Loury, a professor at Brown University, finds "laughable, and sad, Professor Gates's declaration that he now plans to make a documentary film about racial profiling. Is this as far as his scholarship on the intersection of race and policing in America extends? Where has this eminent scholar of African-American affairs been these last 30 years, during which a historically unprecedented, politically popular, extraordinarily punitive and hugely racially disparate mobilization of resources for the policing, imprisonment and post-release supervision of those caught up in the criminal justice system has unfolded?"
Arguing that the nation has chosen to employ the police, courts and prisons to deal with "the antisocial behaviors of our fellow citizens," Loury posits that "such behavioral problems reflect failures elsewhere in our society--racial and class segregation in our cities; inadequate ducation for the poor; and the collapse of the family as an institution in some communities. Because of these failures, we have large numbers of under-socialized, undereducated and virtually unemployable young men in our cities and towns. (They are not all black, to be sure, but they are disproprotionately so.)"
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