Glenn C. Loury

Race, incarceration, and American values

Confessions of a Black Conservative

Late Admissions

Gertrude Himmelfarb

Marvin Olasky

Amy Sherman

David Beito

Rev. Robert A. Sirico

The Revival of American Charity

Transforming Welfare

Loury calls on Americans of all races to break free of stereotypical thinking on "liberal" & "conservative" issues & restore balance in seeking solutions to build a new consensus for civil rights. Includes reviews of books on the topics.

Essays and Reviews on Race and Responsibility in America

One by One from the Inside Out

“Paints in chilling detail the distance between Martin Luther King’s dream and the reality of present-day America.” —Anthony Walton, Harper’s “Intellectually rigorous and deeply thoughtful...Loury’s book deals with racial stigma...in its political and philosophical aspects as a cause of black disadvantage...An incisive, erudite book by a major thinker.” —Gerald Early, New York Times Book Review “Lifts and transforms the discourse on ‘race’ and racial justice to an entirely new level.” —Orlando Patterson “He is a genuine maverick thinker...The Anatomy of Racial Inequality both epitomizes and explains Loury’s understanding of the depressed conditions of so much of black society today.” —New York Times Magazine “Loury provides an original and highly persuasive account of how the American racial hierarchy is sustained and reproduced over time. And he then demands that we begin the deep structural reforms that will be necessary to stop its continued reproduction.” —Michael Walzer Why are Black Americans so persistently confined to the margins of society? And why do they fail across so many metrics—wages, unemployment, income levels, test scores, incarceration rates, health outcomes? Known for his influential work on the economics of racial inequality and for pioneering the link between racism and social capital, Glenn Loury is not afraid of piercing orthodoxies and coming to controversial conclusions. In this now classic work, he describes how a vicious cycle of tainted social information helped create the racial stereotypes that rationalize and sustain discrimination. Brilliant in its account of how racial classifications are created and perpetuated, and how they resonate through the social, psychological, spiritual, and economic life of the nation, this compelling and passionate book gives us a new way of seeing—and of seeing beyond—the damning categorization of race.

With a New Preface

The Anatomy of Racial Inequality

Why stigmatizing and confining a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to all Americans. The United States, home to five percent of the world's population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate—at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising—is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury argues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans—vastly disproportionately black and brown—with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes.

Race, Incarceration, and American Values

Racial stereotypes -- Racial stigma -- Racial justice.

Glenn C. Loury

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