The Revenge of the Thin Blue Line 41: Harvard Economist Roland Fryer Study Destroys Racial Bias in Police Shootings or does it?

So, at work a friend asked me if I had heard the Harvard study showing there is no racial discrimination in shootings.  I said I hadn't and he began to play a video with his phone facing away from me.

So, right away I could tell the speaker was an African-American man.  I will leave it up to you to determine why rightwingers absolutely love hearing conservative black writers and thinkers like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas, Colon Noir, Candace Owens or whomever regurgitate reactionary agitprop and direct snide inflammatory insults at Democrats, progressives, LGBTQ persons and other minorities.

Bari Weiss lies about Crime

Anyway as I listened to about 30-60 seconds of the speaker who it turns out is Harvard Economist Professor Roland Fryer, who stated he had published a study showing there was no bias in police shootings.  Reading up on it, the study was conducted in 2016 and published in July 2017, so it's post Ferguson but, pre-George Floyd and BLM burning down every city in America 4 times over during the 2020 "Riots".

Now, this video was a snippet from a 75 minute interview with Bari Weiss, so already I know it's going to have a hard right slant while it masquerades as a Neutral follow the facts not feelings or even adopts a pseudo-left patina.  It's also under the umbrella of the "University of Austin", which if you don't know is a Billionaire funded reactionary laboratory designed to undercut education by claiming it's all about stopping Cancel Culture and Wokeness. 

My first question was where did the data come from before we got off topic.  We got off topic because my friend wanted to defend the Jan6th Coup Attempt ("It wasn't an insurrection") and decry the southern border migrant influx.  His defense of the Jan6th criminal conspiracy boiled down to 'They [i.e. the Police] let them in' therefore it can't have been a Coup Attempt.  Shades of a Nixonian belief, If police officer let's you do it, that means it is not illegal.

But, getting back to Professor Fryer, in the snippet he claimed other academics went to him and pressured him to not publish it.  And if that was remotely true he'd name names.  No names?  Didn't happen.  Fryer, also leans in and in semi-stunned tones claims after getting his results of not finding any racial bias in police shooting from his 8 RAs, he hired 8 "fresh ones" and redid the study and got the same result!  Shocking!!!  Of course, you could hire a million RA's and if you feed them the same data every time you're probably going to get the same result.  The old stand by of Garbage In, Garbage Out, still applies I see.

Or if anyone did go to Fryer and ask him not to publish it was because they knew as soon as his study was released shameless bad faith actors would seize upon it and tout it for decades proving there was no racial bias in policing.  Because... No One... NO ONE... reads a study like this in it's entirety.  And yes before you go, Well I found 3 people who read this from cover to cover, functionally no one reads everything.  Instead what they do is read the Title, perhaps find a tidbit or two in the study that conforms to their narrative, and cite it over and over and over by repetition.

 

And that's the biggest disservice of this paper because, grotesque Reactionaries like my friend or Megyn Kelly are going to reference it to prove there isn't any bias in Police work.  Even though, and this is classic, Professor Fryer states, "that yes we saw some bias in the low level uses of force, everyday pushing up against cars and things like that..."

Just as an aside, sure there's Police brutality in everyday interactions with black an hispanic people and police like throwing people up against cars blah blah blah... but let me minimize it so I can provide Faux News and rightwing grifters like Bari Weiss the ammo they need to claim 'Ackshullay there really isn't Police brutality'...

And of course, the whole fucking point isn't that White Cops are all Klansman running around gunning down black people on a daily N-word hunt, but that Police brutality and systematic racism stem from the day-to-day interactions and injustices meted out in disproportionate number of traffic stops, unequal application of laws, over-policing of certain neighborhoods based on demographics, targeted harsh sentencing of black and brown peoples while certain whites get special treatment, plus a whole host of other micro-aggressions which minorities face from the Justice System on a daily basis.

Judge Adrian acknowledged he was supposed to
impose a mandatory 4-year sentence against Clinton,
 but he would not send him to prison.
“That is not just... I will not do that.”

But, Crypto-Fascists like Fryer say and take certain actions specifically to upset others.  Don't make the mistake of thinking Fryer or any other fascist believes the bullshit they say, they say it precisely to upset you, to trigger you (as the MAGA Chuds proudly declared in 2020), to get you flustered, to waste your time refuting their nonsense, and ultimately to make you despair and give up.  Fascists win when regular people no longer fight back and cede the ground to the Fascists. 

