P6 - Thanks for the referral. I haven't gotten to the store today to pick up the Sunday edition of the NYT.

I read the piece about Fryar and one of the things that puzzles me is that neither Fryar or the author of the piece specifically addressed what the artcle refers to as "black behaviors." Are there behavioral traits that can be specifically called "black" and are they seperate from and in contradistinction to, say, "white' behavioral traits.

I know, for example, that whites don't name their children Deshawn or Imani but many, many blacks don't give their children such names either. And if black children's life opportunities are lessened as a result of being given these (or other similar) names is that because of the children's behavior or a perception of how they might act or what can be expected of them given their names?

Don't bother to respond to these questions. I'm just musing aloud so to speak.

The economics department at Harvard can be enticing and bedeviling at the same time. Once you disappear into the Littauer Building there isn't much that Skip Gates can do to rescue you if the need ever arises.

Time to go buy the paper.

Hopefully he will produce some relevant work. But I don't trust it. If the NYTimes is lauding him, one might do well to be skeptical of what conclusions are reached. And I don't mean to be a buzzkill but let's be honest, no mainstream American news source speaks honestly when the word race is being used. Anytime I see written or hear of someone looking for intrinsic reasons as to why "black" people aren't doing so well....(sigh)
The papers loooove to high post for those kinds of reports while disappearing Cornel West-like words about how race and capitalism work together.

Earl, I want you to think VERY CAREFULLY about what you just wrote. You say that the individual appears to have made some of the same connections you've made but you know nothing about his work.

About a year or so ago there was a similar piece on Steven Levitt out at Chicago. About the same age as I am, and one of homeboy's co-authors. The difference was that the article focused on Levitt's WORK to a significant degree.

Why the difference?

Put it this way. With the exception of Levitt there are no economists of my generation doing work that would send bells off in MY head. Don't be fooled by the pedigree, his age, and what some English Lit guy says.

I'll add my two cents to this discussion. The regard and prominence being given to Fryar reminds me a great deal of the buzz that was surrounding Glenn Loury during the mid-1980s. Loury is an economist but he taught at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, not the Economics Department, but the Kennedy School is dominated and largely run by those who specialize in the "dismal science".

In fact, if the setting of the school's curriculum was set entirely by these social scientists economics would be the preferred lens for viewing all domestic and international issues. In other words, mathematical modeling and computer simulations and the resultant data would rule. All the rest is just soft sentimental stuff.

Although there is much that I admire about Loury I was always disturbed by the fact that he was so quickly granted tenure at the Kennedy School despite the fact that he had not produced a book or a significant body of scholarly work at the time. He was certainly capable of doing so but the fact was that he had not at the time that he was given an endowed position.

I believed then and now that many of the senior faculty at the Kennedy School such as Tom Schelling (who was Loury's mentor and champion and Graham Allison (who was the school's dean at the time) are right of center Cold War Democrats who were never really comfortable with what they perceived as the excesses of the Civil Rights Movement. Schelling, Allison, Zeckhouser and others were looking for a two-for appointment and found what they wanted in Loury. He was black and he was politically conservative. The Kennedy School at that time did not have one black tenured faculty member.

I don't know what Fryar's politics may be and to some extent that shouldn't matter, but I am somewhat wary and ambivalent about the way in which his career is being promoted by Harvard University and its Economics Department. There is a pattern within the Economics Department and the Kennedy School of promoting black scholars who challenge what is viewed as the prevailing orthodoxies of the Civil Rights Movement but there is no similar push directed toward black scholars who, for example, want to use the mathematical models of modern economics research to demonstrate how blacks have been systematically disadvantaged.

There is much that is admirable about Fryar and I don't mean his overcoming adversity but I still want to read his work. I hope that he succeeds because Harvard will put him out to pasture as quickly as it brought him into the house if he should suddenly begin going in a direction that truly aimes to build on the legacy of W.E.B. DuBois.

All agreed, gentlemen.

I noted the lack of reference to his work in the article because it struck me odd off the top. It means the work is not the point of the article...Fryar's life story is the point.

Now I look at what that life story says to Black folks, and what it says to white folks. It puts him in an interesting position.

I believe he should be attended to, and I do want to see his work.

Turns out I've some minor contact with his work. He co-authored a piece with Levitt about name choice and inter-generational success (or lack thereof). The quick and dirty--does naming your child "Tequisha" influence their life chances? His co-author presented the paper at Washington University but I missed it by a hair. What I found interesting was the DATASET they used rather than the actual paper. I didn't even know you could GET naming records. I wouldn't have even thought about it as an option. But the finding itself was commonplace.

I mentioned Levitt in my previous note. He was the first economist of note to treat drug dealing as a business entity. He befriended a drug dealer in Chicago and got access to his data. His findings? That drug dealers don't make all that much money at the low end. Now the finding itself is something ANY URBAN AFRICAN AMERICAN BORN AFTER 1965 could tell you. It was his datasource that was innovative. There is ONE person that I've known for 20 years or so that I could have gone to for this information.

I would have never thought about doing so.

So what is happening is that the NYT/Harvard engine is going about the process of making the next Glen Loury.

Hopefully he won't get addicted to crack and crash and burn before he contributes something of value.

Sounds like Levitt is the one to talk to.