartments.

I think you're asking Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States, to do the thing that I think should be done by the second black president of the United States.

I think his very example, given the color of his skin, was the most powerful thing.

And actually doing some of these hard Thomas Sowell type of Glenn Loury type of strong words about race, it may be too much to ask, given the nature of modern day politics.

He is a politician, he needed to get elected, he needed to get reelected.

It was in his second term where most of what I'm talking about happened, so he wasn't facing further election, but Obama was what, 46 or 47 when he was inaugurated.

He served for 8 years, so he's in his mid-50s.

He's got another half century or 40 years of life, God willing.

His post-presidency, I think, was what was primarily on his mind.

Not getting elected to anything, but being enshrined in a certain way.

And the persona that he is now embodying, which depends upon a racial narrative that I and Thomas Sowell and others object to, I think was very much in the forefront of his mind when he made decisions as the chief executive officer of the country that we've all now have to live with.

Yeah, but The fact is, he opened the door in a way that hasn't been done in the history of the United States, that I don't see there being even a significant discussion when an African-American, a black man or a black woman runs for president, maybe a black man, let's say, because there still hasn't been a woman president.

I just see that that broke open the possibility of that.

And that example by itself, I mean, to me, the role of the president isn't just policy, it's to inspire, it's to do the Dr.

And Barack Obama is an example of somebody that could give 1 hell of a speech.

Obama is a smooth operator without any question.

I mean, he beat Hillary Clinton in that primary fight, and he beat John McCain in that general election, and hats off to him.

And moreover, he remains an iconic figure in American culture.

I don't think there's any doubt about that.

Let me just mention, Clarence Thomas is also Black.

Clarence Thomas has a story that is vivid and inspiring, just like Obama's story.

He overcome obstacles, just like Obama did.

I mean, extreme poverty and so forth and so on.

Clarence Thomas has served longer than any other member of the United States Supreme Court.

He is 1 of 9 justices, and it's 3 equal branches of government.

So Clarence Thomas, by my arithmetic, personifies 127th of the American state.

His example should be an inspiration to Americans of all races, but especially a black American youngsters.

By the custodians of American education, Clarence Thomas's name is not on that many schools.

Barack Obama's name will be on many of them.

But The same logic that you just used to extol the significance of Barack Obama's ascendancy could and should be applied to Clarence Thomas, in my opinion.

Yes, but it's the office, but also there is a resume and there's accomplishments, but then there is oratory and charisma and a number of Twitter followers.

So there's ability to captivate a large number of people.

That's a skill that correlates, but is not directly connected to with how impressive your resume is.

And moreover, the judicial function, the judge doesn't go out and give speeches of that sort because it's exactly antithetical to what he's doing.

He's a custodian of the law and that's not a popular feature figure in American policy.

He doesn't stand for election and it's a good thing too.

Here I want to say something else though that's provocative.

The next black president, you say, first black president shouldn't have been the 1 to do that, the second 1 should, is more likely than not gonna be a Republican.

I'm not, I don't have a particular person in mind, I'm just saying.

Let me ask you to put on your wise sage hat and give advice to young people.

So if you're talking to somebody who's in high school and in college, what advice would you give them about their career, about life in general, how to live a life they can be proud of?

I mean, first order of business, you're not a victim.

I don't care you male, female, you're gay, straight, whatever, the world is your oyster.

You sit here in the United States of America, a free country, a rich country, everything is possible for you.

Secondly, I would say mastery over the medium in which we're embedded is the key to the future.

So get educated, focus, work hard, invest in your future by acquiring the skills that you need to be able to navigate the 21st century.

I would say the Chinese are coming, and I don't mean anything against China, I just mean to say the world's a small place and it's getting smaller.

And you better get moving and you better get moving quickly.

I'd say your identity, your coloration, your orientation, your category is not the most important thing about you.

So the temptation to limit yourself, I give this speech to my kids.

He has a passage in Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, in which he says, do you know what Ireland is?

Ireland is an old sow that eats her Pharaoh.

He says, Stephan Dedalus is the character that he has in mind in this chronicle.

He says, your ethnic inheritance, he's talking about Irish nationalism, are like nets holding you back.

That your challenge is to learn how to turn those nets into wings and thereby to fly.

