Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative

Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative by Glenn Loury

This book has a lot to unpack. It includes "Black Conservative" in the subtitle. However, he is far from the typical conservative. His most cited economic paper advocates redistributing money from the rich to the poor. (The societal benefits of the poor having a few extra dollars were found to be much greater than the losses experienced by the wealthy.) However, he also published papers against affirmative action. (A lower standard for certain groups would allow them to get through the door with less skill which would end up setting them back as they are not prepared to achieve.) At times he was embraced by the right. At times he was loved by the left. He didn't blindly adopt the beliefs of either side. Instead, he focussed on what he believed in. His beliefs were also not necessarily reflected in his actions.

He dropped out of school only to come back later. (Hence one possible positive meaning of "late admissions".) He received a PhD from MIT and later served as a tenured professor at multiple Ivy League schools. He advocated for black families to stick together, yet he he was not involved in his first son's life. He was in long term marriages, yet was also a serial philanderer. He is comfortable having erudite academic discussions as he is going to the ghetto and pursuing crack and prostitutes. (The "late admissions" could be all the confessing he does in this book about his bad behaviors and the people he has hurt.) He had been arrested on drug charges and spent time in rehab. He was nowhere near perfect and did not expect other people to be perfect. However, he does want to see people putting forth the effort to improve themselves. The book is an interesting story of the challenges in a life you cannot pigeonhole together with an interesting evolution of economic thought.