Harry Holzer – What's Holding Back Black Boys & Men?

Order Glenn's memoir, LATE ADMISSIONS: CONFESSIONS OF A BLACK CONSERVATIVE. Available here or wherever you get your books: https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393881349

0:59 How Harry met Glenn

3:44 Black girls and women are doing relatively well. Why aren’t black boys and men?

11:21 Harry: Some of the barriers are structural, some are cultural

18:20 The crude toolkit for fixing child support

25:15 Black teachers, tutoring, and “high-quality career and tech ed”

31:44 In schools, one size doesn’t fit all

35:22 Three ways to improve employment prospects

39:10 Glenn asks “the Chicago question”

42:09 Discrimination against ex-convicts

50:38 Immigration’s impact on black employment

53:29 Are too many people in prison?

56:07 Harry: Progressives are oblivious to the backlash they generate

Recorded August 20, 2024

Links and Readings

Harry and Glenn’s conversation about “racism, narratives, and backlash” with the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston

Harry and Richard J. Freeman’s 1986 edited collection, The Black Youth Employment Crisis

Melissa Kearney’s book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind

Isabel V. Sawhill’s book, Generation Unbound: Drifting into Sex and Parenthood without Marriage

Douglas Harris’s book, Charter School City: What the End of Traditional Public Schools in New Orleans Means for American Education

Glenn’s paper with Young-Chul Kim, “Rebranding Ex-Convicts”

William Julius Wilson’s book, The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions