Disparity Nonsense | Center for Equal Opportunity

The New York Times had a long editorial-screed over the weekend, titled “Forcing Black Men Out of Society.”

It’s a predictable lament: The racist war on drugs has unfairly imprisoned large numbers of black men, and this has made it harder for them to get jobs when they get out, and it has made it impossible for black women to marry and so they instead have children out of wedlock. What’s more, the fact that so many blacks go to prison reinforces racist stereotypes, so that African Americans can’t get jobs even when they don’t have a criminal record, and even face racism when they are still children by the way they are disciplined in schools. “Deindustrialization” helped pave the way for all this, presumably because it was the difficulty of finding honest work that led so many African Americans to choose a life of crime. The Times concludes—as I said, it’s all very predictable — that racism is also to blame for “the many grievous cases of unarmed black men and boys who were shot dead by the police — now routinely captured on video.”

The solution? Well, the Times doesn’t say, but since it all stems from the war on drugs (“nonviolent drug offenses”), then I guess if drugs were legalized then racism would end, employment would skyrocket, and out-of-wedlock birthrates would plummet.

This is all nonsense, a combination of bad facts and bad logic.

Reasonable people can differ about whether the war on drugs has been a good idea and what can be done to improve law-enforcement policies in this area, but to suggest that it was racist in conception and has been waged in a racially discriminatory way is simply false. If the government had announced that it had no problem with people selling heroin and crack in the ghetto, would that have been welcomed by African Americans? Have the police turned a blind eye to the trafficking in “white drugs,” like methamphetamine and prescription opioids?

If a disproportionate number of those arrested for drug crimes are black, it is because a disproportionate number of drug criminals are black. It is not true that all groups use illegal drugs at the same rate, and in any event it is not for using drugs but for selling them that people are typically sent to prison.

And the charges of racial bias these days are generally limited to drug-law enforcement, since even extremists like Michelle Alexander acknowledge that “black men do have much higher rates of violent crime [than whites].” And the overwhelming majority of those in prison are not there for drug crimes.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is widespread discrimination in drug-law enforcement. What should be done about it? Here’s my suggestion, and it can be implemented immediately and at no cost:

Step 1: Do not use, buy, or sell illegal drugs.

Step 2: If you belong to a racial or ethnic group that you think is targeted by the police, then especially do not use, buy, or sell illegal drugs.

Now, it may be objected that it is unfair if the police let white kids buy, use, and sell illegal drugs more than black kids. True, but when you think about it, it’s really not a good idea to buy, use, or sell illegal drugs anyway. It’s not as if the police were keeping you from doing something that would be beneficial or even harmless to you and your community if you did it. Indeed, if the police were more tolerant of blacks buying, using, and selling illegal drugs than white kids, probably the Times would complain about that. It certainly would not improve the black individuals and neighborhoods for which the Times professes such concern.

At no extra charge, I will also provide another suggestion, for members of all racial and ethnic groups:

Step 3: Instead of using, buying, and selling illegal drugs, spend that time doing homework or something else that will improve your mind, character, and future prospects.

The Times is also wrong to argue that the reason black children are disciplined at higher rates than other children is because of racism, and its suggestion that unarmed black men and boys are “routinely” shot by the police is libelous.

But, most fundamentally, it is absurd to suggest that high black incarceration rates have led to high black out-of-wedlock birthrates. This is a classic instance of confusing cause and effect. Youths, especially boys, are much more likely to get into trouble if they grow up in a home without a father — and this is true regardless of skin color. Conversely, locking up a male does not cause a female to become pregnant.

The Times is right that, to the extent racial stereotypes linger, they are now driven by the perception that African Americans are more likely to commit crimes and have other social and cultural failings. But — though we must strive to judge people as individuals — these perceptions are, as a statistical matter, quite accurate. Recall that even Jesse Jackson admitted to engaging in such stereotyping, when he admitted that he would be more worried if he were being followed by two young black men than by two young men of some other color.

The Times exaggerates the extent and results of that stereotyping, however, and ignores the single most important way to combat them: For African Americans to stop having 71.5 percent of their children out of wedlock. That, and not the legalization of drugs, is what would cause economic well-being among African Americans to skyrocket, their incarceration and discipline rates to plummet, and, therefore, for racism to decline even more than it already has.

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The New York Times is not alone in thinking that racism and sexism explain every disparity. Thus, you hear the same complaint all the time in higher education — for example, that this is why there are fewer women on science faculties.

And the Chronicle of Higher Education is generally hospitable to such claims, so it was something of a surprise to read a pair of articles in it this month on some new research.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education on April 14: “Sexist hiring practices are commonly blamed for the underrepresentation of women in many fields of academic science, but new research suggests that such an assumption is wrong.” In fact, “male and female faculty members in four fields under study preferred to hire female applicants, by a two-to-one ratio, over male applicants with identical qualifications and life situations ….” And then, a few days later, another Chronicle of Higher Education article reported on a second study:

When it came to landing tenure-track jobs in their field, women and members of minority groups considered underrepresented appeared to be at a significant advantage. Black and Hispanic doctorate holders were both quicker and, respectively, 51 percent and 30 percent more likely than their white counterparts to obtain such positions. Asian doctorate holders were slowest to land such positions and 33 percent less likely than whites to obtain them. Women were quicker, and 10 percent more likely than men, to get tenure-track jobs, although the picture varied somewhat by family status, with single men and women who had children under age 6 being at a distinct disadvantage.

The picture changed markedly when it came to getting tenure, which tenure-track professors, on the whole, were most likely to receive at about the seven-year mark. Non-Asian minority members and women were slower to receive tenure, and black assistant professors were substantially less likely to ever receive it. Women with children under age 6 again appeared to be at a disadvantage.

The two articles fit together quite well, and each supports one of the Center for Equal Opportunity’s longstanding criticisms of affirmative action, as I then wrote: “One obvious possible explanation [for the tenure disparity] is that the women and URMs [‘underrepresented minorities’] hired were not as well qualified as the men, whites, and Asian Americans hired. This is quite plausible given the ‘diversity’ efforts to hire more women and URMs.”

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Rick Esenberg, who heads the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, had some nice things to say about us this month in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Roger Clegg wanted to have a dialogue about race. Roger is General Counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. He is fiercely intelligent but gentle-mannered; one of the nicer people I know. CEO had done a study that demonstrated just how strongly the University of Wisconsin prefers African-American applicants over similarly situated whites, Asians and even Hispanics. (The preference still doesn’t result in a large black enrollment at Madison.) When he came to Madison to discuss the report, he was accosted by screaming hordes whose idea of a dialogue is shouting over what you don’t want to hear.

Thanks, Rick! It all ended well, by the way, with more attention being given to our study and the university’s discriminatory policies than would otherwise have been the case. And through persistence I was able eventually to deliver my message to the “screaming hordes” — and then make it home safely.

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