I’m enjoying Jason L. Riley’s book Maverick: A Biography of Thomas Sowell. In a chapter titled “Higher Education, Lower Expectations,” Riley adds to his discussion of Sowell’s critical views on affirmative action by telling of Yale law professor Stephen Carter’s experience with school officials at Harvard Law School. Carter had been rejected when he applied but then received phone calls from Harvard officials apologizing for their mistake. What was their mistake? They had thought he was white. Here’s the passage Riley quotes from Carter’s Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby.
They were quite frank in their explanation of the “error.” I was told by one official that the school [Harvard] had initially rejected me because “we assumed from your record that you were white.” (The words have always stuck in my mind, a tantalizing reminder of what is expected of me.) Suddenly coy, he went on to say that the school had obtained “additional information that should have counted in your favor”–that is, Harvard had discovered the color of my skin….
Naturally, I was insulted…Stephen Carter, the white male, was not good enough for Harvard Law School; Stephen Carter, the black male not only was good enough but rated agonized telephone calls urging him to attend. And Stephen Carter, color unknown, must have been white: How else could he have achieved what he did in college?
READER COMMENTS
Phil H
Oct 25 2021 at 6:59pm
Harvard is a private organisation. They may get their race policies wrong, but that shouldn’t be a concern for libertarians.
Mark Z
Oct 25 2021 at 9:35pm
I feel I’ve made this point a thousand times before, but I’ll make it again. One can simultaneously believe that something should be legal, while also believing it is bad, and there’s nothing self-contradictory about that. I realize many people don’t understand this distinction anymore, but the question of whether something someone (or some organization) does is good or bad or productive or harmful is not equivalent to the question of whether it should be legal.
David Henderson
Oct 25 2021 at 10:37pm
Well said, Mark Z.
Phil H
Oct 26 2021 at 7:57am
Right, but this isn’t the Big Blog of What’s Good and Bad. It’s on libertarian economics, which is a fairly narrow remit. And it’s just disturbing when the authors venture out of the remit into creepy race territory. It’s their blog, and to the extent that it’s about good economics, it’s interesting. If it’s just conservative harrumphing, then it’s not.
JFA
Oct 26 2021 at 8:43am
“And it’s just disturbing when the authors venture out of the remit into creepy race territory.”
What is creepy about this post (which was sparked by reading a biography of a black libertarian economist)? It notes the perverse thought processes induced by engaging in affirmative action (as retold by a black legal scholar). It doesn’t mean that affirmative action is wrong, but the story certainly highlights the subtle bigotry that it is *partly* based on. Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, and Glenn Loury (among many others) have also noted this. In fact, Loury has written several well cited papers on the negative sorting effects that affirmative action can have through the differential incentives for skill acquisition. I mention only black economists because the current zeitgeist is to dismiss what white people say on the topic of race (unless it affirms what the left says)… which I imagine is one reason why you call David’s commenting on affirmative action “creepy race territory”. Affirmative action is by no means some “creepy race territory”.
Mark Z
Oct 26 2021 at 1:44pm
Politics isn’t just about what the government can or can’t do; the hiring policies of large institutions are fair game for criticism too. I quite certain you don’t restrict your political commentary to issues of what should or shouldn’t be legal.
And when Harvard started discriminating on the basis of race, it ventured out into ‘creepy race territory’ first; I see no reason why it’s creepy to scrutinize the creepy behavior of others. Race-based policies are a major issue of contention today. Food websites and poetry foundations are going out of their way to stake claims on these issues. An econ blogger pontificating on the matter isn’t a particularly salient topicality foul in that context. They are, after all, blogging, and bloggers often blog about whatever interests them at that moment. Would you make the same comment on, say, Scott Sumner’s post today on immigration?
Jon Murphy
Oct 26 2021 at 3:57pm
Economists have long been interested in race. Adam Smith talks about it at length in the Wealth of Nations. Frederic Bastiat does, as well. Indeed, our moniker “the dismal science” came about because we insisted on studying race and showing that differences in outcomes cannot be tied to race (against the “Progressive” mindset at the time). Gary Becker won the Nobel Prize in part because of his work on discrimination. Armen Alchian and Ruben Kessel wrote a seminal paper showing how costly discrimination is.
Even if you want to take the fairly restrictive definition of economics as “the study of the allocation of scarce resources,” I fail to see how the study of how Harvard allocates their scarce resources does not fall under the purview of economics.
David Henderson
Oct 25 2021 at 10:36pm
Phil H,
You write as if you think that the only thing libertarians care about is liberty. I care about much more than that.
Mark D. Friedman
Oct 25 2021 at 11:16pm
In addition to what Mark Z said, with which I completely agree, the public/private distinction is not quite so clear cut. At least some Harvard students finance a portion of their studies there with federal loans or grants (taxpayer money), and it receives many millions of federal research dollars. And as a non-profit, Harvard pays no federal taxes, a privilege white-only private schools lost.
KevinDC
Oct 26 2021 at 1:18pm
In response to Mark Z, you write:
For one – this is a change of goalposts compared to your initial comment. You didn’t say that Harvard’s race policy is outside of the scope libertarian economics. You said that the policy itself “shouldn’t be a concern for libertarians”, full stop. The claim “libertarians shouldn’t be concerned about X” is very, very different from the claim “X is not libertarian economics.”
For two – this is just false. Economics is certainly the most common topic discussed on this blog, but it has always been about signifantly more than that. Just recently there was a long and extended book club project hosted by the blog on Huemer’s book Knowledge, Reality, and Value: A Mostly Common Sense Guide to Philosophy – which has precisely nothing whatsoever to do with libertarian economics. If you’re only interested in the economics posts, that’s fine, but to declare as fact that this blog is just narrowly about economics is untrue.
Also, like JFA above, I’m perplexed by your “creepy race territory” take. The post shared Stephen Carter’s experience of being told directly by Harvard that if he had been white he wouldn’t have been considered up to par for admission, but since he was black he was good enough, and that Carter found this to be very insulting. That is “disturbing creepy race territory”? I think anyone would be insulted to be told something like that.
Jo VB
Oct 26 2021 at 2:59pm
I found the sentiment of Carter — being insulted — quite natural. Interestingly, I had the opposite experience. When on the jobmarket for an Ass. Prof. job in economics, I got a flyout from Yale. That is, until they discovered I was male, as they had assumed differently based on my first name. I was sad and disappointed about being disinvited, but not quite insulted. They didn’t think my work was good enough to consider me for the job if produced by a “privileged male”. Their call to make, but still not a pleasant experience.
Mark Brophy
Oct 26 2021 at 11:08pm
Carter’s grandmother was a famous lawyer and his ancestors may have been slave owners. If he performed like a white guy, maybe it was because he’s as rich as a white guy.
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