Robert D. Cherry


Robert D. Cherry or Robert Cherry was a professor at Brooklyn College, with a Ph.D. in Economics from Kansas State University received in 1968. His main areas of interest include race and gender earnings' disparities in America, issues of poverty, low-income housing, tax reform to benefit working families, domestic relations, and immigration. These and other similar subjects are featured in his latest social policy book, published by NYU Press under the title, Moving Working Families Forward: Third Way Policies That Work. Cherry conducts studies of black and Latino students who graduate with degrees from less competitive colleges in the private sector.
Robert Cherry has written extensively on the subject of discrimination and race, as well as the Holocaust in Poland.

''Rethinking Poles and Jews'' ''Polacy i Żydzi''

Cherry is the co-author of Rethinking Poles and Jews: Troubled Past, Brighter Future published simultaneously in Poland as Polacy i Żydzi – kwestia otwarta, one of the first books to address the negative assumptions and anti-Polish bias in the Holocaust literature. The book, produced in collaboration with Dr Annamaria Orla-Bukowska of Jagiellonian University in Kraków, was published in English as well as in Polish; and described by Michael C. Steinlauf as "a ray of light amidst the acrimonious and generally uninformed polemics", and "a series of essays that pierce the stereotypes which have obscured historical reality".

Comments

Some of Cherry's comments on racial issues have aroused controversy. In April 2013, Cherry defended his statements about why black students "do not strive and instead become defeatist" by emailing his gradebook to every member of the National Economic Association list serve
He has written about "the strong moral and economic ethics of African Americans", wherein he argues against negative stereotypes of black men as lacking in family values and self-discipline due to the legacy of slavery. He refers to this as a "victim narrative" and points to evidence by economic historians showing that most black families were stable even during the era of slavery. As a contemporary counter-example, he also points to the significant increase of African-Americans obtaining higher education from 2006 to 2015, which contributed to declining pregnancy rates, and argues that the "liberal position" of a "culture of despair" fails to recognize these achievements.

Books and publications