I was going to sit this one out. Not because I think John McWhorter has the better argument, but because there's nothing I can say that William Julius Wilson hasn't already said better.
Let's get a few things out of the way from the jump. I'm not an academic. I write from the perspective of somebody who grew up in a manufacturing town and knows the impacts of deindustrialization from the ground up. I read "Losing the Race," but not "Winning the Race," That said, Indianapolis may not be the best case study if you want to gain an understanding of the impacts of deindustrialization on Black America. It never suffered the impacts of deindustrialization the way places like Akron (rubber and tires) Birmingham (steel), Detroit (automobiles), or Gary (steel) did.
Let's start with population trends, which tell us a lot about the economic health of a city:
Akron - down 37% since 1960
Birmingham - down 42% since 1960
Detroit - down 62% since 1960
Gary - down 62% since 1960
Indianapolis - up 85% since 1960
Let's look at current poverty rates:
Akron - 23%
Birmingham - 26%
Detroit - 32%
Gary - 32%
Indianapolis - 16%
I sourced the population numbers from a site called Biggest U.S. Cities:
The poverty numbers are from the US Census Bureau.
There's a long list of places I can come up with that suffered big hits due to deindustrialization and have large black populations. Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Flint, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, and Toledo come immediately to mind, but it wouldn't be hard to find others.
The debate, to the extent that there is one, is over the relative impacts of culture, deindustrialization, and government policies. John McWhorter seems to think culture and government policies are the primary causes of problems within Black America. I said in my essay that those things played a role, but experience has taught me that black people with good jobs rarely have the kinds of issues that John McWhorter highlighted in his essay.
Black men with good blue collar jobs were the backbones of black neighborhoods before deindustrialization hit. Young people respected and looked up to them. They were role models and set the standards of acceptable male behavior. In other words, they helped shape black culture.
White men with good blue collar jobs were the backbones of White America too. Anybody who has read "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance gets the point. The people most likely to "screw up" in Vance's book were those without good jobs or a purpose in life. That's true for most Americans. Folks without good jobs or a purpose in life often fall into behaviors that lead to violence and/or "deaths of despair."
Cultural differences help explain the differences in how people from different racial groups respond to these challenges. That said, it should be noted that the urban violence Glenn Loury and John McWhorter often talk about is committed by a relatively small group of people according to criminologist Thomas Abt. Here's an excerpt from an essay he did for The Guardian back in 2019:
In the cities that struggle with high rates of violence, shootings are concentrated among a surprisingly small set of people and places. It doesn’t concentrate in entire communities or neighborhoods. Even in the most allegedly dangerous places, the vast majority of people are not violent, and there are plenty of safe spaces.
In fact, in most cities, about 4% of city blocks account for approximately 50% of crime. In Oakland, 60% of murders happen within a social network of approximately one to two thousand high-risk individuals – about 0.3% of the city’s population. In New Orleans, a network of 600 to 700 people, less than 1% of the city’s population, account for more than 50% of its lethal encounters.
Conventional wisdom tells us that to address violence, we need to work from the outside in, starting by fixing everything else: culture, poverty, racism, employment. But all of the most rigorous and reliable evidence tells us the opposite: we have to work from the inside out, focusing first and foremost on the highest-risk people and places.
The people who commit most of these crimes have modest skills. The challenge is finding ways to help them get their lives on track. I will argue until the cows come home that this is much harder in places where good blue collar jobs are few and far between.
One last point: Have you been to Gary? What you think of as "snark" is a genuine interest in how things would play out if anybody came to Gary and tried to convince black residents that culture and government policies were bigger contributors to their problems than deindustrialization.
I wrote that your comment was snarky. That is not a criticism of you, it is a comment on the words you chose to make your point, which I thought were due to an inaccurate understanding of John's point.
Acknowledging that you have not read the chapter on Indianapolis suggests your comment was more of an emotional reaction than an accurate understanding of John's argument.
John's point is that while everything you write above (and Mr. Wilson writes) is valid and important, it does not provide a sufficient explanation for the phenomena John describes in his books. Glenn emphasized deindustrialization as a significant economic factor. Glenn and John seemed to agree that John's argument is incremental, and (he asserts, and it is important to recognize) almost universally dismissed by academic sociologists. One need not agree with him, but it is important to get his argument correct. Implying that John is insensitive to the plight of those who lost jobs is what led me to comment.
Finally, this is not about who has the "better argument" (either-or); it is "both-and". Both you and John offer important points of view.
John was born into a well-to-do upper-middle-class black family with all expenses paid, free of much worry. He has never gone to bed hungry. John has never worked at a plant or factory. He grew up in a bubble that greatly influenced his thinking (white ivory tower mindset detached).
That sounds like an ad hominem argument, that his socioeconomic position disqualifies his opinion, rather than you engaging and offering a counter argument to his opinion.
