3. Kerwin Charles: “One Does Not Know Where an Insight Will Come From”

Summary

People I (Mostly) Admire — Episode 3: Kerwin Charles

Airdate: January 17, 2026
Host: Steve Levitt (with cameo from Stephen Dubner)
Guest: Kerwin Charles, Dean of Yale School of Management, pioneering labor economist
Episode Title: “One Does Not Know Where an Insight Will Come From”

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Main Theme / Purpose

This episode features a wide-ranging conversation between Steve Levitt and Kerwin Charles, exploring Charles's journey from a small village in Guyana to becoming Dean of the Yale School of Management. It covers his pioneering economic research, personal upbringing, views on race in America, policy thoughts, and parenting philosophy. Levitt and Charles reflect on what it means to thrive intellectually and ethically while navigating both professional and personal crossroads.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Early Life and Upbringing (03:11–05:40)

• Charles describes his formative years in Buxton, Guyana—a small, poor village, yet filled with love and community support.
• His parents, both educators and lifelong learners, inspired a sense of “stick-to-itiveness, grit, and not whining.”
• Quote: “Despite the challenges that were inevitably to lie across my path… I was given equipment to surmount them.” (Kerwin Charles, 03:34)

2. Education and Path to the U.S. (05:49–06:50)

• Early exposure to American culture shaped his ambitions and interests—especially frequent visits to the local American library and reading Sports Illustrated.
• He received a scholarship to Miami, intending to return home, but his career and life evolved in the U.S.
• Quote: “America fascinated me as a place... when came time to go to college, I had the chance to come to Miami.” (Kerwin Charles, 06:13)

3. Craft of Public Speaking (06:50–08:27)

• Charles credits his mother for honing his gift for public speaking through childhood practice.
• Encourages others to slow down and approach both speaking and writing with intent and clarity.
• Quote: “However slow you think you're going, go half of it slower... Have something to set and you'll be good.” (Kerwin Charles, 07:39)

4. Tuberculosis Research and Insights on Public Health (08:27–11:00)

• Explains a pivotal paper: tuberculosis rates fell dramatically before medical interventions were developed—challenging previous public health narratives.
• Causes may include social and environmental shifts beyond direct interventions.
• Quote: “Public health interventions did not have the effect that much of the literature had before us concluded... there's some other thing at work.” (Kerwin Charles, 09:59)

5. Work on Labor Market Decline and Video Games (13:34–16:55)

• Charles, with Eric Hurst and others, has researched declining workforce participation among young men, tying part of it to the rise of video games.
  • About a fifth of young men are neither in school nor working. Many are “out of work” due to both labor market demand and the allure of technology/leisure.
• Quote: “Technological shocks had the effect of raising the opportunity cost of going to work... for men [that leisure is]...video games.” (Kerwin Charles, 14:56)
• Levitt: “It was one of the most distinct occasions of walking into a room thinking this was the stupidest idea... and walking out as a complete 100% believer.” (15:46)

6. Decision-Making as a Leader (16:55–18:44)

• Reflects on decision-making in academia and leadership: some choices require immediate action, others deep contemplation.
• Advises comfort with heterogeneity in decision-making styles, and staying open to revision based on new evidence.
• Quote: “Events might prove me wrong, and if events prove me wrong, you should not feel belittled by that. You should just pivot and change...” (Kerwin Charles, 17:56)

7. Navigating Race and Identity as an Immigrant (20:19–22:19)

• Charles experienced both pan-African solidarity and cultural differences among Black communities in America.
• He found both unity and distinction with African Americans—emphasizing respect for differences while seeking connection.
• Quote: “It's not an unbridgeable chasm, but there are differences... my first girlfriends in the U.S. were African American women who would say, let me take you down to this place... and it had a profound effect on me.” (Kerwin Charles, 21:19)

8. Black Economic Progress in the U.S.: Success and Disappointment (22:19–29:57)

• Discusses historic milestones (post-Civil War amendments, Civil Rights, Brown v. Board) and their impact.
• At the elite levels, Black advancement is dramatic; for the bottom half, there’s persistent and worsening gaps in unemployment, incarceration, and opportunity.
• Highlights how “race-neutral” economic shifts often disproportionately hurt African Americans.
• Quote: “Always mixed in with the good news is some bad or some very bad.” (Kerwin Charles, 23:44)

