“Once upon a time there was a little girl who wanted to know why some people had jobs and others didn’t, so she took a course in economics. The textbook said that if you went to school and did the right things, you’d get a job. But she said, `that can’t be right. I have four cousins in Chicago who finished school, who finished training programs, and who still don’t have jobs.’ So she studied some more.”
That little girl is now Dr. Cecilia Conrad. She told this story as part of her 1993 presidential address to the National Economic Association (NEA). Conrad’s story captures the visceral life experience expressed by most of the Black economists interviewed for this story. Like Conrad, they too suspected that economics had the tools to explain important questions about Black life. But as they pursued it and developed a love for it, they were continually confronted with the fact that the theories they were being taught were contradicted by their everyday experience.
Although they kept studying, the established theories never stopped contradicting their beliefs–and mainstream economists refused to change the theories, even when contradicted with hard data. Perhaps this is why so many Black men and women proudly describe earning a Ph.D. in economics as less like joining a profession than surviving a gauntlet. Surviving that gauntlet earns them induction into an elite clan of warrior intellectuals battling over the most profound issues facing Black America.
“We simply have better answers to many of the questions of poverty and racism in the post civil rights era,” notes Dr. William Spriggs, an economist for the House/Senate Joint Economic Committee. “For example, I believe that Black economists can make much more powerful arguments for the need for affirmative action than political scientists. However, we are often ignored by both white and Black policy makers.”
