National Treasures

Unlike many politically-interested Americans, this blogger regularly listens to only one podcast – “The Glenn Show” at Bloggingheads TV. The program is hosted by Glenn Loury, a brilliant economist who is a tenured professor at Brown University. Unlike many of his colleagues, Loury came to academia from a working class African American background after growing up on the south side of Chicago (and even worked a blue collar job for several years before attending undergraduate school). Like many of his economist colleagues, who tend not to share the ideological fantasies of their more liberal academic brethren, Loury approaches the human condition with an emphasis on realism.

Loury’s most frequent conversation partner is John McWhorter, an African American professor of linguistics at Columbia University who was raised in a middle class neighborhood in the Philadelphia area.  McWhorter has authored two of the best works on black America written this century — “Losing the Race: Self-Sabotage in Black America” and “Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America” (this author read them in reverse order).  McWhorter is a regular commentator in various forums, including news programs, on race in America and, quite distinctly, linguistics.

Loury and McWhorter set themselves apart from so much of the social criticism on race in America by (a) not accepting the conventional wisdom as to the elite left’s viewpoint on race-related issues (McWhorter detests it and castigates it as more of a “religious experience” than a factual look at the topic, while Loury more jovially dismisses this viewpoint as generally unrealistic based upon the evidence) and (b) daring to treat the discussion of race as one with many nuances.  Neither man denies the existence of racism and, to a lesser extent, certain structural, race-involved inequalities that can impede an individual’s ability to succeed.  However, both question the narrative that the primary driver of black/white achievement gaps in the United States is racism,  now often referred to by the ubiquitous term “white supremacy.”

Seeking to further characterize their views would spill more ink  than is necessary to let the reader know that one will not find a better discussion of interesting, and often controversial, matters in the American cultural discourse, particularly on the topic of race. Glenn Loury and John McWhorter deserve many accolades for their excellence.

A link to Loury’s show is below; it may require a cut and paste to use.

https://bloggingheads.tv/programs/glenn-show