9. Policy Prescriptions for Racial Progress (29:57–33:00)

• 1. Expand college attendance and counseling for Black Americans.
• 2. Provide analytical and technical skill-building, both in and out of college.
• 3. Address the monumental racial wealth gap through creative policies—possibly reparations or race-conscious liquidity transfers.
• Quote: “The difference in wealth between African Americans and whites is gargantuan... This notion about history and intergenerational dynamics is... important in the African American context...” (Kerwin Charles, 31:32)

10. Racial Segregation and Cultural Cleavage (33:00–34:49)

• Noted persistent de facto racial segregation in social and cultural realms, with little overlap even in media consumption.
• Argues deep interaction reduces misunderstanding and bias.
• Quote: “There's kind of deep comprehension and deep sensitivity that comes from being closely connected with and not segregated from other people.” (Kerwin Charles, 34:13)

11. Race and Society in Guyana vs. U.S. (34:49–37:08)

• Guyana’s racial mix is more fluid socially, but deeply political and volatile around elections—especially after oil discoveries raised the stakes.
• Warns that unless racial tensions are resolved, resource discovery could divide the nation.
• Quote: “Despite this incredible discovery, not much good will come from it unless we solve this fundamental race and ethnicity problem.” (Kerwin Charles, 38:29)

12. Thoughts on Parenting (39:03–40:26)

• Advocates accepting and nurturing children as they are, instead of imposing parents’ passions.
• Quote: “Let their passion become your passion. And let disappointment in what they do or who they are never enter your mind.” (Kerwin Charles, 39:53)

13. Teaching Children about Race and American Belonging (40:26–43:13)

• Wants his sons to be confident in their identity, proud of their heritage, and also fully claim their place as Americans.
• Integrates African American history, music, and food as tools for building belonging and perspective.
• Quote: “I’m teaching them to love the special thing about them... and then to say, look, you belong to the American family.” (Kerwin Charles, 42:42)

14. Playful Farewell (43:39–43:55)

• Charles slips and calls Chicago “home,” then corrects himself to New Haven. The hosts leave this in as a warm, genuine moment.
• Quote: “Man. I miss. I miss Chicago... Back home. Back. Back there. That was a slip. New Haven's home.” (Kerwin Charles, 43:39)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Opportunity and Openness:
  “One does not know as one traverses one's life, where a helpful relationship will form, where an insight will come from.”
  (Kerwin Charles, 05:23; also, episode title)

• On Social Mobility:
  “There's a sense of unlikelihood and then there's a sense that whatever I wanted to do, it would be difficult to achieve, but achievable.”
  (Kerwin Charles, 03:58)

• On Parenting:
  “Let disappointment in what they do or who they are never enter your mind.”
  (Kerwin Charles, 39:53)

• On Economic Progress:
  “No one could have reasonably predicted in 1970 that more than a million black people, as we talk on the phone, would be in jail.”
  (Kerwin Charles, 24:28)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Early years in Guyana: 03:11–05:40
• Public speaking insights: 06:50–08:27
• Tuberculosis research: 08:27–11:00
• Video games and labor market: 13:34–16:55
• Race and the immigrant experience: 20:19–22:19
• Racial economic progress: 22:19–29:57
• Policy ideas for racial equity: 29:57–33:00
• Cultural segregation: 33:16–34:49
• Guyana’s race dynamics and oil discovery: 36:42–39:03
• Parenting philosophy: 39:03–40:26
• Talking to kids about race: 40:26–43:13
• Closing/farewell: 43:39–43:55

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Summary Tone & Language

The conversation is thoughtful, reflective, and often candid. Levitt and Charles maintain a tone of curiosity, sincerity, and gentle humor—never shying away from complexity or nuance. Charles’s responses are eloquent and measured, bringing both academic rigor and lived experience to every topic.

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This episode offers a profound and personal journey through the mind and life of one of America’s most insightful economists, making it a must-listen for anyone interested in economics, leadership, race, and the real stories behind achievement.

Transcript

[Steve Levitt]

A rich life isn't a straight line to a destination on the horizon. Sometimes it takes an unexpected turn with detours, new possibilities and even another passenger. Or three. And with 100 years of navigating ups and downs, you can count on Edward Jones to help guide you through it all. Because life is a winding path made rich by the people you walk it with. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones Member, SIPC Everyone deserves to be connected.