Mr. Roscoe's reply to me does a nice job in explaining his different perspective. I agree with him there is room for many perspectives when it comes to policy debates, regardless of where and under what circumstances one was reared.
Thanks for your reply. Please watch the conversation between John and Glenn again and listen carefully to John's assertions from 16 years ago and today.
Just before the three minute mark John from 2007 says that deindustrialization "doesn't seem to explain anything." John from 2023 goes on to say that the best way to account for the effects of deindustrialization is, "It didn't help that low skill jobs moved away." He also asserts if the only issue was that factory jobs moved away that people would have moved or set up businesses the way immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean often do. I listened carefully and offered a different perspective on these things in my post.
As for "emotional" responses, listen carefully to what John said just before the seven minute mark. He doesn't want to believe that people didn't respond well to deindustrialization. He doesn't want to believe that the exodus of the black middle class affected the people left behind. He says around the 7:35 mark that some of his reaction is "visceral."
Listen to the fuller conversation and John says around the 29 minute mark that he spent a year doing an analysis of Indianapolis data but has spent less than three hours there:
There are people who believe they can accurately assess economic and cultural shifts this way. I write from the perspective of someone who thinks you can't know a place or a people unless you spend significant time on the ground. I also explained in my first response to you why I don't think Indianapolis is a good case study if you want to understand the impacts of deindustrialization on Black America.
I've spent time in Akron, Birmingham, Detroit, Gary and Indianapolis. No disrespect to John, but my time in these places, combined with having spent many years in the manufacturing space, gives me a perspective he doesn't have. I shared my perspectives on deindustrialized cities and included data to flesh out my points. There's room for many perspectives when it comes to public policy debates so let folks read both essays and draw their own conclusions.
"I shared my perspectives on deindustrialized cities and included data to flesh out my points."
You did, and you did that very well. I appreciate that.
"There's room for many perspectives when it comes to public policy debates so let folks read both essays and draw their own conclusions."
I completely agree.
I am glad that John's two earlier books have elicited a lively response in these comments. I enjoyed the tightly structured arguments John makes in his writing.
I plan to move on to "Woke Racism" to see what John has to say about more recent developments.
I was going to sit this one out. Not because I think John McWhorter has the better argument, but because there's nothing I can say that William Julius Wilson hasn't already said better.
Let's get a few things out of the way from the jump. I'm not an academic. I write from the perspective of somebody who grew up in a manufacturing town and knows the impacts of deindustrialization from the ground up. I read "Losing the Race," but not "Winning the Race," That said, Indianapolis may not be the best case study if you want to gain an understanding of the impacts of deindustrialization on Black America. It never suffered the impacts of deindustrialization the way places like Akron (rubber and tires) Birmingham (steel), Detroit (automobiles), or Gary (steel) did.
Let's start with population trends, which tell us a lot about the economic health of a city:
Akron - down 37% since 1960
Birmingham - down 42% since 1960
Detroit - down 62% since 1960
Gary - down 62% since 1960
Indianapolis - up 85% since 1960
Let's look at current poverty rates:
Akron - 23%
Birmingham - 26%
Detroit - 32%
Gary - 32%
Indianapolis - 16%
I sourced the population numbers from a site called Biggest U.S. Cities:
https://www.biggestuscities.com/
The poverty numbers are from the US Census Bureau.
There's a long list of places I can come up with that suffered big hits due to deindustrialization and have large black populations. Chicago, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Flint, Grand Rapids, Milwaukee, and Toledo come immediately to mind, but it wouldn't be hard to find others.
The debate, to the extent that there is one, is over the relative impacts of culture, deindustrialization, and government policies. John McWhorter seems to think culture and government policies are the primary causes of problems within Black America. I said in my essay that those things played a role, but experience has taught me that black people with good jobs rarely have the kinds of issues that John McWhorter highlighted in his essay.
Black men with good blue collar jobs were the backbones of black neighborhoods before deindustrialization hit. Young people respected and looked up to them. They were role models and set the standards of acceptable male behavior. In other words, they helped shape black culture.
White men with good blue collar jobs were the backbones of White America too. Anybody who has read "Hillbilly Elegy" by J.D. Vance gets the point. The people most likely to "screw up" in Vance's book were those without good jobs or a purpose in life. That's true for most Americans. Folks without good jobs or a purpose in life often fall into behaviors that lead to violence and/or "deaths of despair."
Cultural differences help explain the differences in how people from different racial groups respond to these challenges. That said, it should be noted that the urban violence Glenn Loury and John McWhorter often talk about is committed by a relatively small group of people according to criminologist Thomas Abt. Here's an excerpt from an essay he did for The Guardian back in 2019:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/10/us-gun-violence-thomas-abt
In the cities that struggle with high rates of violence, shootings are concentrated among a surprisingly small set of people and places. It doesn’t concentrate in entire communities or neighborhoods. Even in the most allegedly dangerous places, the vast majority of people are not violent, and there are plenty of safe spaces.