That's what Fryer is all about.

So I won't tell you I read this whole study, but right away even Fryer and his team have to acknowledge

Interestingly, as the intensity of force increases (e.g. handcuffing civilians without arrest, drawing or pointing a weapon, or using pepper spray or a baton), the probability that any civilian is subjected to such treatment is small, but the racial difference remains surprisingly constant.  These are rare events. Yet, the results indicate that they are significantly more rare for whites than blacks. With all controls, blacks are 21 percent more likely than whites to be involved in an interaction with police in which at least a weapon is drawn and the difference is statistically significant. [3]

So, getting back to where the data is from you will be unsurpirised to learn it comes from Police Departments themselves, and Fryer admits it's difficult to get any data around Police shootings other than it happened and almost impossible to get data from the day-to-day indignities black and brown persons suffer at the hands of bigoted Police Officers. 

And why choose the data he chooses?  Certainly, Professor Fryer would state he didn't want his paper to be about any one high profile police shooting of a black person, like Laquan McDonald in Chicago, or Walter Scott in South Carolina, but his decision to narrowly say their is not racism in Police shootings also afforded him the opportunity to ignore Eric Garner being choked to death in Long Island.  So, the data mainly comes from Police department records themselves Houston Police Department (2005-2015), New York Stop & Frisk (2003-2013), and from cities Boston, Camden, Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, six Florida counties.

Notice this data completely excludes entire regions of the country and every State in the Deep South, the regions of the country where most Americans would say Institutional Racism is a way of life and abuse of force and authority goes back centuries.

But, anyway my time is more and more precious to me so there's not much more to be gained from an 8 year old study or anything to be gained from watching his interview with the odious rightwing troll Bari Weiss.  But, understand two things about this study as with John Lott's totally bogus NRA-funded study that Americans use guns in self-defense 3,000,000 times a year or Andrew Wakefield's fraudulent study that vaccines cause Autism this study will forever be cited as absolute proof that there is no anti-black bias in Police Work, Police Officers merely go to where the crime is, and crime is an inherent part of black and brown society. 

Remember language is a weapon and the language that Fryer employs is designed to give cover to the growing demands of right-wingers that the handcuffs be taken off their Police, because we know Police never lie in reports, Police never arrest innocent men, and every euphemistically named Officer-involved shooting (OIS) is a good shoot.  After all who you gonna believe New York's Finest or your lying eyes?

Prosecutors released new footage of a viral attack on two police officers that appears to conflict with police accounts of their initial interaction with a group of migrants that quickly escalated into a melee that triggered nationwide outrage.

Professor Fryer then concludes with a Bill Cosby, a beloved black authority figure especially to Whites, style condemnation of black people,

The importance of our results for racial inequality in America is unclear. It is plausible that racial differences in lower level uses of force are simply a distraction and movements such as Black Lives Matter should seek solutions within their own communities (emphasis added) rather than changing the behaviors of police and other external forces. 

Conclusion: 

So, while reading this I did find multiple refutations of Professor Fryer's work.  (I won't go into his personal failings or foibles but leave that to you to decide if it undercuts his research and work.)

2020 update: The specific flaws of Roland Fryer's paper have now been characterized in two studies (by other scholars, not myself). Knox, Lowe, and Mummolo (2019) reanalyze Fryer's data to find it understates racial biases. Ross, Winterhalder, and McElreath (2018) do something similar through a statistical simulation.

Fryer’s analysis is highly flawed, however. It suffers from major theoretical and methodological errors, and he has communicated the results to news media in a way that is misleading. While there have long been problems with the quality of police shootings data, there is still plenty of evidence to support a pattern of systematic, racially discriminatory use of force against black people in the United States.

There should be no argument that black and Latino people in Houston are much more likely to be shot by police compared to whites. I looked at the same Houston police shooting dataset as Fryer for the years 2005-2015, which I supplemented with census data, and found that black people were over 5 times as likely to be shot relative to whites. Latinos were roughly twice as likely to be shot versus whites.

