Roland Fryer

I've been reading the Economist lately and I highly recommend that the rest of you do as well. I just read a really interesting article about ghetto-survivor/tenured-Harvard-professor Roland Fryer. I know that these social-issues posts don't generate the same kind of responses that videos of high-heeled debutantes making fools of themselves do, but I hope you all check this article out.

Here it is.

Some highlights:

*Mr Fryer now applies his supple mind to the touchy, tangled issue of racial inequality. Why are African-Americans so much less prosperous than whites? Why do so many black children flounder in school? Why do so many young black men languish behind bars? Why are stories like Mr Fryer's considered so surprising?

*What ails black America? Public debate falls between two poles. Some academics and most civil-rights activists stress the role played by racial discrimination. It may no longer be overt, they argue, but it is still widespread and severe.

*Mr Fryer eschews histrionics in favour of hard data. He is obsessed with education, which he calls “the civil-rights battleground of the 21st century”.

*His most striking contribution to the debate so far has been to show that black students who study hard are accused of “acting white” and are ostracised by their peers.

*A study by Richard Sander of the University of California, Los Angeles, found that when the bar is lowered for black applicants to law school, they are admitted to institutions where they cannot cope. Many who drop out of top-tier colleges might have thrived at slightly less competitive ones.

*In 2000 the average white household in the bottom fifth of income-earners had net assets of $24,000. The figure for blacks was a piffling $57.

*The proportion of black babies born out of wedlock has nearly doubled since 1970, to 69%. And 70% of these births are to mothers who are truly alone, not cohabiting.

Please read the whole article. I hope some of you find it as fascinating as I do. Would love to hear your thoughts.