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[Kerwin Charles]

You are in fact talking to a black person who is the dean of the Yale School of Management. That's a fact. Who was your colleague at Chicago? We have friends who are deans at similar places or prominent faculty at other places. And I can go on. But if one takes the African American experience panoramically and one weighs these obvious and undeniable aspects of success with the bad things, one would have to say that there are ways in which our hopes have been realized and there's a healthy dose of stuff that's pretty bad. Disappointment and failure intermingled with success.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So Kerwin Charles is such an interesting character. He's a top economist. He's the dean of the Yale School of Management. And most interesting to me is he's done all this when he was born in a small town in Guyana.

[Steve Levitt]

Welcome to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Kirwan has a way of understanding that's not academic but intuitive. Somehow Kirwan can see what's important and that's what he does. In his research, he studied things as varied as the black white income and wealth gap and how video games might be the reason why young males are no longer working in the labor market and how we beat tuberculosis. And I have to say, of all the economists I know, I think Kerwin gives me the best advice. It is such a pleasure to be talking today with Kerwin Charles, a good friend and a deep thinker who teaches me and clarifies my thinking every time we talk. So you sit today at the pinnacle of academic success, but I gotta say, from where you started, it has to be an incredibly unlikely outcome. Could you just tell us a little bit about growing up in Guyana?

[Kerwin Charles]

So I was born in a small village where my parents met when they were in their late teens. Buxton is the village is where I began my education. And in some ways, I think you're right to observe that the path from that place and time to here is an unlikely one. In some ways, Guyana was during my childhood and still a relatively poor, very poor country. But there are aspects of the path and journey that are less unlikely. Despite the fact that I was born in a small village, I was enveloped always by loving, attentive parents, family and friends. Elders of village raised me, as they say, and because of what had been poured into me, despite the challenges that were inevitably to lie across my path, as I moved through, I was given equipment to surmount them. That's a sense I genuinely had my whole life long. And so there's a sense of unlikelihood and then there's a sense of that whatever I wanted to do, it would be difficult to achieve, but achievable.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Were your parents educated or no?

[Kerwin Charles]

They were. The government of Guyana was sending some select persons to study fields that were of great need in that country. My father, when he came to Miami, which is the closest US School to my country, became interested in marine biology. My mother did special education. I was already born and left with my grandparents in Buckson while my parents pursued their education in the States. My parents are still alive, and I am incredibly close to my parents. I talk to my mother and father every morning. I talk to my mother at the close of every workday and on weekends. It might be more frequent than that. About my mother, I will say that she remains the best teacher I've ever had in my life. There became a point when the things that interested me could not be taught me by my mother. But she gave me a sense of excitement about things I didn't know and an eagerness to test myself and challenge myself that I've carried with me my whole life long. Stick to itiveness, grit, not whining and so forth is one important lesson taught me by my mother. She taught me too, the importance of being open to new experiences and people, because one does not know as one traverses one's life, where a helpful relationship will form, where an insight will come from, and so on.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

And you were an incredible student, as I understand, which opened up the opportunity to come to the U.S. can you tell us about that?

[Kerwin Charles]

I was a good student. I was fortunate because of my parents early exposure to the States and Because of my deep reading about America throughout my life, which I did, I spent a lot of time as a kid at the John F. Kennedy Library in my country, Dynamos, a socialist country, throughout my life. But the John F. Keldy Library was this American outpost to which I repaired frequently in between school and lessons or basketball practice to read old issues as Sports Illustrated and other American magazines. I am to this day obsessed with Sports Illustrated. Every time I move, it's the first thing I make sure is forwarded. And I would talk to the American guys there. America fascinated me as a place. And so when came time to go to college, I had the chance to come to Miami. I had a chance to get a scholarship there and came to Miami with the intention of going home because I had an incredibly happy childhood. And one thing led to the next thing and here I am.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So I think the first time I ever ran into you was in the context of you being a public speaker. And I was blown away. You took the stage, no notes. And unlike other people, you spoke in paragraphs rather than sentences.

[Kerwin Charles]

Steve, that's a nice thing to say.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

I'm curious of whether that's a learned skill or something that came naturally. And if you have any advice to people who don't have off the chart ability for public speaking.

