Tapsearch Com EditorSports and racism
May 10th 2007 22:19
The American Spectator's Web site published a letter of mine today regarding a column they ran yesterday. Letters tend to cycle through quickly, so I'll preserve it here for posterity:
Editor:
I tend right on racial issues, so I read "Bigotry and Sports" with interest. However, Ms. Fabrizio misses two crucial points regarding the social science of racism.
First, regarding the NBA study (it showed black and white refs call fouls differently against black and white players), she remarks that it's "junk science." Presumably, she's referring to the allegation that the researchers used box score data, which doesn't tell them which ref made which call. However, using statistical methods it's possible to determine whether a given ref (or a ref of a given race) being present correlates to a higher or lower number of penalties.
Here's the data the authors came up with (pdf): Per 48 minutes played, black players got 4.330 fouls when the majority of refs were white and 4.329 fouls when the majority of refs were black. White players got 4.954 from white refs and 5.023 from black refs. White players get more penalties, no matter the race of the ref, largely because they're "taller, heavier, and more likely to play center."
What the media hasn't played up, of course, is that black players are treated the same by white and black refs. But white players get fewer penalties when the refs are white (for every 502 penalties a black ref team calls on black players, a white ref team will only call about 495, or 98.6 percent). This means either (A) white refs go easy on white players relative to black refs (or if you prefer, black refs go hard on white players relative to white refs) or (B) white players play more aggressively in front of black refs. Regardless, it shows that a ref's race makes a difference on the B-ball court.
Two, Ms. Fabrizio dismisses evidence that whites harbor unconscious biases against blacks. Yet implicit attitude tests have shown that quite reliably. As I once wrote in the Northwestern Chronicle, a conservative college paper, summarizing my own results on one such test:
In a freshman-year psychology course, I took a computerized test -- a headshot or a word was flashed on the screen, and I pushed a button if the person was white or if the word was positive [i.e. "happiness"]. I pushed a different button in response to black faces or negative words.
But then the program switched up on me. Now I had to push one button for white faces or negative words, and another for black faces and positive words.
Like 87.9 percent of white American participants, I performed faster and with greater accuracy when asked to pair "white" with "good" and "black" with "bad."
One can certainly put these results in perspective -- it takes a professionally devised test to unearth this, and white racism probably ranks well behind gangs in hurting the black community. But it's wrong to pretend the results don't exist, or that they mean nothing.
Blog: Robert VerBruggen
Editor:
I tend right on racial issues, so I read "Bigotry and Sports" with interest. However, Ms. Fabrizio misses two crucial points regarding the social science of racism.
First, regarding the NBA study (it showed black and white refs call fouls differently against black and white players), she remarks that it's "junk science." Presumably, she's referring to the allegation that the researchers used box score data, which doesn't tell them which ref made which call. However, using statistical methods it's possible to determine whether a given ref (or a ref of a given race) being present correlates to a higher or lower number of penalties.
Here's the data the authors came up with (pdf): Per 48 minutes played, black players got 4.330 fouls when the majority of refs were white and 4.329 fouls when the majority of refs were black. White players got 4.954 from white refs and 5.023 from black refs. White players get more penalties, no matter the race of the ref, largely because they're "taller, heavier, and more likely to play center."
What the media hasn't played up, of course, is that black players are treated the same by white and black refs. But white players get fewer penalties when the refs are white (for every 502 penalties a black ref team calls on black players, a white ref team will only call about 495, or 98.6 percent). This means either (A) white refs go easy on white players relative to black refs (or if you prefer, black refs go hard on white players relative to white refs) or (B) white players play more aggressively in front of black refs. Regardless, it shows that a ref's race makes a difference on the B-ball court.
Two, Ms. Fabrizio dismisses evidence that whites harbor unconscious biases against blacks. Yet implicit attitude tests have shown that quite reliably. As I once wrote in the Northwestern Chronicle, a conservative college paper, summarizing my own results on one such test:
In a freshman-year psychology course, I took a computerized test -- a headshot or a word was flashed on the screen, and I pushed a button if the person was white or if the word was positive [i.e. "happiness"]. I pushed a different button in response to black faces or negative words.
But then the program switched up on me. Now I had to push one button for white faces or negative words, and another for black faces and positive words.
Like 87.9 percent of white American participants, I performed faster and with greater accuracy when asked to pair "white" with "good" and "black" with "bad."
One can certainly put these results in perspective -- it takes a professionally devised test to unearth this, and white racism probably ranks well behind gangs in hurting the black community. But it's wrong to pretend the results don't exist, or that they mean nothing.
Blog: Robert VerBruggen
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