Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

A 1984 graduate of Appalachian State University, Stephen Dubner earned an MFA in writing at Columbia University, where he also taught. He has published several books, including Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics, both co-authored with Steven Levitt; his articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and elsewhere. Dubner is the producer and host of the podcast Freakonomics Radio, which continues the “hidden side of everything” in the spirit of Freakonomics, exploring the often-surprising choices people make. Dubner lives in New York City with his wife, son, and daughter.

Economist Dr. Fryer is an African American who studies the differences between the life experiences of Black and White individuals in America. At first a lackluster student but a good athlete, Roland Fryer won an athletic scholarship to the University of Texas. There, he realized he wasn’t going to the pros, so he buckled down, studied, and liked it. He quickly earned his PhD; became a tenured professor at Harvard, a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, and a MacArthur “Genius” Scholar; and won the Clark Medal in economics. (“Roland Fryer.” Harvard EdLabs via Archive.org. archive.org/web/20190808193049/https://edlabs.harvard.edu/people/roland-fryer. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.)

Fryer found that, controlling for socioeconomic background, there is no gap between African American and Caucasian learning abilities in the early years, but that the gap grows thereafter, largely due to a lack of PTA support and a surfeit of activity by gangs and strangers near Black inner-city schools. Fryer asserts that some Black students are punished by their peers for being good students because it’s considered “acting White.” He also found that Black and Hispanic people suffer use of force by police more often than White counterparts, but that they’re not shot more often. (Fryer Jr., Roland G. “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force.” National Bureau of Economic Research, July 2016, revised January 2018, nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w22399/w22399.pdf. Accessed 11 Feb. 2021.)

A more recent survey corroborates Fryer’s assertion that White officers pull Black people over more often. The new data shows that minority officers make fewer stops of minorities and use less force during stops than White police. This suggests that more diverse police departments will improve community relations. (Bocar, A., et al. “The Role of Officer Race and Gender in Police-Civilian Interactions in Chicago.” Science Magazine, 12 Feb. 2021.)

Venkatesh was “born in India, raised in the suburbs of upstate New York and southern California, and graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a degree in mathematics” (89-90). In 1989, while studying for a sociology PhD at the University of Chicago, Venkatesh ventured into the city’s Black projects, where he meant to survey residents with a long questionnaire. Instead, he embedded himself into a crack cocaine gang for six years, getting to know their way of life. Venkatesh later met author Steven Levitt at the Harvard Society of Fellows, where both were members; their collaboration led to research papers that revealed the relative poverty of drug-dealing gang members, information outlined in Freakonomics.

Descended from the founder of the Stetson hat company, Stetson Kennedy spent his childhood in Florida. His uncle was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, but Kennedy became a hard-charging anti-bigotry writer who infiltrated the KKK and later wrote an exposé against it, viewing “the Klan as the terrorist arm of the white establishment itself” (54). Kennedy realized that much of the Klan’s power came from its secrecy, so he revealed many of the group’s secrets to radio and other media; soon millions of Americans knew the silly names of KKK officers as well as the shoddiness of its programs and the larceny of its leaders.

Formed in the aftermath of the US Civil War, the Ku Klux Klan was a secret society that sought to defend White Southerners against the advent of a newly freed population of African Americans. They committed acts of violence against Black Americans and anyone who supported Black human rights. Their numbers dwindled after several years but rose in the early 1900s when millions of Whites joined the group in a crusade against Blacks, Jews, Catholics, unionists, and others deemed unworthy. During the 20th century, the Klan’s power waxed and waned; much of their influence derived from the fear that they would kill people who resisted their efforts to impose their beliefs on society. In fact, most lynchings took place outside the KKK purview, but the group was happy to take credit for them.

College-educated and a maverick, JT worked for a time in marketing but wound up leading the local chapter of a drug gang, the Black Disciples. In 1989 he took grad student Sudhir Venkatesh under his wing. Smart and logical, JT developed innovations that improved the gang’s profitability, and he ended up on the group’s board of directors, whose members enjoyed the most lucrative positions of the drug-dealing gang. JT later was arrested under a federal indictment and sent to prison.

The Gangster Disciples are an amalgam of two street gangs, including the Black Disciples, that make money from illicit drug sales. Sociology grad student Sudhir Venkatesh, while interviewing residents of Chicago’s housing projects in 1989, became acquainted with gang members, including local boss JT, and embedded himself within the organization for six years. The gang’s “foot soldiers” do the selling on street corners, make very little money, and have a four-year death rate of 25%. Higher-ups make much more money, but all members risk significant jail time. The main drug for sale during Venkatesh’s time was crack cocaine, which was cheap and easy to sell, and which led to a large increase in drug-related deaths, mostly from gang wars over sales turf.

As New York City’s police chief in the mid-1990s, Bratton introduced new policing techniques, including a computerized monitoring system of crime hotspots and a “broken window” theory that advocated a crackdown on minor crimes such as breaking a window, jumping a pay turnstile, or aggressively panhandling before they lead to worse crimes. Bratton also hired more police officers. Crime plummeted, and Bratton got the credit, but statistically it was the new hires who really made the difference, and crime also was dropping everywhere in America. Bratton later became Los Angeles’s police chief, where he introduced similar changes but also hired more police.