[Kerwin Charles]

So some of it is learned. I would as a child be called upon by my mother to speak about some matter and it might be a matter of relative insignificance. We lost the cricket match to what's his name's team and I was cheated. Yeah. What happened? Explain that thing with the minimum of ums and ahs and likes and so forth and just do it over and over and then one becomes better at. So some of it was learned personality practically. I think what is very useful to me is slowing down. If there's a single bit of advice I'd give people speaking in felt like is to say 1. However slow you think you're going, go half of it slower and have in mind something you want to say at the beginning and some fundamental point you want to see at the end and let it flow naturally. I feel this way about writing too. Slow down. Have something to set and you'll be good.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Great advice. So you went through Miami, you got your PhD in economics in Cornell. You went to University of Michigan where you got tenure in economics. You came to Chicago and were stand out there. And now you're dean of the Yale School of Management. You've done such a wide variety of fascinating topics and one that really caught Me, especially in a Covid time, is that you've been studying tuberculosis and I learned so much from that paper. Could you just share a little bit about the history of our public health interventions against tuberculosis?

[Kerwin Charles]

Yeah. So we begin in the early 1900s with TB being the second leading cause of death in the United States. And over the next 40 years or so, that thing plummets. It plummets despite the absence of medical interventions to address the thing.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Wow. I think there are very few people today who would have guessed that tuberculosis was the number two cause of death. So if there was no new treatment for it, why do people think that deaths from tuberculosis plummeted?

[Kerwin Charles]

One could imagine that TB rates might have fallen because of public health. There were anti spitting laws to pick one example. Or because of things having to do with a decline in overcrowding. Yeah, the improvement in meat inspection, an improvement in water quality, all the rest.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So you analyzed the impact of these public health efforts. Were they effective?

[Kerwin Charles]

One thing that is emerging from our work both with TB and for other diseases is that public health interventions did not have the effect that much of the literature had before us concluded. I want to be very careful because it is natural for people to say, oh, Kirwan is saying that public health interventions now wouldn't work for some other thing. Or public health interventions then also didn't work. I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that what we thought about the effectiveness of public health interventions in the States was overblown. There's some other thing at work. Thinking about what those other things were and what the implications of those other things might be for other countries and contexts will be something I'll be doing over the next few years.

[Steve Levitt]

You're listening to people I mostly admire with Steve Levitt and his conversation with the dean of the Yale School of Management, Kerwin Charles. He'll return after this short break.

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[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

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[Kerwin Charles]

I don't.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So it's probably a good thing because your research suggests that video games are an important driver of some very negative Trends in the U.S. economy.

[Kerwin Charles]

Yes. So this is work with my dear, dear friend and frequent co author Eric Hurst and the Marx Marc Aguiar and Mark Bills. It's important to mention Eric in this context because he and I have written a series of papers about the decline in participation and the labor demand explanations for that. We've thought about automation in one paper. We've thought about sectoral decline in manufacturing in multiple papers and how that has caused a sharp increase in non work among men.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Okay, so what are the facts, Kerwin? Well, we're talking about 20 something young men. They're not in school, they're not working, they're not locked up.

[Kerwin Charles]

Yeah, that's right.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Nobody really knows what they're doing. But there's a whole lot more of them than there used to be.

[Kerwin Charles]

Look, much of that is explained by demand side factors that the labor market is not. Especially the less skilled ones is not hiring these guys the way it once did. Places where they live, some of them have been particularly buffeted by manufacturing decline. Housing booms and busts have interacted in interesting ways. All demand side stuff.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Okay, so what share of young men are in this category of doing nothing?

[Kerwin Charles]

Ballpark? I want to say, you know, a fifth. And one of the things that we speculated in the paper is that the technological shocks have been one of the main sources of demand side changes there might well have been and indeed we believe there were technological shocks that had the effect of raising the opportunity cost of going to work. Why it might show up in things like my increased utility flow from Facebook, timing, Instagram, video games, all of it. And what we do is attempt to document the role that that factor technology shocks in the out of work space which people are calling the video game space because that for men is the key activity that is technology related, whereas for women it is social media.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

I gotta say Kir, when I saw one of your co authors, Mark Aguiar gave that paper at the University of Chicago, it was one of the most distinct occasions of walking into a room thinking this was the stupidest idea I had ever in my entire life and walking up as a complete 100% believer. I mean really good at collecting data in a thoughtful, sensible, simple way and exposing a fact that nobody would have thought of. It's a real talent and one that isn't always encouraged or rewarded in our profession, but to me is among the most important things we can do.