Flying into the open skies of modern society.

Don't be your grandfather, don't be your father.

Don't wear your things so heavily that it keeps you from being open to everything that's new in the world.

Yes, everybody comes from somewhere, but it doesn't have to be where you end up.

So you're not your father, you're not your grandfather.

You are this wonderfully blessed human being in the middle of, going into the middle of the 21st century.

1 of the greatest writers of the 20th century, a profound 1, but an Irishman nevertheless.

The levels of humor within that is not lost on me.

Let me just mention the great Ralph Ellison, the African-American writer, Invisible Man is his masterpiece, embodied this spirit.

Okay, we black Americans, we do come from somewhere, that coming from somewhere is from slavery in America, that's our ancestral heritage.

Skin and bone, these are superficial things.

The spirit, and if I were a more religious person, I could give a whole disposition about that, but it's the spirit, It's that light that's inside.

And our challenge is to live in the fullness of it, as opposed to this blinkered thing where we don't look left, we don't look right.

We're just fitting within this template that we inherit.

Glenn, you've lived an incredible life, a productive 1, but just representing some powerful ideas, some powerful ideals.

Well, it is a really interesting coincidence that you posed me that question because I'm coming from a funeral.

On the preceding Tuesday, 5 days ago, I was at the funeral of Eugene Wesley Smith, who was my brother-in-law.

My sister, Leonette, passed away in August of 2021.

Her husband has died at the age of 68 in April of 2022, and I was at his funeral.

He died suddenly of a heart attack that came completely out of the blue.

I could go into the details, but, you know, take my word for it.

He was a businessman, a steel trader, metals trader.

He had clients, counterparties, people he did business with all over the world.

He had 3 sons, 1 of whom is in his early 30s, 2 of whom are in their late 30s.

These are my sister's children, she's deceased, now he's deceased.

The older 2 sons are severely developmentally disabled, and although they were in their late 30s, they're not independently viable, they don't function effectively, they have to be cared for.

That responsibility has now fallen to the family, but mainly to the surviving son, who lives with his wife and his 2 young children, and has assumed the responsibility.

My sister and her husband, Wesley, Eugene Wesley Smith, cared for their disabled sons at home.

They didn't wanna see them institutionalized.

They had some help from programs at the state and social worker and so on, but they mainly took on the burden of caring for them at home.

Anyway, I go on at length here, and I don't know how much of this you'll choose to make use of, and it doesn't matter, really.

I'm just trying to respond to your question.

I was asked to offer some remarks at the funeral.

And I, you know, I spoke well of this great man.

He carried a lot of people with him, business associates, family members, and so forth and so on.

He was an intellectual, even though as a businessman, much of his day was taken up with the, you know, minutiae of contracts and, you know, the details of the order being delivered and not being delivered, of the quality of the product, of the financing, and so forth and so on.

Yeah, he was a powerful mind, and he studied, he read books, he was interested in music and art, he's a spiritual seeker, had been ordained as a child minister in his youth, and while he remained a master of the Christian canon, he also explored Eastern religion and other spiritual paths, and kind of stood above any particular tradition as a man who believed in God but thought that God manifest himself in many ways to human beings and that there was much to learn from other religious traditions as well.

This is Wesley, we called him Wesley by his middle name, Eugene Wesley Smith, may he rest in peace.

68, that's 5 years younger than I am right now.

What were the thoughts in your mind leading up to it, having to give that speech in the days that followed?

first of all, I wondered, what would I say?

And there was no way to prepare, and I decided, I rehearsed in my mind this, he had straight back, he had broad shoulders, he had a big heart, he had a great mind, he had a capacious spirit and whatnot, and I used that as a template for making my remarks.

But my main thought was, my God, life is precious and life is fleeting, and death is a part of life.

And I thought, well, I wanna take better care of myself than I do, et cetera, et cetera.

But I also thought a lot of this is not in my hands at all.

I thought 1 should have his affairs in order.

My brother did not have all of his affairs in order in the sense that there is a lot of, you know, things are going to probate, there was no will, there's, you know, this is kind of unsettled.

I don't want that to happen to my surviving family members.