Plagiarism and the Bad Faith rightwing attacks on American higher education

In PraegerU history this fictional Bodega
was actually burned down by BLM because,
"George Floyd, a black man who resisted 
arrest and was held under the knee of a
Police Officer, died while in custody."

I'm questioning my education

Is my education who I am now? 

- Pearl Jam (2003)

Heather Digby Parton has a better post about Christoper Rufo and the coordinated rightwing attack on Claudine Gay and the "liberal" media continued willingness and eagerness to adopt the rightwing framing of the issue of Plagiarism.

“It's time that Gaza Ends. The 2 million people who live there, they are clever assassins. They need to be removed from that land. That land needs to be turned into a national park." @MicheleBachmann Dean at @RegentU. 

Bachmann's call for the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Gaza did not earn her even the slightest rebuke from the Corporate Media let alone her former Republican colleagues in the House of Representatives.

The completely disingenuous House "investigation" led by Elise Stefanik continues to pay dividends to the Republican attacks on Education in general and any educator who does not bow down to the nascent Fascist agenda the GOP is rapidly advancing.

Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned.  She's the second of the three women brought up before the Republican Inquisitors on December 5th, former University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned before Christmas but Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth has yet to bow down before the rightwing witch hunt.

Say whatever you want about the woeful answers these three gave to the House committee, a public relations nightmare from three people who should already have a baseline pro-level PR game.  But, I have to wonder if the law firm which prepped them wasn't actually paid to undermine their preparation and set them up to be slaughtered.

Former Harvard President Gay came from a. fairly well-to-do background but, that still doesn't mean to Republicans she's nothing more than her black skin and aggressively shaved head.  A scalp they yearned to take.  Gay, of course, received death threats and was called the N-word numerous times by conservatives before wealthy Harvard benefactors like billionaire racist Bill Ackman demanded her resignation, often in violent racist tirades.

The allegations of plagiarism are overwrought.  To the rabid rightwing drones plagiarism means copying and pasting entire sections of text which isn't what Gay did but, in America some people are afforded Zero-Margin for error.   It would be fascinating if Josh Hawley's Yale degree work or Ted Cruz's time at Harvard but, we all know that even if it was shown to be plagiarized, as with Neil Gorsuch unattributed copying, Republicans wouldn't care one whit.  In fact, Republicans get extra credit for undermining every institution they besmirch and for breaking rules others have to follow.

For a long time, Republicans have accused liberals, higher education, and the Dept of Ed of indoctrinating young people.  The truth is when people are educated and exposed to new ideas they more often than not turn away from Reactionary dogma and Republican propaganda.  This angers Republicans to no end.  

Republicans have hated the Department of Education ever since the Federal Government decided to make sure minorities had access to higher education.  What they want is to funnel taxpayer dollars to Fascist fundamentalist schools, but they also want to gain control of what is taught.  The still shot from the PraegerU "lesson" on George Floyd is one of a series of kids cartoons aimed at instilling racist, homophobic, bigoted hatred, and anti-class consciousness in young people.   

Republicans have a long list of enemies; teachers are some of the top targets.  It's a non-stop barrage of marching fascism now.  Giving in and appeasing Republicans is a short and long term losing strategy.  We are on a collision course with whether or not a Nation can remain half free and half MAGA.

Update:

Neri Oxman ❤️Jeffrey Epstein

Remember slimly hedge fund Billionaire Bill Ackman, who demanded Claudine Gay resign over Plagiarism?  Well his wife Neri Oxman is an Epstein client and <drum roll> a Plagiarist.

An analysis by Business Insider found a similar pattern of plagiarism by Ackman's wife Neri Oxman, who became a tenured professor at MIT in 2017.  Oxman plagiarized multiple paragraphs of her 2010 doctoral dissertation, Business Insider found, including at least one passage directly lifted from other writers without citation.

Any chance Bill Ackman demands his wife resign from MIT?

The Full Romney (Ann wears the pants in the Family)

"I guess we better unzip him and let the real Mitt Romney out," Ann Romney holds Mitt's testicles in her feminazi lockbox, as the R. Limpballs saying goes.

Ann Romney wears the big boy pants in the family. Mitt only gets to sashay around in his Harvard-embroidered special underwear.

