Brilliant, Positioned to Ask Hard and Basic Questions

Via Sunday's hop-skip-and-jump through Marginal Revolution...

We're in awe of what is revealed in the NYTimes profile of Roland Fryer, a sometime collaborator with Steven Levitt, and a fresh voice beyond the barren conceptual loopings that have bounded  America's coversations on race. Makes us proud of our attenuated antediluvian association with a great university, when it can keep its mind on its business.

He never wanted to score any sympathy points, nor did he want to give his colleagues the opportunity to dismiss him as a freak accident, an exception to the standard rules of academic success -- which might imply that Harvard is not a normative goal for a young black man in the first place. There is also the fact that Fryer's particular science places a high premium on avoiding the personal, the anecdotal. The data are what matter in economics, and the more ruthlessness that an economist can summon to make sense of the data, the more useful his findings will be.

May the principle of Veritas protect this young professor in his independence, honesty, enthusiasm, and breadth of feeling. Definitely not part of a problem.

Update: Stephen J. Dubner reports on the fallout

After I wrote about Roland Fryer, he was assailed by fellow black scholars for having underplayed the degree to which racism afflicts black Americans.

He says that he (Dubner) particularly enjoys writing about economists, since they like data at least as much as they like posturing.