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Diane Martin
May 3, 2007, 8:26:47 AM5/3/07
to multicultural-church group, multicultural-church digest subscribers
Hi all,
Just a note that I heard an interview of one of the statisticians involved in this research on National Public Radio yesterday. He said that there is no way any one player would recognize bias (in fact those interviewed who were willing to speak on the issue said that the referees were fair). The only way to recognize these finding was by analyzing a large amount of data collected over time. I found the findings interesting, dismaying, but not all that surprising. I think that there are numerous ways that unrecognized internal racism affects people much more personally such as housing, banking, etc, which the article below also holds up. I believe that studies of this kind are important because they help us face the subtle racism that permeates our society.
Diane Martin
==============================================================================
== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, May 2 2007 12:27 pm
From: Scott
Interesting article about how racism works its way into all kinds of
things -- but it should be noted that this is really about
subconscious racism (as stated in the article) so it is more
reflective of racism in society (both black/white) as reflected in the
NBA -- No need to go out boycotting the NBA (editorial comment).
The actual study is posted in the files section.
I am curious as to what conference attendees think about this and how
it might affect your congregations.
------------------------------------------------
May 2, 2007
Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls
By ALAN SCHWARZ
An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose
playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other
parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell
University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991
through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against
black players than against white players.
Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy
at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in
economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called
fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was
not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which
fouls are called "is large enough that the probability of a team
winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the
refereeing crew assigned to the game."
N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview that the
league saw a draft copy of the paper last year, and was moved to do
its own study this March using its own database of foul calls, which
specifies which official called which foul.
"We think our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and
demonstrates that there is no bias," Mr. Stern said.
Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-
Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered
the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound. The N.B.A. denied a request
for its underlying data, even with names of officials and players
removed, because it feared that the league's confidentiality agreement
with referees could be violated if the identities were determined
through box scores.
The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer
review before publication in an economic journal, but several
prominent academic economists said it would contribute to the growing
literature regarding subconscious racism in the workplace and
elsewhere, such as in searches by the police.
The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the
N.B.A.'s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of
"Pervasive Prejudice?" and an expert in testing for how subtle racial
bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions
ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi
drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the
author of "The Wages of Wins," which analyzes sports issues using
statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of
the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
"I would be more surprised if it didn't exist," Mr. Ayres said of an
implicit association bias in the N.B.A. "There's a growing consensus
that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any
conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by
unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make
snap decisions, they often can't keep themselves from subconsciously
treating blacks different than whites, men different from women."
Mr. Berri added: "It's not about basketball - it's about what happens
in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you
have an evaluation team that's so different from those being
evaluated. Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe
you should have more African-American referees - for the same reason
that you don't want mostly white police forces in primarily black
neighborhoods."
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.
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of
his league's officiating, said in a telephone interview after reading
the paper: "We're all human. We all have our own prejudice. That's the
point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this
application, as in a thousand others."
Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before
reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, "No comment."
Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the
Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers,
each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated
them differently.
"If that's going on, then it's something that needs to be dealt with,"
James said. "But I've never seen it."
Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and
Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the
paper's claims. Rod Thorn, the president of the New Jersey Nets and
formerly the N.B.A.'s executive vice president for basketball
operations, said: "I don't believe it. I think officials get the vast
majority of calls right. They don't get them all right. The vast
majority of our players are black."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such
population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating
factors.
For the 1991-92 through 2003-4 seasons, the authors analyzed every
player's box-score performance - minutes played, rebounds, shots made
and missed, fouls and the like - in the context of the racial
composition of the three-person crew refereeing that game. (The N.B.A.
did not release its record of calls by specific officials to either
Mr. Wolfers, Mr. Price or The Times, claiming it is kept for referee
training purposes only.)
Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player
and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and
speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that
information to predict how an official would view the player. About a
dozen players could reasonably be placed in either category, but Mr.
Wolfers said the classification of those players did not materially
change the study's findings.
During the 13-season period studied, black players played 83 percent
of the minutes on the floor. With 68 percent of officials being white,
three-person crews were either entirely white (30 percent of the
time), had two white officials (47 percent), had two black officials
(20 percent) or were entirely black (3 percent).
Mr. Stern said that the race of referees had never been considered
when assembling crews for games.
With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr.
Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable
regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different
variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that
centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white;
that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at
different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were
at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise;
particular coaches on the sidelines; the players' assertiveness on the
court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals,
turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some
substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined whether otherwise similar black and
white players had fouls-per-minute rates that varied with the racial
makeup of the refereeing crew.
"Across all of these specifications," they write, "we find that black
players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an
increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees
officiating a game increases from zero to three."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price also report a statistically significant
correlation with decreases in points, rebounds and assists, and a rise
in turnovers, when players performed before primarily opposite-race
officials.
"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."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to
affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional
black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team's chance of
winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and
so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the
greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years
won 48.6 percent of games - a difference of about two victories in an
82-game season.
"Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters
white, you'd win a few more games," Mr. Wolfers said.
The N.B.A.'s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the
actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection
system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training
purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league's study was less
formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for
only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007),
and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran
status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying
which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul.