Besides making fun of the fit and fabulous Michele Obama Right-Wingers claim she dominates Barack, that Michelle is making the decisions, that she commands the President, oh and also that Michelle Obama is fat, ha ha ha! [See my post: Of Derrières, Jim Sensenbrenner, and Conservative Racism] So it would seem incongruous that Mitt Romney is sending out his wife to do his campaign work for him.

Ah, but here is where the Oppressive Misygonist Republicans reveal themselves. Mitt sends out Ann to talk to women, and she reports to him. As Amy Davidson reported in The New Yorker, Mitt said;

She says that she’s going across the country and talking with women, and what they’re talking about is the debt that we’re leaving the next generation and the failure of this economy to put people back to work. She says that she talks to women and they’re concerned about the jobs that their kids are going to get.

Last Tuesday on Fox News, Mitt was asked what he will do to reach out to women;

I’ve had the fun of being out with my wife the last several days on the campaign trail. And she points out that as she talks to women, they tell her that their number one concern is the economy.

Note that Ann can fill her specific role as supporter and go-between Mitt with women, to talk to them about Hearth and Home but that's it. And that's the subtle difference the Right is going to try to make between Ann and FLOTUS Michelle Obama. The Right is gearing up this performance to play to the bigoted stereotypes that feed their wretched voting base and this hearkening back to earlier days when America was great and blacks and women knew their place, is prime meat.

But, the Right-Wing is clever and what Mitt's advisors are doing is properly setting up Ann Romney to properly draw in female voters for him. But, remember we're never going to see The Full Romney because of the gross excesses and outlandish expenditures of the Harvard educated elitist out-of-touch Romney's would shock so many of the struggling conservative voting base as to cement an electoral landslide for Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney tells Jay Leno If you were Wealthy, you'd be Healthy [updated]

Update:
Via Crooks and Liars here is video of Mitt Romney recalling "one of the most humorous" things he could remember was when his Elitist father fired American auto workers.

Oh, Mitt! Like Father, Like Son!

With the recent revelation that Mitt Romney's garage will have an elevator for his cars, The Vulture swooped down to make an appearance on the Jay Leno Tonight Show (Leno famously loves and collects cars.)

But, it wouldn't be a Mitt Romney appearance with out the Out-of-Touch Quarter Billionaire taking a chance to reveal just how disconnected he is from 99.9% of Americans.

Vulture Mitt has the smooth misunderstanding of Health Insurance that comes from being born a child of privilege and riches never having to worry if he or his family members got sick, injured, had their job outsourced by Bain Capital, lost their coverage or had their foot run over by one of the many illegals mowing Mitt Romney's palatial estate.

“It seems to me like children and people with preexisting conditions should be covered,” Leno noted.

“People with preexisting conditions — as long as they’ve been insured before, they’re going to continue to have insurance,” Romney explained.

“Suppose they were never insured?” Leno asked.

“Well, if they’re 45 years old, and they show up, and they say, I want insurance, because I’ve got a heart disease, it’s like, `Hey guys, we can’t play the game like that. You’ve got to get insurance when you’re well, and if you get ill, then you’re going to be covered,’” Romney replied.

“I know guys that work in the auto industry and they’re just not covered because they work in brake dust,” Leno pressed. “And then they get to be 30, 35, and were never able to get insurance before. Now they have it. That seems like a good thing.”

It is a good thing. Which is why Mitt and the Republican Party can't stand it. Republicans do not want the government doing "good things" because then people we see that government can in fact be a positive force. But, not to Mitt. If you don't have heath insurance and want it now? Too bad we Rich people play "a game" with your life.

Additionally, Paul Ryan re-released his Path to Penury, which guarantees to take 4 Trillion from the poor, sick and old and give it to the 1%.

The Republican Party is wholly invested in returning the United States to the Gilded Age and the Obscene Wealth concentration in the hands of the 1%.

Because, to conservatives the rise of individualism and the emancipation of minorities, women, homosexuals and all those oppressed by the Right-Wingers represents the Destruction of America.

What Obamacare actually represents, flawed as it is, is potential liberation from control by the 1%, the ability to have reasonably affordable care without being bankrupted or being denied coverage because you had a pre-existing heart condition and don't have the illicit war profiteer wealth to buy a new one like Dick Cheney.

Related:
Alternate Brain: You'll get health insurance ...