In fact, in most cities, about 4% of city blocks account for approximately 50% of crime. In Oakland, 60% of murders happen within a social network of approximately one to two thousand high-risk individuals – about 0.3% of the city’s population. In New Orleans, a network of 600 to 700 people, less than 1% of the city’s population, account for more than 50% of its lethal encounters.
Conventional wisdom tells us that to address violence, we need to work from the outside in, starting by fixing everything else: culture, poverty, racism, employment. But all of the most rigorous and reliable evidence tells us the opposite: we have to work from the inside out, focusing first and foremost on the highest-risk people and places.
The people who commit most of these crimes have modest skills. The challenge is finding ways to help them get their lives on track. I will argue until the cows come home that this is much harder in places where good blue collar jobs are few and far between.
One last point: Have you been to Gary? What you think of as "snark" is a genuine interest in how things would play out if anybody came to Gary and tried to convince black residents that culture and government policies were bigger contributors to their problems than deindustrialization.
.
I wrote that your comment was snarky. That is not a criticism of you, it is a comment on the words you chose to make your point, which I thought were due to an inaccurate understanding of John's point.
Acknowledging that you have not read the chapter on Indianapolis suggests your comment was more of an emotional reaction than an accurate understanding of John's argument.
John's point is that while everything you write above (and Mr. Wilson writes) is valid and important, it does not provide a sufficient explanation for the phenomena John describes in his books. Glenn emphasized deindustrialization as a significant economic factor. Glenn and John seemed to agree that John's argument is incremental, and (he asserts, and it is important to recognize) almost universally dismissed by academic sociologists. One need not agree with him, but it is important to get his argument correct. Implying that John is insensitive to the plight of those who lost jobs is what led me to comment.
Finally, this is not about who has the "better argument" (either-or); it is "both-and". Both you and John offer important points of view.
John was born into a well-to-do upper-middle-class black family with all expenses paid, free of much worry. He has never gone to bed hungry. John has never worked at a plant or factory. He grew up in a bubble that greatly influenced his thinking (white ivory tower mindset detached).
That sounds like an ad hominem argument, that his socioeconomic position disqualifies his opinion, rather than you engaging and offering a counter argument to his opinion.
Mr. Roscoe's reply to me does a nice job in explaining his different perspective. I agree with him there is room for many perspectives when it comes to policy debates, regardless of where and under what circumstances one was reared.
Thanks for your reply. Please watch the conversation between John and Glenn again and listen carefully to John's assertions from 16 years ago and today.
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/debating-the-deindustrialization
Just before the three minute mark John from 2007 says that deindustrialization "doesn't seem to explain anything." John from 2023 goes on to say that the best way to account for the effects of deindustrialization is, "It didn't help that low skill jobs moved away." He also asserts if the only issue was that factory jobs moved away that people would have moved or set up businesses the way immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean often do. I listened carefully and offered a different perspective on these things in my post.
As for "emotional" responses, listen carefully to what John said just before the seven minute mark. He doesn't want to believe that people didn't respond well to deindustrialization. He doesn't want to believe that the exodus of the black middle class affected the people left behind. He says around the 7:35 mark that some of his reaction is "visceral."
Listen to the fuller conversation and John says around the 29 minute mark that he spent a year doing an analysis of Indianapolis data but has spent less than three hours there:
https://glennloury.substack.com/p/john-mcwhorter-sixteen-years-of-the#details
There are people who believe they can accurately assess economic and cultural shifts this way. I write from the perspective of someone who thinks you can't know a place or a people unless you spend significant time on the ground. I also explained in my first response to you why I don't think Indianapolis is a good case study if you want to understand the impacts of deindustrialization on Black America.
I've spent time in Akron, Birmingham, Detroit, Gary and Indianapolis. No disrespect to John, but my time in these places, combined with having spent many years in the manufacturing space, gives me a perspective he doesn't have. I shared my perspectives on deindustrialized cities and included data to flesh out my points. There's room for many perspectives when it comes to public policy debates so let folks read both essays and draw their own conclusions.
Mr. Roscoe,
Thank you for your response.
"I shared my perspectives on deindustrialized cities and included data to flesh out my points."
You did, and you did that very well. I appreciate that.
"There's room for many perspectives when it comes to public policy debates so let folks read both essays and draw their own conclusions."
I completely agree.
I am glad that John's two earlier books have elicited a lively response in these comments. I enjoyed the tightly structured arguments John makes in his writing.
I plan to move on to "Woke Racism" to see what John has to say about more recent developments.