But what happens when we look at fouls?
A coming paper by a University of Pennsylvania professor and a CornellUniversity 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."
Now Benjamin Disraeli said "You can prove anything with statistics." Mark Twain said "there are lies, damned lies -- and statistics." So I will acknowledge that statistical data can be misleading. Then again, sometimes statistics will contradict the things that we think we see, that things that we have just come to accept as true. (Memes, really.)
Here's a link to the whole paper, if you'd rather.
Now, a quick Google News search indicates that this is not the first bombshell dropped by Professor Wolfers. Maybe I just missed it, but this one didn't seem to make so much noise.
3 comments:
Wow.
I found this especially cool because I'm taking Probability and Statistics this semester AND I'm a huge Boston Celtics fan. I'm sure there might be some subconscious racism here and there but things like that are hard to measure since there are so many other factors that could throw off your data. For instance, maybe it's not that white refs are racist, maybe they are just terrible at reffing. I've noticed that many times white referees just make bad calls in general. Kind of like that time Paul Pierce drove to the hoop, was thrown down to the ground, landed on his head and smashed his teeth: No foul called. All white refs. Possibly racism. Or maybe since it's mostly a black man's game these days, black refs make better calls. It's hard to tell.
ONE thing is for sure.
out of the current 60 referees in the NBA, the one female referee (who happens to be black), Violet Palmer, makes THE WORST calls everytime. Perhaps we should explore sexism as well. Or maybe she just hates the Celtics and blows the game for them every time. We will never know.
www.probasketballrefs.com/Default.aspx?tabid=113
If I was a referee, that would be my biggest challenge. Not rooting for my favorite team and helping them out
During the two years I played basketball, I never thought about referees making baised calls.
It makes sense, however, that something like that might actually occur.
Supposedly it takes a person less than ten tenths of a second to judge another person. If a white ref already had subconcious rascism, maybe that split-second judgement could lead to a more biased call.
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