The Arthur Levitt Public Affairs Center sponsored a lecture by Harvard University assistant professor of economics Roland Fryer, titled "Toward a Unified Theory of Black America," on Jan. 31. Fryer, whose work focuses on understanding racial inequality through quantitative research, spoke to a crowded Chapel audience about several of his past studies as well as his current project, which provides students in urban public schools with monetary incentives for good academic performance.
Fryer began his engaging and humorous lecture by speaking about his own personal history. Typically, he said, sociologists or anthropologists may begin by talking about themselves in order to disclose any biases they may have. While economists generally do not do this, Fryer said that due to the intense and personal nature of the topic of racial inequality, it made sense for him to do so. Fryer was raised by his grandmother in an all-black neighborhood in Daytona Beach, Fla. Though his teacher grandmother sent him to a mostly white elementary school, he went to all-black middle and high schools. During his childhood, Fryer said that he was not particularly interested in his education. Only after going to the University of Texas on a football scholarship did he discover his love of mathematics. In graduate school at the University of Chicago, Fryer said he was struck by the beauty and power of the sophisticated mathematical analysis techniques he was learning, but was disappointed to see that they were being used on such theoretical problems as "optimal cake eating" and "optimal corn growth."
The problem with the study of racial inequality, Fryer continued, is that we are not putting our most brilliant minds and sophisticated techniques to use. Instead, he said, we leave this important discussion in the hands of pundits and talking heads "who think the plural form of the word anecdotes is data." For this reason, he said that decided to take his degree and dedicate his work to the study of racial inequality from a quantitative and factual perspective. He said that the three most important aspects of this inquiry are facts, methodology, and teamwork.
"If you take one thing away from this lecture," Fryer said, "it is that facts are our friends. We need more facts and less politics when we're talking about racial and gender inequality." He gave examples of some alarming facts that show continued racial inequality, including racial achievement gaps, decreased life expectancy for black Americans, and the high percentage of young black men in prison.
"Facts cannot speak on their own, however," he continued. This is where interpreting facts through sound methodology comes in. Fryer cautioned against confusing a correlation of two factors with a causal relationship. He mentioned a few obviously flawed causal claims which most people would dismiss as false. He then pointed out that people do not have the same critical viewpoint for claims about race, such as the idea that black culture causes racial inequality.
In a study Fryer conducted to test this hypothesis using quantitative analysis, he compared the socio-economic outcomes for similarly situated black women in California based on whether or not they had stereotypical black names. Since names can generally be considered an indicator of a cultural investment, Fryer argued that the racial quality of a name could stand in as an indicator of culture. In this study, Fryer and his colleagues found that the outcomes were not different, indicating that the level of cultural investment as measured by naming was not the cause of success or failure.
Similarly, Fryer conducted a study to test the relationship between the use of crack cocaine and decreases in black achievement and advances in various cities. Using sociological evidence about when crack cocaine was introduced into various cities throughout the U.S., he evaluated the connection between crack's prevalence and data points from these cities such as test scores, infant mortality, and teen homicide. Indeed, the study found that the introduction of crack into each city coincided with decreasing achievement and quality of life for the black communities of those cities.
Once we have used facts and methodology, Fryer said, we must use teamwork to implement scientific findings in a way that will solve the problems of racial inequality. He spoke about a pilot program he is implementing in several cities throughout the U.S. to test the effectiveness of monetary incentives in increasing students' performance. While this may at first seem like an unsavory idea, Fryer said, a look at the facts will make it clear why it is worth a shot. In expecting low-income urban children to dedicate themselves to their education in order to head for further education and a career, we are expecting them to follow along a path that they may have no examples of in their own life. We're also asking them to work hard now for rewards they won't see for at least ten years, whereas middle and upper class children get more immediate benefits. "Don't fool yourselves that the kids on the Upper East Side or in the suburbs aren't given incentives for their good performance in school," he said.
Critics have said that this program will destroy the intrinsic motivation for learning in these urban students. Fryer disagrees, saying that this program is giving them any sort of motivation where there was none before, and that this keeps them engaged in school until internal motivation for higher learning can be developed. Thus far, these pilot programs have shown marked increases in the performance of the students involved, and the students' success has not ended after the incentive program was phased out.
"We have a crisis, and we can't afford to lose another generation," Fryer said. He emphasized that we must scientifically test many different approaches to solving the problem of racial inequality, and go with the one that works best. "This is personal for me, this is not about marks on a chalkboard," Fryer reiterated. "These are my people, your people, and we have got to get busy. This is not only about theorems and numbers, but about trying to right a wrong through science and community action."
-- by Caroline Russell O'Shea '07