[Kerwin Charles]

You know, I think in our field, and I think in every intellectual, scholarly field, one has to find one's place and say, look, there's some things I can do and let me find a way to answer questions that interest me and perhaps interest the world using the set of things I can do reasonably well. And I've had some success at doing that.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Now I've sat by as you've made some very hard decisions and I would not describe you as a good decision maker. You are the most fraught and uncertain and wish washed decision maker. Nonetheless, often the people who are the worst at something have good advice to give. Could you give listeners advice about making good decisions?

[Kerwin Charles]

I have found that across contexts the speed with which I have to make decisions has had to shift. So if I'm a referee or an editor, I could sit with the paper for a long time and I talk to friends who've been editing and they say I decided on a favor an hour. Not me, can't do that. Being comfortable with heterogeneity across contexts in your decision making style is point one. There are things you should do immediately. As Dean, I've got to decide whether we will do this thing or not. I do that right away. There are decisions though about what we will do as a school. In response to the George Floyd manner, my style then is to be contemplative, is to sit with it, is to walk with it, to turn it around and not be rushed. And because I'm comfortable with the different styles of decision making across context, I'm at peace with it. I believe that we should be open to revision, especially those of us in leadership role. Events might prove me wrong, and if events prove me wrong, you should not feel belittled by that. You should just pivot and change after due diligence has been done, information has been acquired and some reflection has occurred. And then there are things about which I genuinely do not know.

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[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

We'll talk a lot, I'm sure, about race in the us. So you were an immigrant. You were, I'm sure, perceived as being African American by everybody, even though you were Afro Guyanese. What was that like?

[Kerwin Charles]

What was it like? It was considerable culture shock. My whole life long, certainly my whole life beyond age 13 or 14. Even in Guyana, I didn't conceptualize African Americans as being fundamentally different from me or me from them. There was in Guyana a Pan Africanism that spoke about the oneness of black people around the world. And so when I met African descended brothers and sisters in the States, I felt like one of them. On the other hand, I quickly discovered, I want to describe it as a shocking thing. Of course I knew that there was cultural nuance that was specific to one's place of origin. Of course I understood that. And so it's one thing to say that I feel like I'm the same as a brother from Philly. It's one thing to say that. But a brother from Philly has a different life experience. He has seen particular things here. His granddad experienced things and mine did not. By the way, the reverse is also true. But there are differences and I'm respectful of those differences. And so early on sought to understand that lived difference. My first girlfriends in the United States were African American women who would say, let me take you down to this place here and show you some aspect of things you didn't know or understand. Yeah. And it had a profound effect on me. It showed me one similarity and sameness. Hey, hey. When I hear Go go music from D.C. i heard that beat before, man. Yeah, in reggae music or calypso music. Let me play something for you. Kind of like that also made me respectful of difference. It's not an unbridgeable chasm, but there are differences between me and African American persons born and raised here that are important.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So let me ask you a hypothetical question. Let's think about some high point in American history, Whether it's the Emancipation Proclamation or Brown versus Board of Education in 1954. Civil Rights act of 64, Martin Luther King's I have a Dream speech. Imagine you and I sitting and having lunch at one of those times, projecting forward to what we imagined this country would be like in 2020. Do you think that we would be disappointed in the economic progress that African Americans have made? Or surprised? What's your take on that?

[Kerwin Charles]

