[cyborg]

Black America.. White America... what's with all the separation? There's no more a unified anything about black people than there is about white people. I guess no one in academics wants to be a plain American.

[cyborg]

ping

[mark502inf]

Fryer has a huge appetite for advocacy but a far larger appetite for science, and as a scientist he won't exclude any possibilities, including black behaviors, from the menu of factors that contribute to the black condition

The politics & sensitivities are so imbedded into this debate that white researchers steer away. This guy may bring some much needed science into the issue.

[Talking_Mouse]

bookmark to read later

[backhoe]

I must be inhaling that Stupid Gas the pulp mill here puts out ( inside joke betwixt me & wifey... ) because if this writer has a point, or theme, I can't find it anywhere.

[Capriole]

What a moving story. This young man's splendid mind, his great capacity for work, and his background are combining to do a lot of good. His work is fascinating. May God bless him (as He has already done). I hope that as he gets older he'll return to faith.

[alice_in_bubbaland]

Interesting Read, Thank You!

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

What is a pure technical economic theorist? Are these the guys who believe that economics is a pure science and try to prove their theories through calculus?

If he is, I had one of these #&*(!%@# in grad school. All he proved was that he could do calculus and other math calculations on the board (applause) and that he was very imaginative.

[jaime1959]

Excellent article!

[tickmeister]

Good article. The guy seems to be willing to address the obvious fact of black-white inequality. It has long been irritating to me that this subject can't be discussed.

In a free society, and in conservative circles in specific, people are evaluated and treated as individuals. (Unlike the practice of liberals.) It is entirely possible that the best mathematician who will ever live will be black, even if blacks in general are inferior to whites and orientals in that field. Conservatives will nurture, respect, and honor such an individual for his achievement, liberals will malign him for acting white. The whole point is that in a just society, individuals will be treated as individuals, not as members of a group. Thus, it makes no difference what the general ability level of their group is.

Bill Walton, during the 45 seconds that he was healthy, was arguably the best and most dominating basketball player of all time in spite of the fact that blacks in general achieve greater success than whites in that sport. Meritocracy should be the rule in all of society, not just sports.

Racial and sexual groups will never be equal. The sooner that we accept that fact and file it as unimportant, the better.

[MortMan]

If only those chartreuse people would realize that each and every one of them is NOT unique - they belong to the same collective as every other chartreuse human being. There is NO individuality, there can be NO independent thought! /sarcasm

[ken21]

i read this this morning while i was sitting on the toilet.

disappointing read.

i thought his ideas would reach some fruition, and i awaited anxiously, completing the article, ... not.

[Shisan]

The article promotes tokenism and racial favoritism in a shameless way. It is obvious from the text that all of his perks are because he is black. What is painful is that he seems unaware of this.
He may be a great scientist just like Einstein but it will take a while to find out.

[garbanzo]

As soon as you say something like, 'Well, could the black-white test-score gap be genetics?' everybody gets tensed up. But why shouldn't that be on the table?''

This is the only quibble I have with an otherwise excellent article. When hasn't this been on the table? It wasn't like back before the Civil War people were saying, "Look at those intelligent and hardworking slaves, who are every bit my intellectual equals!"

A certain part of white America is secretely hoping to establish that the problems of black America are genetic simply because then the problem of race and racial inequity goes away. But this simply a false dichotomy - a failure of imagination on how to deal with race, i.e. racial problems are either genetic or expansive affirmative actions programs are needed. I think Fryer is to be commended for attempting to find a "third way" on issues of race.

[sandydipper]

He admits stealing money from McDonald's cash register "when he could" - pretty much sums up where black America went wrong.

[norton]

The purpose of scholarship is to add knowledge to the total, not necessarily to 'make discoveries' or land on the moon.
If this guy can add any significant knowledge to the matter of race relations then more power to him.
If he can do that AND be heard and listened to then he has served himself and others well.

What I'd like to see him examine is just what happened to that "Talented Tenth" that at one time existed within and may have allowed a vibrant and often successful parallel black community but today seems lost, misdirected, or possibly exiled from, that community.

Fryer appears to have some link with that part of the past and I'm glad he makes use of it.

He could also go to the core of that 'salty slave' theory by looking at Jamacan immigrant families, African immigrant families, and ancestors of American slaves; I think he'd find a great difference in the hypertension scores based simply on where people believe their ancestors came from.

[Bryan]

There is only one forebear whom Fryer aspires to emulate: W.E.B. DuBois, the fiercely interdisciplinary black scholar and writer ...

Let's not be too hasty about enthusiastically praising Fryer here. DuBois was a socialist.

[PISANO]

There is a key difference, of course: Summers is not a woman; Fryer is black.

I stopped reading after this quote. IF IDEAS can only be discussed by one race or gender in order to be legitimate, well then the inmates have taken over the asylum.

[The Westerner]

bump to finish later. What a sad story about his cousins. This young man is liberating his white colleagues who are shut down due to political correctness.

[cpdiii]

The ugly secret that is the 10,000 lb elephant in the room that no academic will approach is the subject of eugenics. The slave owners, a dark chapter of shame in our nation, practiced eugenics over a period about about 200 years. An academic such as Ronald Fryer should study the effect. If he does he will not be welcome at Harvard ever again.