Study sees racial bias in calling fouls

[Wynton]

Did anyone see this story in the NYT today?

Cliff notes: a study claims that there is racial bias in calling fouls in the NBA.

My initial reaction was that it would be extremely difficult to create any study that could account for all the variables. But if you read the entire article, it appears that the study made a strong effort to do just that.

The NBA had its own study done, and came to a different conclusion. But the NYT engaged three "neutral" experts who concluded that the study finding bias was more persuasive.

[Jack of Arcades]

Now I hope the Mavs get an all-white ref crew in Games 6 and 7.

[Colt McCoy]

[ QUOTE ]
Did anyone see this story in the NYT today?

Cliff notes: a study claims that there is racial bias in calling fouls in the NBA.

My initial reaction was that it would be extremely difficult to create any study that could account for all the variables. But if you read the entire article, it appears that the study made a strong effort to do just that.

The NBA had its own study done, and came to a different conclusion. But the NYT engaged three "neutral" experts who concluded that the study finding bias was more persuasive.

[/ QUOTE ]

LOL

[Stepping Stone]

Link to .pdf of the paper on racial bias

[teamdonkey]

[ QUOTE ]
Did anyone see this story in the NYT today?

Cliff notes: a study claims that there is racial bias in calling fouls in the NBA.

My initial reaction was that it would be extremely difficult to create any study that could account for all the variables. But if you read the entire article, it appears that the study made a strong effort to do just that.

The NBA had its own study done, and came to a different conclusion. But the NYT engaged three "neutral" experts who concluded that the study finding bias was more persuasive.

[/ QUOTE ]

i've only read the article and not the actual paper, but here are my first thoughts:

-that actual increase in fouls called is really, really small. If you replace 3 black refs with 3 white ones (the most extreme example), the black players will have 0.12-0.20 more fouls called on them per 48 minutes (the opposite also applies, with black refs calling fouls on white players, but to a lesser extent). In the scope of a game or even season that's insignificant.

-the data in the paper showed each additional black starter a team had meant about 2 fewer victories for that team each season. That IS a significant number.

So what's the difference?

[ QUOTE ]
“Player-performance appears to deteriorate at every margin when officiated by a larger fraction of opposite-race referees,” they write. The paper later notes no change in free-throw percentage. “We emphasize this result because this is the one on-court behavior that we expect to be unaffected by referee behavior.”

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basically this says black players PLAY worse (points, rebounds, assists, turnovers, etc) with white referees and vice versa. Because 68% of refs are white (at the time of study, 64% now) this results in overall worse perfomance by black players.

What does this mean? Why would players play worse with referees of a different race, if the number of fouls called against them only changes minimally? That's hard to say. I don't think it's bias with the refs, but rather with the players themselves.

Gonna read the paper tonight and maybe comment more.

[HajiShirazu]

At first I thought this study was BS but I see there is indeed something to it. It should never be any surprise to anyone who knows anything about race relations that white refs would be biased in favor of whites.
A technical foul study would be WAAAAY more interesting than this, I don't know why they didn't do that. I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation was 3-5 times stronger than for regular fouls.
The real question is, why are 85% of the players black while most of the refs, and most of the coaches and executives white? More importantly why are the blatantly racist policies of David Stern such as the dress code continually unchallenged?

[Colt McCoy]

Maybe there is a bias. I certainly wouldn't be overly surprised by it, but I don't see any way to prove it. The rate at which fouls are called in no way proves bias. Even if someone watched every second of every game to make some kind of judgement on every single foul, the study is still open to bias by the people performing the study who obviously went in hoping they could show racism.

[UATrewqaz]

[ QUOTE ]
blatantly racist policies ... such as the dress code

[/ QUOTE ]


Ah yes that blatantly racist dress code.

Can you believe my employer has a similiar racist dress code? Monday I showed up wearing dirty overalls and a confederate flag cape, as a tribute to my Southern ancestors, and they sent me home!

They used some flimsy excuses about "looking professional" and "my image reflects on the companies image" but it was a load of crap. I saw right through those dirty racists.

[iggymcfly]

[ QUOTE ]
At first I thought this study was BS but I see there is indeed something to it. It should never be any surprise to anyone who knows anything about race relations that white refs would be biased in favor of whites.
A technical foul study would be WAAAAY more interesting than this, I don't know why they didn't do that. I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation was 3-5 times stronger than for regular fouls.
The real question is, why are 85% of the players black while most of the refs, and most of the coaches and executives white? More importantly why are the blatantly racist policies of David Stern such as the dress code continually unchallenged?

[/ QUOTE ]

Because African-Americans are physically different than whites in that they can generally jump higher and run faster which makes them better at basketball. However, they have no such advantage for coaching, refereeing or being an executive; therefore those numbers more closely mirror the general population which is predominantly white.

Why do people have to look for racism when it's not even there? And the dress code's racist? Give me a break. I think you're a racist if you're saying that it's somehow harder for a black person to put on a collared shirt for a post-game interview than it is for a white person.

[J.R.]

[ QUOTE ]
To investigate whether such bias has existed in sports, Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined data from publicly available box scores. They accounted for factors like the players’ positions, playing time and All-Star status; each group’s time on the court (black players played 83 percent of minutes, while 68 percent of officials were white); calls at home games and on the road; and other relevant data.

But they said they continued to find the same phenomenon: that players who were similar in all ways except skin color drew foul calls at a rate difference of up to 4 ½ percent depending on the racial composition of an N.B.A. game’s three-person referee crew.

[/ QUOTE ]

All they did was look in the box scores, not a which ref called which foul, but whether the "crew" (already deemed either "white" or "black") called a foul?

The conclusion section of the paper on page 31 states "we test whether players of a given race receive fewer fouls when more of the referees present are of the same race"

I only skimmed the paper- how significant is the conclusion "up to 4%"?