I want to have my affairs such that should heaven forbid, I fall over 1 day and don't get up again, people don't have to scramble about how to take care

Now, I read this wonderful book called The Swerve.

It's about the nature of things, which is this great classical work from the Roman period by this guy Lucretius.

And I'm trying to think of the name of the author, but you could look it up.

It won like a National Book Award or a Pulitzer Prize.

And it's the history of the recovery of this book by 1 of these Italian, Renaissance Italian people who would go into the monasteries in Central Europe and look through the scrolls and they discover these classical works from antiquity which had been lost through the dark ages and they republish and read these works.

And Lucretius's great work on the nature of things was 1 of these books, Poggio Broccolini, I don't remember the Italian guy's name, but this all could be looked up.

15th century, and the name of the author is Stephen Greenblatt.

Yeah, Stephen Greenblatt, a magnificent book and a terrific story.

Anyway, 1 of Lucretius's points, he was an atheist, I mean, he was a Roman, I mean, he didn't believe in mysticism, And he argued it's irrational to be afraid of death.

The point of being afraid, I mean, I'm wasting my time fearing something that I have no ultimate control over.

Yeah, because you can't predict when it happens.

And therefore live every day fully, live every day purposefully, you know, and so on.

But these are all just words, you know, I don't want to die.

I saw my late wife, Linda Datcher Lowry, Dr.

Linda Datcher Lowry, professor of economics at Tufts University, whom I met in graduate school at MIT, black woman from Baltimore.

She died at the age of 59 from metastatic breast cancer.

And I watched her suffer and I watched her die.

And we cared for her at home right up until the very end.

She died in our bed with our sons on either side of her, and the dog curled up by the porch door in the bedroom, and she expired.

And I watched her suffer and I watched her die, and I don't wanna suffer, who does?

I am likely to see my death coming and to lament it.

There's a book by Richard John Newhouse, the theologian, called As I Lay Dying.

He had stomach cancer, and he thought he was dying, and he wrote this book, As He Lay Dying.

He went into remission, and he had another

He went into remission, and he had another couple of years.

He thought he was dying, and he had another couple of years.

And I can remember meeting him at a bookstore in suburban Boston when he was on a tour.

He was a friend of mine, a theologian and a public intellectual.

He founded the Institute on Religion and Public Life in New York City, which still exists, Richard John Newhouse.

And he's contemplating his own death from the point of view of a Christian minister.

He was first a Lutheran pastor and then he converted to Catholicism, or as he would have put it, I returned to the church because he thought the Renaissance was over.

I mean, I'm sorry, the Reformation, Richard Thought was over, he says there's only 1 church, you know, et cetera.

But I'm saying all that to say I read that book aloud to my wife Linda as she lay dying in that bed.

I'm supposed to believe in everlasting life, but the fact of the matter is this is me and I'm lying here and I'm dying.

How are you going to do anything other than dread the end of me?

So let's acknowledge that I don't want to die, okay?

I'm just going to tell you that up front.

But that is not the end of—my death is not the end of life.

I will go and do my best right up until the end.

I will accept what is inevitable, and I will hold out this belief." And he's a Christian minister, so he holds out this belief, and he knows that the belief is not rational.

It's not a reasoned, deductive, scientific conclusion.

It's spiritual in the most fundamental way.

It is something that people hold on to, and they have hope, and he had hope.

I used to be, but I'm no longer a Christian and I'm no longer a theist, really.

I mean, There's no magic that's going on here.

There's no unseen hand behind the scene that's arranging things.

What I believe is that when I look at the natural world, I see the evolution of the species.

I see the organic development of the planets.

I mean, the Earth is going to not exist in a finite number of years.

I think with a very high probability, the sun is going to die, it's going to implode, it's going to go supernova, whatever is going to happen, and there's not going to be any there.

Or is that something economists and social scientists and mathematicians are not equipped to answer?

You know, I think we try to live well and meaningfully within our time, we bond, we reproduce, we try to pass on and we accept our limitations and our mortality, we try to contribute.

And that's through our children and through our work.

And we're in this together, we're not in this alone.

I get a lot of gratitude out of teaching.

I don't wanna be self-important or pretentious here.

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Glenn Loury: Race, Racism, Identity Politics, and Cancel Culture | Lex Fridman Podcast #285