Study Finds No Racial Bias Against Blacks — Boston Globe Reports Opposite
A new study demonstrates that the so-called "driving while black" phenomenon is not supported by the data in Massachusetts. The study uses a "veil of darkness" approach to estimating racial bias. If the rate of pulling over blacks rises during daylight hours, when police can see the race of the driver, and falls during night-time hours, when they cannot, then that would suggest there is a racial bias in their decision of whether to pull over a car. By looking specifically at the “Inter Twilight Period”—the period that is dark for part of the year and light for the other—it was even possible to compare results at the same time of day with substantially similar driving conditions but in different lighting.
In contrast to the theory underlying the term “driving while black,” what they discovered was that police have a statistically significant bias towards pulling over white drivers. The report says this means that "no support was shown for a pattern of racial disparity". That’s a bizarre, but revealing, conclusion. They literally just proved racial bias. (Or, is there another possible explanation of their findings? I can't think of one.) But because they believe the racial bias they found hurts whites, they conclude by stating the exact opposite of what their data showed: there is no racial bias. Apparently, the study’s authors believe racial bias exists only where it hurts minorities.
In a moment, I’ll consider who is really hurt by a failure to apply laws encouraging safe driving equally to blacks, but first it's worth considering how another finding of the study was covered by corporate news media. The study found that, once pulled over, black and hispanic drivers were more likely to be searched and given a citation, a fact that the Boston Globe used to argue that the study was actually “further documentation of inequities in the justice system”. The newspaper makes no mention of the fact that a higher rate of searches and citations does not in any way suggest police bias, and therefore does nothing to suggest inequities in the justice system.
To see why it does not, consider that blacks account for 16% of stopped drivers, but only 9% of state residents, and whites account for only 65% of stopped drivers while they make up 80.6% of state residents. So, blacks are pulled over at a much higher rate than whites, even though the study proved that when police can identify the race of the driver they pull over blacks less often, demonstrating bias against pulling over blacks. What could explain why blacks are pulled over at a higher rate despite the fact that police are biased against pulling them over? The answer is, of course, a difference in rate of driving violations, on average, between white and black drivers—a possibility which is highly likely if driving violations are related to socioeconomic status, as many other kinds of violations are.
Similarly, a higher rate of searches and citations does not suggest police bias, because we don't know the average rate at which police have legitimate reason to perform a search or give a citation for each of the black, white and hispanic driving populations. Indeed, we have strong reasons to suspect that, on average, police will have legitimate reasons to perform a search or give a citation more often for black drivers than white drivers—again, reflecting how rates of various types of infractions are highly related to socioeconomic status.
One way to investigate whether police initiate a search with less cause for one group than another is to examine how often police searches turn up contraband, or the "hit rate" of searches. If searches rarely turn up contraband for one group, but frequently do for another group, that suggests that police might be using a lower threshold of suspicion for initiating a search for the former, and higher threshold for the latter. Past investigations show that the hit rates tend to be similar for whites and blacks, suggesting an absence of bias, though they are much lower for Asians. If the hit rate approach is valid, this suggests that police might be more suspicious of Asians. But, it could also simply be that Asians are less likely to be carrying contraband even when exhibiting the exact same behaviors that are probable cause for search of other groups. For that reason, simple disparities like this actually tell us almost nothing about the presence or absence of discrimination.
Nevertheless, the headline of the Boston Globe article claims “report on Mass. traffic stops shows stubborn racial biases persist in policing”. The rest of the article strongly emphasizes the difference in search and arrest rates, and quotes extensively from “community leaders” and so called “experts” claiming the big takeaway from the study was police bias. One supposed expert,
Daniel Medwed, a law and criminal justice professor at Northeastern University, said “the key finding is that drivers of color are more likely to be searched and given citations after a stop.” That, he said, is “revealing about potential police biases in making judgment calls about whether a search is warranted or a citation merited under the circumstances.”
The Globe also quotes a community organizer lamenting that “it doesn’t seem like there’s any systemic change that’s happening to stop it,” then spends a couple paragraphs falsely implying that police stops are more dangerous for black people, and continues on to quote various other community activists making similar points.
