[sokoloff]

The general unwillingness (and career danger) to even study this topic is concerning to me. Maybe there are correlated factors, maybe there aren’t. I think we’d all be better off if these topics could be studied, so they could be understood, so any negative effects could be ameliorated most effectively.

When I see respected economists reporting that there are differences in economic success that are correlated with race and respected sociologists reporting differences and other factual data analysis, I see differences that seem to persist by race. All of those are output measurements. What’s the next logical thing you do as an academic, seeking to understand a problem in search of a persistent, structural solution? Go look for input measures and see what you can learn about the system. That’s the step that seems to be a third-rail and if we’re not willing to study the structural inputs to the problem, we’re handicapping ourselves in solving any of it.