Let's step back a second. Go to the fundamental amendments that guarantee equal citizenship to African American and the day that's signed and passed. Looking forward, what could one imagine? Indeed, if one had a short term view, one might say, you know, it'd be amazing. It'd be amazing if there's African American representation in the national legislature. It'd be amazing if there are African American property owners to large numbers. It'd be amazing if there's unification across the country. It'd be amazing if Racial violence were, if not at an end, then dramatically reduced. And if one fast forward it to 1884, ish, or so one would have thought, boy, every aspiration is being met. Reconstruction's been a fantastic thing. There are black senators, There are another thousand of them. There's enough. African Americans are making all kinds of inroads. And then those hopes are dashed. In 1960, how many black attorneys are there in the major law firms in the country? How many black accountants working not just for black clients? Those numbers are incredibly small. Incredibly small. They're way higher today. And so there is good news. And yet. And yet always mixed in with the good news is some bad or some very bad. The experience of African Americans at the bottom of the earnings distribution, the employment experience is worse than you would have predicted in 1960. The incarceration experience today is way worse than you predicted in 1970. No one, I think, could have reasonably predicted in 1970 that more than a million black people, as we talk on the phone, would be in jail. The share of African American men are measured in the whole population who are not working today, meaning you take into account the institutionalized, the unemployed, and the out of the labor force is more than 30%. That's astoundingly high. And then there are other disappointments. You mentioned Brown. And in some ways it's been incredibly successful. The black graduation rate is not hugely dissimilar from the white graduation rate. That was not true in 1960. At the same time, we have these other measures of lack of performance, of lack of investment in what share of American school districts larger than, I don't know, 50,000. Does at least a majority of African American children read at grade level? It's a handful. That's a national disgrace. That's a national disgrace. But if one takes the African American experience panoramically, yeah, there's good things and then there's a healthy dose of stuff that's pretty bad.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

And you're not just talking anecdotally as well. This comes out of your research. You've done this profoundly important research that has shown really exactly what you're saying, which is at the very top, African American success has been fantastic. But, you know, in the bottom part of the distribution, blacks have even lost ground relative to whites since, I don't know, 1970 or some period like that.

[Kerwin Charles]

Exactly correct. And an African American boy who goes to Princeton today and majors in actuarial science or chemistry or whatever, he will be not especially dissimilar from his white counterpart. They will be Fine, let's forget that and let's think about the many millions of African Americans who are not that far. Think about an unemployment rate I just talked about. Think about the decline of manufacturing, the rise of automation and other things, all of which especially adversely affect blacks. At the median and below. You can imagine a society tugged, stretched, affected by forces that let's, for purposes of our conversation, call them race neutral. The overall widening of the earnings distribution, the running away of one percentile from the one adjacent to it. Notice that its effect, this race neutral thing, will be to exacerbate already existing gaps based on initial condition. African Americans close the high school gap right at the time that being a high school graduate doesn't matter the way it wants to. African Americans in one of the world's great migrations, leave the south where they were clustered, and spread to the Midwest and the Northeast and to industrial centers in the rest of the country and have a good life for a while. And then manufacturing declines, collapses. The timing is bad. African Americans in the late 1990s for the first time dramatically increase homeownership rates. And then the housing market collapses. The effect of a housing bust is not felt equally by race. A collapse in housing prices especially hurt certain groups who were unable to move, who have to congregate together because of other reasons, you see. So that's the backdrop. Historians can give you other examples. I think my work shows that in the aggregate, these distributional forces have been the prime mover for observed black success at the median between 1940 and 1970 or so, and have also been the preeminent mover for what has occurred subsequent to that time. That is not to say that what we'll call in this conversation race specific forces not matter. There's a discrimination. There is occupational exclusion, which is discrimination's twin. There are skill differences, there's stigma. What do I as a society find discomforting, alarming, anomalous, odd, weird, peculiar? All that. Because humans are limited, we cannot be animated about every single thing, and a country has to pick and choose what it's going to be animated about. The things it becomes animated about are things that seem to run afoul of how it thinks the world ought to be. Imagine I told you that the majority of people in prison were women. That would be weird. When one observes that there are things about African Americans that place them at the bottom of the earnings distribution, the skill distribution, the opportunity distribution, it strikes people as less anomalous and therefore they are inspired less to dig into it, to understand. Thus, and So I don't know what one calls that. Does one call that prejudice? Does one call that animus? Backs are especially buffeted by some forces. This buffeting need not only be negative. Here's a positive buffering. Brown v. Board and its application had the effect of disproportionately raising spending on African American students and schools. In the absence of that closing that race specific closing the negative outcomes we just described at the median and below would have been worse.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So imagine you were in charge of policy on race in this country and imagine you had a big budget, let's say, I don't know, a $trillion or $500 billion. What would you do? Well, so let me preface that by saying so somebody asked me that question the other day and I've been thinking about race in America for the last 20 years and I didn't have a good answer. I wasn't sure what to say. So I'm genuinely curious. What three things would you try to do to improve the situation, the economic and the social situation for African Americans?