The N.B.A. study reported no significant differences in how often
white and black referees collectively called fouls on white and black
players. Mr. Stern said he was therefore convinced "that there's no
demonstration of any bias here - based upon more robust and more data
that was available to us because we keep that data."
Added Joel Litvin, the league's president for basketball operations,
"I think the analysis that we did can stand on its own, so I don't
think our view of some of the things in Wolfers's paper and some
questions we have actually matter as much as the analysis we did."
Mr. Litvin explained the N.B.A.'s refusal to release its underlying
data for independent examination by saying: "Even our teams don't know
the data we collect as to a particular referee's call tendencies on
certain types of calls. There are good reasons for this. It's
proprietary. It's personnel data at the end of the day."
The percentage of black officials in the N.B.A. has increased in the
past several years, to 38 percent of 60 officials this season from 34
percent of 58 officials two years ago. Mr. Stern and Mr. Litvin said
that the rise was coincidental because the league does not consider
race in the hiring process.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the
annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the
American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then
submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal
peer review before consideration by an economic journal.
Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have
found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other
parts of American society.
"There's bias on the basketball court," Mr. Wolfers said, "but less
than when you're trying to hail a cab at midnight."
Pat Borzi contributed reporting from Minneapolis and John Eligon from
East Rutherford, N.J.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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== 1 of 1 ==
Date: Wed, May 2 2007 12:27 pm
From: Scott
Interesting article about how racism works its way into all kinds of
things -- but it should be noted that this is really about
subconscious racism (as stated in the article) so it is more
reflective of racism in society (both black/white) as reflected in the
NBA -- No need to go out boycotting the NBA (editorial comment).
The actual study is posted in the files section.
I am curious as to what conference attendees think about this and how
it might affect your congregations.
------------------------------------------------
May 2, 2007
Study of N.B.A. Sees Racial Bias in Calling Fouls
By ALAN SCHWARZ
An academic study of the National Basketball Association, whose
playoffs continue tonight, suggests that a racial bias found in other
parts of American society has existed on the basketball court as well.
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a Cornell
University graduate student says that, during the 13 seasons from 1991
through 2004, white referees called fouls at a greater rate against
black players than against white players.
Justin Wolfers, an assistant professor of business and public policy
at the Wharton School, and Joseph Price, a Cornell graduate student in
economics, found a corresponding bias in which black officials called
fouls more frequently against white players, though that tendency was
not as strong. They went on to claim that the different rates at which
fouls are called "is large enough that the probability of a team
winning is noticeably affected by the racial composition of the
refereeing crew assigned to the game."
N.B.A. Commissioner David Stern said in a telephone interview that the
league saw a draft copy of the paper last year, and was moved to do
its own study this March using its own database of foul calls, which
specifies which official called which foul.
"We think our cut at the data is more powerful, more robust, and
demonstrates that there is no bias," Mr. Stern said.
Three independent experts asked by The Times to examine the Wolfers-
Price paper and materials released by the N.B.A. said they considered
the Wolfers-Price argument far more sound. The N.B.A. denied a request
for its underlying data, even with names of officials and players
removed, because it feared that the league's confidentiality agreement
with referees could be violated if the identities were determined
through box scores.
The paper by Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price has yet to undergo formal peer
review before publication in an economic journal, but several
prominent academic economists said it would contribute to the growing
literature regarding subconscious racism in the workplace and
elsewhere, such as in searches by the police.
The three experts who examined the Wolfers-Price paper and the
N.B.A.'s materials were Ian Ayres of Yale Law School, the author of
"Pervasive Prejudice?" and an expert in testing for how subtle racial
bias, also known as implicit association, appears in interactions
ranging from the setting of bail amounts to the tipping of taxi
drivers; David Berri of California State University-Bakersfield, the
author of "The Wages of Wins," which analyzes sports issues using
statistics; and Larry Katz of Harvard University, the senior editor of
the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
"I would be more surprised if it didn't exist," Mr. Ayres said of an
implicit association bias in the N.B.A. "There's a growing consensus
that a large proportion of racialized decisions is not driven by any
conscious race discrimination, but that it is often just driven by
unconscious, or subconscious, attitudes. When you force people to make
snap decisions, they often can't keep themselves from subconsciously
treating blacks different than whites, men different from women."
Mr. Berri added: "It's not about basketball - it's about what happens
in the world. This is just the nature of decision-making, and when you
have an evaluation team that's so different from those being
evaluated. Given that your league is mostly African-American, maybe
you should have more African-American referees - for the same reason
that you don't want mostly white police forces in primarily black
neighborhoods."
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.
Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks and a vocal critic of
his league's officiating, said in a telephone interview after reading
the paper: "We're all human. We all have our own prejudice. That's the
point of doing statistical analysis. It bears it out in this
application, as in a thousand others."
Asked if he had ever suspected any racial bias among officials before
reading the study, Mr. Cuban said, "No comment."
Two veteran players who are African-American, Mike James of the
Minnesota Timberwolves and Alan Henderson of the Philadelphia 76ers,
each said that they did not think black or white officials had treated
them differently.
"If that's going on, then it's something that needs to be dealt with,"
James said. "But I've never seen it."
