Harvard Professor Told 'Not to Publish' Study of Racial Bias in Police Shootings - Once He Did, 'All Hell Broke Loose'
“To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.” This pithy maxim perfectly encapsulates today’s delusional woke movement.
In another illustration of this truism, a black Harvard professor has been attacked by liberal mobs for publishing research contradicting the left’s race-baiting, anti-police narrative.
In 2016, economist Roland Fryer published a study concluding there is no evidence of racial bias in police shootings.
The report, titled “An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force,” found that “on non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police.”
However, it said, “on the most extreme use of force — officer-involved shootings — we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account.”
The study ignited an immediate, vitriolic backlash as “all hell broke loose,” Fryer told The Free Press’ Bari Weiss last week.
The report contradicts the foundational presumption pushed by race-hustling grifters such as Black Lives Matter, which claims the police shoot black suspects at a far higher rate than other groups because of racial animus.
“I collected a lot of data. We collected millions of observations on everyday use of force that wasn’t lethal. … And it was in this moment, 2016, that I realized people lose their minds when they don’t like the result.”
“So what my paper showed … was that yes, we saw some bias in the low-level uses of force — everyday pushing up against cars and things like that. People seemed to like that result,” he said.
“But we didn’t find any racial bias in police shootings. Now that was really surprising to me because I expected to see it.”
WARNING: The following videos contain vulgar language that some viewers may find offensive.
“We didn’t find any racial bias in police shootings.”
Economist Roland Fryer tells @bariweiss at @uaustinorg about the 2016 paper on policing bias that led to his need for an “armed guard” for over a month and the academics who told him not to publish. https://t.co/dklaGtiMxT pic.twitter.com/95FbOe3jhJ
— The Free Press (@TheFP) February 15, 2024
Fryer said the investigation was conducted by eight, full-time research assistants over about a year.
The professor said he did the study a second time using eight new research assistants because he was so astonished at the findings and wanted to confirm the results.
“When I found this surprising result, I hired eight fresh ones and redid it to make sure,” he said. “They came up with the same exact answer. And I thought it was robust.
“And I went to go give it, and my God, all hell broke loose.”
According to Fryer, just minutes after posting the 104-page report, he was viciously attacked online.
“It was a 104-page, dense academic economics paper with a 150-page appendix, OK?” he said. “It was posted for four minutes when I got my first email — ‘This is full of s***. It doesn’t make any sense.’
“And I wrote back, ‘How’d you read it that fast? That’s amazing! You are a genius.’
“And I had colleagues take me to the side and say, ‘Don’t publish this. You’ll ruin your career.’ And I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘What’s wrong with it?'”
The economist said he asked his colleagues if they believed the first part of his study, which found some evidence suggesting potential racial bias with regard to nonlethal use of police force. Fryer said his colleagues said they believed that part.
However, when he asked if they believed the second part of his study — which found no evidence of racial bias in police shootings — they refused to give him a straight answer.
Fryer said his colleagues told him, “Well, the issue is they just don’t fit together. We like the first one, but you should publish the second one another time.”
“I said, ‘Let me ask this: If the second part about the police shootings — this is a literal conversation — I said to them, ‘If the second part showed bias, do you think I should publish it then?’ And they said, ‘Yeah. Then it would make sense,'” he said.
“And I said, ‘I guarantee you I’ll publish it. We’ll see what happens.'”
What happened, Fryer said, is that he required around-the-clock police protection after publishing his study due to the barrage of threats he received in response.
“I lived under police protection for about 30 or 40 days,” he recalled. “I had a 7-day-old daughter at the time … So I was going to the grocery store to get diapers with an armed guard. It was crazy. It was really, truly crazy.”
Check out the full interview below:
There are several disturbing revelations spotlighted by this nauseating incident.
One is that the left seems to relish stoking racial division and gets violently offended at anything that could ease that conflict.
The second tragic observation is that academia — especially “prestigious” schools such as Harvard and the rest of the Ivy League — has devolved into festering petri dishes that promote toxic left-wing propaganda. Between that and the pervasive rot of affirmative action, once-eminent academic institutions have lost all credibility.
The third disquieting finding is that this incident confirms speculation that public opinion doesn’t happen organically, but is instead shaped by institutions — such as schools, Hollywood and the media — in an insidious and sinister manner.
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