[Kerwin Charles]

Okay, there is, as you know, we call the college premium. And the college premium is where the action is. And so one thing I would do would be to increase college among African Americans. Why aren't we doing this counseling? We're doing this counseling so as to equip people with the analytical and technical skills that the labor market increasingly demand. Maybe those skills can be otherwise acquired in some context. Thinking about creative ways to provide to students whether they go to college or not, the kinds of skills that the market will increasingly demand would be a second skill or education related thing I would do. A third thing I would do would be to look the income difference between African Americans and whites is large, especially at the median, but it is completely dwarfed by the wealth difference. The difference in wealth between African Americans and whites is gargantuan. Now wealth, unlike income, has in a family perspective the benefit of being directly transmittable. I can, upon my demise, leave my thing to my kid. In fact the thing for overwhelming majority of Americans, the overwhelming majority of wealth is in their house. This notion about history and intergenerational dynamics is in my view incredibly important in the African American context and cannot be easily dismissed. And it has its origins, its historical root in denial from years ago. African Americans at the dawn of the Civil War were sixth and seventh generation Americans. They did not benefit from the great land grab in the west that other people did. And your one's great great grandfather being able to go and stake a claim as it was at in Illinois Or Indiana territory or California. The consequences of that might redound over time. I don't know where I come down on what is called the reparations debate, but there are transfers one can make that address the thing I just described. Can we ease liquidity constraints in a racialized way? That seems to me a kind of thing I would encourage deep thought about and steer some of that many trillion dollar hypothetical thing you told me.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

It is really shocking the degree of racial segregation which persists in our country. Not by some evil design, simply I think by preferences and happenstance, as far as I can tell.

[Kerwin Charles]

I think that's right. When one thinks about the great sociologists who have studied racial segregation. I believe his name is Andrew Hacker, the sociologist. He talked about the cultural cleavage in the country and he had the top 10 television programs by race. And the thing about it, it was amazing. There was exactly zero overlap.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

No, I think there was one. Monday Night Football. Monday Night Football.

[Kerwin Charles]

Monday Night Football. Leave football out of it. Yeah, throw that away. Now one can say, well, these don't matter. I am not convinced about that. There's kind of deep comprehension and deep sensitivity that comes from being closely connected with and not segregated from other people. I taught at places like Chicago and Michigan, and there are styles of talk among the very privileged black and white students that I taught at those places. African Americans who have not interacted with whites, who are meeting them for the first time, bring to those interactions culturally conditioned styles of talk. And someone's use of an expression unfamiliar to you or their incorrect use of a slang term causes you innocently to ascribe to them. Less talent, less initiative. But if you knew them, if you know that African Americans can be bilingual, then you would be more forgiving about those slippages. Perhaps.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

Butch race, like in Guyana, they're Afro.

[Kerwin Charles]

Guyanese who are descended from African slaves. When slavery was abolished by the British in the early 1800s, they then brought or encouraged to come large numbers of people from the Indian subcontinent. And so those groups, the descendants of those groups, Afro Guyanese and Indo Guyanese, constitute the overwhelming bulk of the population. There are other groups that matter. One is the native people, people we call Amerindians. In Guyana, then we have a relatively robust Chinese population and we have a group of people who are descended from Portuguese. But there was a healthy mixing in one's social contacts. On the one hand, there was more easy and natural racial mixing than I would come to observe when I got to the stats. On the other hand, there has always existed in Guyana, especially after independence, racial tension around politics. Any Guyana who's listening to this thing will know that over the five days of the week, their mother, their aunt, their wife, they themselves are making six dishes over the course of the week. It's every kind of dish. It's pepper pot, which is a native dish. It's cook up, which is an African American dish, a black dish on Tuesday. It's dal and bindi on Wednesday, and fried rice and chow la mein on Thursday. That's how every Guyanese lives. And yet at election time, people retreat to these racial camps and snipe at each other in very unhelpful and indeed very unhealthy way. So race has, on the one hand, is more fluidly and comfortably lived there, but on the other is a much more salient feature of politics, of official social organization.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

There was a massive oil discovery by ExxonMobil in Ghana, I don't know, seven, eight years ago, which could potentially transform the entire economy there. And yet there's also, I think, a lot of challenge. Just curious. There can't be many people better situated than you to think about the economics of what lies ahead.

