Thread by @TrevonDLogan

Today I’m reviewing a paper by a senior economist who asked for my feeeback. I regularly send drafts of my papers out to others working in the same area. However, for as much work as I do in race and economic history it is quite rare for any white scholar to ask me my opinion 1/N

There could be several reasons for this, but in thinking about the sociology of science this means that very few black scholars are involved in the production of economic knowledge about black people. This has a material impact on the quality of the work 2/N

Why? The black intellectual tradition has always been about alternative theoretical and methodological approaches. Without these, we’re not truly analyzing black people as much as what white scholars have mythologized about black people. 3/N

Ellison made just this point in his review of Myrdal’s “An American Dilemma” Specifically, social science theories of black people are largely imitative or reactionary. In other words, blacks either imitate or react to whites. That’s it. 4/N

aalbc.com/books/bookrevi…

More important, this limiting frame (true in Econ when we assume, say, similar utility functions) rejects the possiblility that what we see and cannot see in behavioral models can be explained by racial experiences that are more nuanced that our existing theories allow. 5/N

“It will take a deeper science than Myrdal’s, deep as that might be, to analyze what is happening amongst the masses of Negroes. Much of it is inarticulate, and Negro scholars have for the most part ignored it through clinging, as does Myrdal, to the sterile concept of race” 6/N

We are doing better, especially in race theory. But Econs for the most part are not using it, and are even hostile to it because race theory is antithetical to the axiomatic theory of economics. But this means we’re WAY behind the technological frontier on race scholarship 7/N

I think a more diverse economics community, and one which takes race theory seriously, is the only way Econs can avoid the Ellison critique. The fact that our work is highly subject to a 1944 critique should be embarrassing— humiliating, even. But I don’t think many care. 8/N

There’s little reason to care in the insular and hierarchical world of economics. But this implies that people are not serious scholars-not reading broadly in the field, not challenging existing dogma in the search for the truth. Bottom line— falling down on the job 9/N

Maybe putting it that way will spur people to action because Econs hate to be thought of as behind the times, using old tools, or using discarded theories. Yet this is exactly where we’re at. We have to sit in that truth as a discipline. “But you are, Blanche, you are!” 10/N

Just something to think about as we work to solve a multitude of problems. I just think it’s best that we are equipped with the latest technology. Perhaps the staleness is the fact that we’re still putting square pegs in round holes and this has to stop. 11/11