Belated congratulations to the former cardinal Robert Prevost on becoming the first American pope, Leo XIV. Considered a long shot, His Holiness benefited from a little-known Vatican affirmative action plan aimed at his minority group—White Sox fans.
Speaking of affirmative action, Jason Riley is out with a new book, The Affirmative Action Myth: Why Blacks Don’t Need Racial Preferences to Succeed. First-time contributor Professor Richard Epstein gives us a review.
Riley “does a skillful job in explaining how the ‘goalpost moves’ with the various accounts of affirmative action. The original use of that term in Lyndon Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 was meant to ‘take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.’ Rooting out various embedded forms of discrimination is one thing, but putting in place a new system that makes these reverse preferences into the law of the land is quite another. And it is that extension which morphs into a prolonged account of ‘a History of Retrogression,’ in Riley’s well-chosen phrase, that starts in the 1970s. There are all sorts of social slights given to the likes of Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Justice Clarence Thomas because of the implicit assumption that their successes in life were attributable to their color and not their abilities.
“More relevant is that in the modern era, as in earlier times, Riley documents that on net affirmative action programs did more harm than good, coming as they did after the undeniable levels of black progress between 1950 and 1970. This was in part because the overall growth in the economy was higher in the 1950s and ’60s (at around 4 percent) than in the 1970s and ’80s, where it was about 2.75 percent or about 32 percent less, validating once again the John F. Kennedy observation that a rising tide lifts all boats—with the exception of affirmative action programs that slowed down the increase in black wages.
“Many of the headwinds were from those affirmative action programs as well, including the breakup of two-parent households brought in part by generous welfare benefits, which was a far worse situation than in the 1920s, when unified black families were far more common. And the fashionable modes of progressive teaching in places like New York and California have (adjusting for race) fallen behind the scores in Mississippi and Louisiana, where the emphasis on teaching reading through phonics has had a far greater success. And at the university level, the huge, but often concealed gaps, between Asian and white students on the one hand, and black students on the other does nobody any good by putting black students in settings where they are likely to fail. Riley rightly castigates activists like Ibram X. Kendi for treating inflammatory racist policies that only divert attention as to what should be done.”
Meanwhile, author Jens Ludwig wonders what should be done about gun violence. Weekend Beacon contributor Robert VerBruggen explains in his review of Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence.
“Violence isn’t usually cold, calculated, and rational; it generally doesn’t come from economic motives, logical cost-benefit analysis, or a stable, pathological drive to inflict pain on the innocent. Instead, it most often happens in 10-minute windows of heated arguments and decisions made under stress. Ludwig repeatedly invokes the late psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s concepts of ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ thinking—the former being automatic and instinctual, the latter more careful, slow, and effortful.
“The trick, Ludwig proposes, is to intervene in those 10-minute windows where System 1 takes over and wreaks havoc, which can be done in several ways. ‘Social control’ approaches highlight the ability of onlookers to stop errant behavior: Elements of urban planning, from simple lighting to Jane Jacobs-style neighborhoods that closely mix businesses and residences and create a sense of cohesion, can provide more visibility and ‘eyes on the street’ to prevent situations from turning violent. Police presence can help too, even when cops don’t actually make arrests. There are also promising programs, many of them studied by Ludwig’s lab in Chicago, that aim to teach those at high risk of violence how to interrupt their own problematic thought patterns when no one else does.
“Ludwig is a bit gung-ho at times. He paints his central insight as more of a breakthrough than it really is—few will be surprised to hear that lots of murders stem from people losing their tempers in arguments—and occasionally oversells his policy solutions. But we’re not going to, say, end poverty, eliminate guns, and lock up all males from the ages of 15 to 29 anytime soon, so America’s homicide problem demands nuanced, layered solutions. And the types of ideas Ludwig embraces are underused.”
From one type of magazine to another, Patrick Cooke reviews Graydon Carter’s memoir, When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.
“To the New York publishing world, the Observer’s resurrection [led by Graydon Carter] was a triumph and it did not escape the notice of S.I. Newhouse, the petite paterfamilias of the Condé Nast publishing empire—home to such luxury titles as Architectural Digest, Glamour, GQ, and Vogue. The crown jewel of its holdings were the New Yorker (published by sister company Advance Publications) and Vanity Fair—the glitzy, gabby chronicler of the world’s smart set. (To land any job at the 350 Madison Avenue headquarters of Condé Nast in the late 1990s was to be welcomed into the Emerald City.) As Rich Uncle Pennybags go, they didn’t come any richer or more avuncular than “Si”—another one-named being of this golden era. He offered Carter a $600,000 salary (over $1.4 million today) to take the helm at Vanity Fair. (Si first offered him editorship of the New Yorker, but in a bit of palace intrigue, Tina Brown—the incumbent editrix of Vanity Fair at the time—managed to snatch that job away for herself. Readers will enjoy tales of Graydon vs. Tina’s long-standing enmity in the book.)
“With the wunderkind now installed, New York’s publishing world wondered how the editor who once lampooned the rich and famous was going to pivot to fawning over them. Carter steps lightly over this awkward question in his recounting except to suggest that today, bygones are bygones—hey, it was a long time ago, we’ve all moved on—and when he writes elsewhere in this book that ‘I hate hurting anyone’s feelings,’ you could almost believe him.
“Over the next two decades Carter would mold the magazine into something more than a showcase for starlets—although there were still plenty of those. His aim? ‘An assortment of compelling stories encompassing current history, feuds, scoops, and scandals from the world of literature, art, fashion, show business, politics, Wall Street and Silicon Valley.’ He built a first-rate stable of writers such as Michael Lewis, Dominick Dunne, Nancy Collins, and Christopher Hitchens. Circulation soared, and with every important story Vanity Fair broke, his reputation grew—along with his signature hair style, a cotton-candy merger of Giuseppe Verdi meets Bob’s Big Boy.
“‘When traveling on business, I stayed at the Connaught in London, the Ritz in Paris, the Hotel du Cap in the South of France, and the Beverly Hills Hotel or the Bel-Air in Los Angeles,’ the author tells us. ‘Suites, room service, drivers each day. For most European trips, I flew the Concorde.’ Who wouldn’t have traded places with him?”
And to think I was content with lunch at the Palm!
Happy Sunday.
Vic Matus
Arts & Culture Editor
Washington Free Beacon