That is what John Rosenberg calls a recent New York Times piece by Nancy DiTomaso, a sociologist affiliated with the business school at Rutgers. She contends that one reason for high unemployment among minorities is that they’re shut out of the job market by the actions of whites, who use networks to ensure that only other whites get jobs.

DiTomasi’s argument would be slaughtered in a high-school debate, but American academics suffer no penalty for advancing ridiculous ideas, so long as they don’t upset any of our “protected groups.”