Two African-American coaches, Doc Rivers of the Boston Celtics and
Maurice Cheeks of the Philadelphia 76ers, declined to comment on the
paper's claims. Rod Thorn, the president of the New Jersey Nets and
formerly the N.B.A.'s executive vice president for basketball
operations, said: "I don't believe it. I think officials get the vast
majority of calls right. They don't get them all right. The vast
majority of our players are black."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price spend 41 pages accounting for such
population disparities and more than a dozen other complicating
factors.
For the 1991-92 through 2003-4 seasons, the authors analyzed every
player's box-score performance - minutes played, rebounds, shots made
and missed, fouls and the like - in the context of the racial
composition of the three-person crew refereeing that game. (The N.B.A.
did not release its record of calls by specific officials to either
Mr. Wolfers, Mr. Price or The Times, claiming it is kept for referee
training purposes only.)
Mr. Wolfers said that he and Mr. Price classified each N.B.A. player
and referee as either black or not black by assessing photographs and
speaking with an anonymous former referee, and then using that
information to predict how an official would view the player. About a
dozen players could reasonably be placed in either category, but Mr.
Wolfers said the classification of those players did not materially
change the study's findings.
During the 13-season period studied, black players played 83 percent
of the minutes on the floor. With 68 percent of officials being white,
three-person crews were either entirely white (30 percent of the
time), had two white officials (47 percent), had two black officials
(20 percent) or were entirely black (3 percent).
Mr. Stern said that the race of referees had never been considered
when assembling crews for games.
With their database of almost 600,000 foul calls, Mr. Wolfers and Mr.
Price used a common statistical technique called multivariable
regression analysis, which can identify correlations between different
variables. The economists accounted for a wide range of factors: that
centers, who tend to draw more fouls, were disproportionately white;
that veteran players and All-Stars tended to draw foul calls at
different rates than rookies and non-stars; whether the players were
at home or on the road, as officials can be influenced by crowd noise;
particular coaches on the sidelines; the players' assertiveness on the
court, as defined by their established rates of assists, steals,
turnovers and other statistics; and more subtle factors like how some
substitute players enter games specifically to commit fouls.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price examined whether otherwise similar black and
white players had fouls-per-minute rates that varied with the racial
makeup of the refereeing crew.
"Across all of these specifications," they write, "we find that black
players receive around 0.12-0.20 more fouls per 48 minutes played (an
increase of 2 ½-4 ½ percent) when the number of white referees
officiating a game increases from zero to three."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price also report a statistically significant
correlation with decreases in points, rebounds and assists, and a rise
in turnovers, when players performed before primarily opposite-race
officials.
"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."
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price claim that these changes are enough to
affect game outcomes. Their results suggested that for each additional
black starter a team had, relative to its opponent, a team's chance of
winning would decline from a theoretical 50 percent to 49 percent and
so on, a concept mirrored by the game evidence: the team with the
greater share of playing time by black players during those 13 years
won 48.6 percent of games - a difference of about two victories in an
82-game season.
"Basically, it suggests that if you spray-painted one of your starters
white, you'd win a few more games," Mr. Wolfers said.
The N.B.A.'s reciprocal study was conducted by the Segal Company, the
actuarial consulting firm which designed the in-house data-collection
system the league uses to identify patterns for referee-training
purposes, to test for evidence of bias. The league's study was less
formal and detailed than an academic paper, included foul calls for
only two and a half seasons (from November 2004 through January 2007),
and did not consider differences among players by position, veteran
status and the like. But it did have the clear advantage of specifying
which of the three referees blew his whistle on each foul.
The N.B.A. study reported no significant differences in how often
white and black referees collectively called fouls on white and black
players. Mr. Stern said he was therefore convinced "that there's no
demonstration of any bias here - based upon more robust and more data
that was available to us because we keep that data."
Added Joel Litvin, the league's president for basketball operations,
"I think the analysis that we did can stand on its own, so I don't
think our view of some of the things in Wolfers's paper and some
questions we have actually matter as much as the analysis we did."
Mr. Litvin explained the N.B.A.'s refusal to release its underlying
data for independent examination by saying: "Even our teams don't know
the data we collect as to a particular referee's call tendencies on
certain types of calls. There are good reasons for this. It's
proprietary. It's personnel data at the end of the day."
The percentage of black officials in the N.B.A. has increased in the
past several years, to 38 percent of 60 officials this season from 34
percent of 58 officials two years ago. Mr. Stern and Mr. Litvin said
that the rise was coincidental because the league does not consider
race in the hiring process.
Mr. Wolfers and Mr. Price are scheduled to present their paper at the
annual meetings of the Society of Labor Economists on Friday and the
American Law and Economics Association on Sunday. They will then
submit it to the National Bureau of Economic Research and for formal
peer review before consideration by an economic journal.
Both men cautioned that the racial discrimination they claim to have
found should be interpreted in the context of bias found in other
parts of American society.
"There's bias on the basketball court," Mr. Wolfers said, "but less
than when you're trying to hail a cab at midnight."
Pat Borzi contributed reporting from Minneapolis and John Eligon from
East Rutherford, N.J.
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
==============================================================================
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