Earlier this week, a business school professor and an economics graduate student released preliminary results of a study on whether there is racial bias in NBA refereeing. The study, which is very interesting, has also stirred up quite a controversy.
The study, which analyzed every game from 1991 to 2004, using box scores to determine the racial composition of the refereeing crew and players on the court, found that:
the rate at which fouls are earned by black players is largely invariant to the racial composition of the refereeing crew. By contrast the rate at which fouls are earned by white players responds quite strongly to referee race. Further regression-based tests yield a similar pattern (see in particular the coefficient on %white referees in Table 4), suggesting that the impact of the biases we document is on white players, who are either favored by white referees, or disfavored by black referees.
The study argues that this referee bias largely explains why white starters have a higher winning percentage than black starters (51.8% versus 49.7%) and why teams give that blacks more playing time than their opponents win games less frequently (48.6%).
The study's authors don't provide an explanation for the referee bias, although they point to economic theory that suggests unconscious discrimination exists. It could be that black referees are penalizing whites; it could be that white referees are rewarding whites. Regardless, they argue, the net result has a discriminatory bias against teams which are more likely to play black players.
It's almost comical watching the media cover this story, which has been mostly panned. The most amusing thing to witness is when they interview current NBA players about the study. What NBA player in the world is going to criticize refs? That's a big no-no in the world of sports. Second of all, most NBA players probably aren't experts in statistical analysis. Finally, according to the study, black referees are actually more likely to call fouls on black players. It's just that they are even more likely to call falls on whites (or whites less likely to call fouls on whites). The study's argument is that since most NBA referees are white, the bias works against teams that plays more blacks.
Whatever the reasons for and effects of the disparity, it is indisputable that they exist, and it is extremely unlikely that they are due to random chance. The study is an interesting and important contribution to the study of implicit biases.
It is clear that the study has identified a set of facts which have made some people very uncomfortable. But the fact that it makes them uncomfortable does not mean we should ignore the study. In fact, perhaps it increases the study's importance. Discomfort, after all, need not be a permanent condition. Things do change, and sometimes for the better.
One blogger showing signs of such discomfort is Steve Sailer, a proponent of the genetic roots of income (and other) inequality who argues that race determines athletic success, particularly in basketball. (He should be surprised to learn that teams that play more blacks are less likely to win than teams that play whites – a fact that does not bode well for his theory that athletic success is rooted in genetics and can be explained by biodiversity.) After a somewhat rambling refutation of the New York Times' coverage of the study, Sailer resurrects one of his favorite myths:
If you are interested in a blatant example of old guard stupidity in sports having a disparate impact by ethnicity that the media relentlessly ignored for decades because it was benefiting a minority group, here's my 2003 article "Baseball's Hidden Ethnic Bias."
Sailer sees the study and its media coverage as yet more proof of bias against whites. I have to give the man credit for being consistently obsessed, yet it seems sometimes that there is little room in his world for dispassionate analysis, a fact which is disappointing because the topics that interest him are so very important to our nation.
(By the way, the short reply to Sailer's baseball essay that it is completely full of bullshit. He's a man without facts on this issue. And I'll be posting on this site in the next few days the facts that prove my case. Hopefully, he'll see the mistakes he made in his analysis. Although he's a guy with strong opinions, my optimistic sense of human nature hopes that he's a guy who can see his mistakes and might one day be able to play a role resolving rather than escalating racial and ethnic problems.)
I hope there's more studies like this one on the NBA. Professional sports provides a common frame of reference for so many Americans, so it is hardly surprising that we often discuss national issues within the context of its playing fields. It's not just race. Sure, you have Rush Limbaugh and Jimmy The Greek on race, but you also have Tim Hardaway and Jon Ameci on homosexuality, and Pat Tillman and Mohammed Ali on politics. And the more we engage with each other as a nation on these types of issues, the better all of our lives will be.
© Jed Lewison