In other words, despite a clear finding in the report that police are biased against pulling over black drivers, and a clear warning in the report that the difference in search and citation rates "doesn’t mean that the race/ethnicity of the stopped driver is the CAUSE of the search”, the Boston Globe intentionally framed the story to give the false impression that the report did find bias against blacks.
It did not. It literally found the opposite.
It’s worth taking a minute to pause and consider exactly how divisive and inflammatory this sort of dishonest spin actually is. It comes at a time when activists are spreading the lie that police are hunting and exterminating black citizens and when suspicion and resentment towards police within black communities is so high that activists are calling for abolition of police even while nearly 10,000 blacks per year are murdered by criminals across the country. It’s hard to imagine how the Globe could spin a report—that actually found discrimination in favor of black drivers—in a way that was any more poisonous to healing the fractured relationship between black communities and police officers.
False implications of discrimination are often far more damaging to disadvantaged groups than they are to the accused. And yet, people worried about the welfare of those groups frequently make such allegations without careful analysis of the facts.
So let's return to the question of who actually suffers from this intentionally inflammatory and divisive reporting and from the racially unequal application of the law it encourages. The answer to that question depends on who benefits most from careful, law abiding, driving. Good driving helps to protect the safety of the driver and the communities they are driving through. Bias against applying laws that encourage safe driving to black drivers, who are more likely to be driving through predominantly black neighborhoods, disproportionately hurts those black communities and black drivers.
Why would the Boston Globe intentionally frame a story in a false light that misleads people about police bias and encourages policies that plainly hurt black communities? That’s the question we should all be asking ourselves.
I sometimes worry that the spin of (selective) correlation=causation promoted by progressives causes African Americans to expect and to perceive racism excessively, essentially creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Hard to know with certainty.
As you so often point, out applying the most logical base rate is vital to attempts to use statistics to evaluate claims of racism. To that end, has the 'veil of darkness' effect been validated in some other way? Merely because it makes sense doesn't make it true.
After reading a few of your posts, I've gathered that you are a data scientist by trade, that you are educated/have significant professional experience as a data scientist.
Separate from your professional background, you appear to be in the process of shining a light on the harm that can arise from DEI initiatives, in particular situations where hostile work environments result *because* of DEI initiatives, rather than DEI leading to positive workplace outcomes. You've shared your belief that you were terminated as an employee at Thompson Reuters improperly, even illegally, when you attempted to challenge narratives surrounding the BLM movement in your workplace hub focused on DEI.
I am instinctively suspicious of any social context in which there is only one "correct" perspective, as it seemed was the case at Thompson Reuters. have a very negative perception of groupthink. Which led to my being initially sympathetic to your contention that what took place at your former employer was wrong. That was my initial reaction when I read about your lawsuit in an online Massachusetts legal publication which had a brief article about your lawsuit.
After I noticed that blurb, I found your blog and read a few of your posts, which fleshed out the details of your experience. The first impression that formed was of you being a well-intentioned, professional man of integrity, someone who applied his data science background & skill to interpreting the BLM movement, and in doing so, arrived at a conclusion which fell outside of the popular opinion at your place of business (after all, the organization created a forum were such topics were addressed, you only commented after the organization's HR took that step), leading to unfair/inappropriate workplace hostility and possibly illegal loss of employment.
Although I haven't come across any post in which you outline your political or moral point of view explicitly/holistically, your posts suggest you're sympathetic to causes of social justice and on a more personal level you identify as a member of an ethnic minority that has experienced historic oppression and injustice. You seem to be saying - I am not a hateful person. That you made an honest contribution to the dialogue in "The Hub," informed by your tendency to interpret event through a metrics-driven, data-centric lens.
Whereas what you encountered at Thompson Reuters, and in other circumstances you've commented on outside of any workplace context, are hard-left viewpoints which refuse to accept the world as it is, who insist on everyone being force-fed preconceived narratives and worldviews regardless of what impartial interpretation of events/studies may suggest, even to the point of illogically denying the veracity of unbiased data, and/or (most absurdly) dishonestly drawing conclusions supporting their views from data which in fact opposes their conclusions.