[Kerwin Charles]

So various kinds of questions arise. And these questions concern matters like how the resource might be used, what kinds of inequality and related concerns might be brought to the fore, how the discovery of the oil might cause simmering racial tensions to rise to the fore. And one sees traces of some of the downsides of the oil discovery in the following fact. Guyana had its national election on March the second, as we speak here today, in early July. The winner has not been declared into this toxic stew is the matter of race. And so I have seen over the last three months on social media and emails and other things, more negative race talk, more disturbing racialized talk than I've seen in many a year. And I'm quite disturbed by to find some way to use these resources first to reassure people that the gains from this resource will be evenly spread by right is in a country that has the kind of racial and ethnic divisions I mentioned, unbelievably important. This thing threatens to cleave the country apart. I speak with no hyperbole. We need lots of infrastructure in the country. The country needs a massive investment in education, in transportation infrastructure, sewage, lighting, all that stuff. And all of that can be done. There are resources enough to do all of that. But I worry that despite this incredible discovery, not much good will come from it unless we solve this fundamental race and ethnicity problem.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

So, Corwin, I know you have two young boys And I have observed you and the deep love you have for your sons. Your attachment to your sons is really heartwarming to watch. It's beautiful to watch. Do you have advice on parenting that you would hand out to listeners?

[Kerwin Charles]

Oh, boy. So my two sons are both very different. I love nerdy things, but I also really love all sports, especially basketball, college and pro college football. And when one engages with one's kid, there is often a surprise upon discovering that something that is so fundamentally a part of me is not shared by this kid. How is that possible? I took my son to see LeBron James play and we had fantastic scenes. He could not have been less interesting. And there is an acceptance that a parent has to have. They're saying, you know, you have this being for X number of years under your roof and with you side by side. Accept him or her as they are and let their passion become your passion. And let disappointment in what they do or who they are never enter your mind. It's hard, but try as best you're able to make that visa.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

I wonder what you tell them about growing up and being African American. And we haven't talked at all about the murder of George Floyd. Or do you talk to your boys about those things?

[Kerwin Charles]

My boys are very young. I'll talk to them more as they age. This is something I think about a lot. What do I want to communicate to them? What do I want to tell them about race? One of the things I want to communicate to them is to be calmly proud and confident about who they are without bravado or pot clanging. The feel about oneself that one is the same as what's his name over there. I think it's a very important thing. I feel that about myself. That's vastly more important. Vastly than whatever econometrics I know or didn't know or something. Want to communicate that to them. And there is a community from which you spring with traditions and history and so forth. Not every element of which you must like or mimic, but there's things about which you must be proud. Part of that communication necessitates exposure to people from this community. Here is the food we make on Thursday back home. You see? I want you to listen to this. Listen. I love hip hop music a lot. I love the blues. And I want you to understand why. It's genius. Sad shmo they called him. This guy. Don't nobody blow the horn like him. Yeah. Can you hear that? And he's like, you understand? There's that and then there is like, how much history to teach them. And what aspect of history? You know, my boys are born in America. And so Frederick Douglass is part of their legacy. Okay. King is part of their legacy. Harry Tubman's Friday legacy. What about Lincoln? He's part of legacy, too. Alexander Hampton's part of legacy. And so I'm teaching them to love the special thing about them, what distinguishes them from other Americans, and then to say, look, you belong to the American family. And that American family has got one heck of a history. Contributed to by black people, true, but contributed to by lots of white people. And what's his name in your class who happens to be white, has no greater claim on Lincoln than you. He doesn't? Yep. How one is navigating that is tricky, but that's how I think about it.

[Steve Levitt]

People I mostly admire is part of the Freakonomics Radio Network and is produced by Freakonomics Radio and Stitcher. Matt Hickey is the producer and our sound designer is David Herman. All of the music you heard on the show was composed by Luis Guerra. We can be [e-mail] thanks for listening.

[Kerwin Charles]

Man. I miss. I miss Chicago. I look forward to seeing you soon. Back home. Back. Back there. That was a slip. New Haven's home.

[Interviewer (possibly Stephen Dubner)]

New Haven's home. Not gonna cut that one. That one's Stan. That one Stan.

[Steve Levitt]

The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything. Stitcher.

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