Responding to the latest horrifying act of violence in his native Chicago, in which a CTA driver was beaten up by a group of black youths and a local columnist blasted the Democratic political leadership which has left the city a roiling cauldron of violence, economist and Brown University professor Glenn Loury fired a blistering attack on leftists who talk a good game but are nowhere to be found, snapping, “This is not ‘systemic racism.’ Rather, it’s savagery running amok right in the center of my hometown, Chicago. The perpetrators are black youth. About this fiasco, there is not a mumbling word to be heard from the liberal anti-racists. I wonder why not.”
This is not "systemic racism." Rather, it's savagery running amok right in the center of my hometown, Chicago. The perpetrators are black youth. About this fiasco, there is not a mumbling word to be heard from the liberal anti-racists. I wonder why not… https://t.co/rU2pbgbZ4N
— Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) December 9, 2021
Loury was responding to columnist John Kass, who tweeted, “Lightfoot, Foxx, Preckwinkle, Pritzker, Judge Evans. Look at what your liberal policies have done to Chicago, city of anarchy. You’ve killed the city. You make speeches about ‘equity’ Disgusting and shameless.”
Lightfoot, Foxx, Preckwinkle, Pritzker, Judge Evans. Look at what your liberal policies have done to Chicago, city of anarchy. You’ve killed the city. You make speeches about “equity”Disgusting and shameless https://t.co/QvwPigHu1i
— John Kass (@John_Kass) December 5, 2021
As recently as December 2, The Chicago Sun-Times reported, “Last weekend, three people were shot dead and 26 were shot and wounded in Chicago. On Monday, nine more people were shot. On Tuesday, seven more people were shot. On Wednesday, 10 people more were shot, three fatally.”
Loury has not been shy about confronting those whom he feels are leading the black community astray; he has said of activist Al Sharpton, “I think the politics of the Democratic Party is perfect for creating the careers of people like Al Sharpton, who broker the race card and the votes of black Democrats for the access that they can get and who played a certain kind of functional role in something that I think really poorly represents the interest of African-Americans rightly understood.”
Loury listed actions Sharpton could take but hasn’t that would engender respect for him in Loury’s perspective:
If Al Sharpton were running around talking about charter schools; if he were running around urging African-Americans to adopt kids who don’t have any parents; if he were insisting that it’s possible for black kids compete effectively if they get the kind of instruction and support that they need to acquire the intellectual skills that allow them to compete in an exam school situation or anything like that; if he was going to find ex-offenders who were prepared to reject the gang life and affirm decent ways of living and foster relationships of guidance with young men who were not yet on the right path and so forth and so on; if he was working with the cops and not against the cops to try to keep the peace in some of these neighborhoods, I’d have more respect for him.
He continued, “But it’s a very high-level shtick. He’s refined it to perfection, and he’s out Jesse Jacksoning Jesse Jackson in the twenty-first century while the clock keeps ticking on poor black people, and the demagoguery that spews out of him is almost completely unrelated to the actual material needs of this population.”
He turned to Sharpton’s buddy, President Joe Biden: “Joe Biden is going to rescue inner-city Baltimore? Really? At the brokerage of Al Sharpton Joe Biden is going to save education for poor black people? Joe Biden is going to make it safe to walk on the South Side of Chicago after midnight because Al Sharpton is in the Oval Office?”
Here I am, explaining to @JohnHMcWhorter exactly what's wrong with Al Sharpton (time was limited, so I had to keep it short!) See more at my new channel, https://t.co/kM0UhXwAz4 and support this work at https://t.co/ZICguBef8A pic.twitter.com/atyygE3pdU
— Glenn Loury (@GlennLoury) September 30, 2021