That latter, more extreme truth-subverting dynamic was the situation you described in the post I'm commenting on in a February 2022 Boston Globe article headlined, "For some, report on Mass. traffic stops shows stubborn racial biases persist in policing."
I subscribe to the Globe and immediately recognized the article you referenced. That article frustrated me too when I read it, to the point it sprang to mind right away 2+ years later when I read your mention of it. I agree with your suggestion that the Globe's reporting was not intellectually honest in that instance. A dissonance exists between what the writers were suggesting should be concluded from the 2020 MASSACHUSETTS UNIFORM CITATION DATA ANALYSIS REPORT they cited, versus the more nuanced, complicated, and at times contradictory inferences the study actually suggested. Like you, I came away believing the writers undermined their suggested conclusions when through simplistic, at-times misleading analysis.
However, the need for intellectual honesty to support one's credibility, that cuts both ways, it exists for anyone's credibility to be maintained.
A concern that arises often these days, reading media online, interacting with people at work, in personal life, etc is my sense of declining societal maturity being at the root of what we are talking about when we refer to polarized opinions, across the political spectrum, characterized by a lack of humility, lacking generosity of spirit, a tendency towards victimhood, and a deficit of self-awareness, particularly in the form of higher expectations applied to others compared to oneself. It is so worrying, I think of my kids in this context a lot.
I couldn't help thinking of that dynamic as I read your comment about the study findings mentioned in the Globe article, stating:
"In contrast to the theory underlying the term “driving while black,” what they discovered was that police have a statistically significant bias towards pulling over white drivers. The report says this means that "no support was shown for a pattern of racial disparity". That’s a bizarre, but revealing, conclusion. They literally just proved racial bias. (Or, is there another possible explanation of their findings? I can't think of one.) But because they believe the racial bias they found hurts whites, they conclude by stating the exact opposite of what their data showed: there is no racial bias. Apparently, the study’s authors believe racial bias exists only where it hurts minorities."
The identity/credibility presented in your blog is based on a foundation you being a data-driven, reasonable, well-intentioned individual who unfairly lost his job after trying to positively contribute to the dialogue about BLM, and later other observations rooted in that same perspective, on other topics., only to experience ideologically-inflexible hard-left attitudes demanding their perspective be deferred to, and racially-tinged hostility resulting when you presented your honest perspective.
And yet, despite your extensive/prestigious education and professional background as a data scientist, you suggest that police racial bias against *white* drivers exists, based on the rate of traffic stops for white drivers being greater than white driver's overall percentage of the population, to a statistically significant degree, in a single 10-month study from 2020 which does not itself suggest any conclusion of the sort, You state - "They literally just proved racial bias. (Or, is there another possible explanation of their findings? I can't think of one.) " You additionally accuse the Globe of obscuring statistical evidence of bias against white drivers, despite you undoubtedly being aware any single point of correlation between two data points never provides a basis of definitive causation, much less a hypothesis you've suggested after the fact from a single study, which was not mentioned by the study's authors. Never mind your inclusion of the statement - "I can't think of one," referring to your not being able to think of an alternate explanation for the white driver's over-representation in traffic stops, besides police anti-white discrimination. By saying things like this, you make clear you are unconcerned with the appearance of credibility and legitimacy, much less the substance of being so.
You appear to have fully discarded the credible, reasonable, well-intentioned persona you presented in at first, and no doubt continue to present within the proceeding of your DEI lawsuit, though this lack of ostensible credibility has not prevented you from continuing to solicit others from donating to your legal cause. It seems, unfortunately, you've come full circle, making the sort of spurious, unfounded, illogical, dishonest assertions you started out by saying you were endeavoring to stand up in opposition towards, only to lose your job in the process of fighting that good fight. You are cavalierly, opening intellectually honest yourself at the same time you criticize the Boston Globe for being intellectually dishonest.
You had my support as I read about what you experienced. I tended believe you were credible, that you were advancing the idea that reasonable debate requires a willingness to engage with differing points of view, in an intellectually honesty and mature manner. Then you lost my support, by being intellectually dishonest yourself.
You started out by suggesting you are a data scientist who is led by the truth of your statistical analysis. You don't seem to be even trying to maintain that persona any longer.