Post-racial officials finding it's difficult to hold gains

Houston Chronicle article "Post-racial officials finding it's difficult to hold gains" (September 23rd, 2010) concludes that "black is black, white is white," and denotes the end of post-racial relations. Corrections suggests it gives little data for its conclusion.

A mere four years ago, for example, Americans celebrated the rise of two hope-filled post-racial stars: District of Columbia Mayor Adrian Fenty and Newark's Mayor Cory Booker. Each was touted as a young, energetic, post-civil-rights-era savior in the mold of then-Sen. Obama.

Multiracial coalitions of voters elected them both. Each managed to transcend race-based politics and make gains worthy of national praise regarding schools, crime, housing, economic developing and other issues that are either nonracial or should be.

Yet despite those successes, Fenty was voted out of office on Sept. 14. White voters still supported him almost two-to-one, but black voters in the majority-black city turned on him by a similarly wide margin.

What the article does not state is that Adrian Fenty lost to another black man, Vincent C. Gray. When one black man beats another black man in a Mayoral race, it's rather odd, without including more data, to conclude that skin color was a factor in the political race. Individual candidate race holds no predictive power in a simple regression (there is no variance in candidate race).

One number can't illustrate teacher effectiveness

Los Angeles Times article "One number can't illustrate teacher effectiveness" (August 25th, 2010) criticizes Richard Buddin's scoring of Los Angeles teachers, arguing that it isn't taking everything into account and that there's an "ethical issue" publishing his research:

Given analytic weaknesses, the ethical question that arises is whether The Times is on sufficiently firm empirical ground to publish a single number, purporting to gauge the sum total of a teacher's effect on children.

Corrections had a number of issues with the article's criticism of Buddin's procedure. However, the more interesting issue was the author's raising of "ethicality" in the Times decision to publish Buddin's research. Theory suggests that unions may raise short-run pay but they flatten skill differentials. Perhaps to that end, teacher's unions have nearly uniformly opposed the ranking of teachers and anything that might help that process.

One reason for this is so fellow travelers might then criticize any empirical ranking that breaks a union's power by encouraging best practices and getting rid of bad teachers. What, then, might a strategy be to break this cartel of unions denying statistics, and education professors criticizing studies using bad statistics? To publish the best studies we can using the statistics we are given. Why?

Let us imagine that there are two types of teachers, good teachers, and bad teachers. They both have the same baseline utility. Both their utilities may be decreased by increased supervision. However, given that they'll be ranked, good teachers would rather have good statistics. The idea is displayed graphically below (click to enlarge).

What might this do? If they aren't being graded, both good teachers and bad teachers prefer to obstruct good statistics being collected. However, if they are being graded, good teachers now prefer good statistics while bad teachers like them even less. However, a wedge has now been created, and it's an empirical question whether or not good teachers will be able to outvote bad teachers in the quest for the collection better statistics.

In this vein, publishing well-done, competent research that admits its flaws (which an article criticizing it then rehashes) and encourages the destruction of union power to the detriment of bad teachers and benefit of students would appear the only "moral" choice.

Case of soup-kitchen thief fuels critics of three-strikes laws

Christian-Science Monitor article "Case of soup-kitchen thief fuels critics of three-strikes laws" (August 19th, 2010) discusses California's three-strikes law, a law that requires an individual be sentenced to life imprisonment after being convicted of three felonies. It leaves relatively undiscussed the statistical reasons for such a law.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza said Taylor’s sentence was one of many third-conviction cases that brought “disproportionate” sentences and “resulted in, if not unintended, then at least unanticipated, consequences.”

[...]

But stories like Taylor’s are useful in illustrating the problems behind the law's implementation, says Ms. Levinson. The challenge for critics will be trying to prove that society does not benefit from decades-long or even life sentences for nonviolent – or at least not serious – crimes.

Corrections suggests that it may make sense to permanently incarcerate individuals who have been convicted of only minor crimes previously, because the likelihood that they have committed unobserved and serious crimes is high. It's worth noting that, truncating the distribution of claims at the 90th percentile, burglars appear to commit about 38.1 burglaries per year (Visher 1986, reported by NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research). The Senate Congressional record from 2004 indicates that rapists commit between 8 and 10 rapes on average, before being caught (Congressional Record, page 22999). Car Thieves in England appear to steal 45 cars before they're 18, and 94 when they're older (Car Theft: The Offender's Perspective, Light, Nee and Ingham, 1993, page 11). Between 545 and 707 metric tons of cocaine was shipped toward the United States in 2007. Two-hundred and fifty-nine metric tons were caught by U.S. authorities, either internally, at arrival zones, or in transit. Given the discrepancy, Corrections conjectures that distributors of cocaine go through hundreds, or thousands of transactions without being caught.

Perhaps some of these statistics are individually not dependable, but their consistency and magnitude serve as more general suggestive evidence. Given someone has been convicted of one crime, the likelihood that they have committed an order of magnitude more without having been caught appears rather large. The idea that crimes someone is convicted for are simply a signal for the crimes they have committed is the impetus for the point Corrections makes here.

Let us imagine, before we have caught and convicted an individual, that we have some probability distribution that we believe they are sampled from, some likelihood that they are a career criminal, irredeemable recidivists. This is our "prior probability," a distribution between zero and one, that someone will be a recidivist, displayed graphically below (the image is rather small, click to enlarge).

Someone's criminal act or acts provide a data distribution that the person will be a recidivist. One example of this might be their being caught and convicted of breaking into a building. Our hypothetical probability distribution we might place that someone has committed a major crime given they have been caught committing a serious crime like breaking an entering is displayed graphically below


We have distribution of the data on the probability of another criminal act, displayed graphically below (click to enlarge).



We can combine our data on our parameters of interest with our prior beliefs about the parameters, in this case the likelihood that someone will commit another criminal act (click to enlarge)



We can summarize bayesian update by displaying our prior, data, and posterior in one graph, displayed graphically below (click to enlarge). For those interested, in this case we took data to be drawn from a binomial distribution, and assumed its conjugate prior distribution, a beta distribution (therefore making the prior distribution is a beta distribution--of course, our assumptions are without loss of generality, merely for mathematical convenience).



To summarize the point Corrections is making: given that someone has committed and for two felonies previously and has been convicted of a third felony, the likelihood that they have committed dozens, or hundreds of felonies and crimes is high. Convicting and imprisoning these career criminals for life, for their three observed, and dozens of unobserved felonies and crimes, may simply be the optimal response of a justice system that is sentencing people for their likely crimes (the likely crime they were convicted, and the likely crimes they were not caught for).

For those concerned that we are convicting individuals for crimes they have only likely committed, we remind them that this is precisely what the judicial system does currently. The question is how to decide the threshold for punishment.

Corrections finally notes that it is possible punishments already take this into account--that is, the penalty for marijuana distribution, in locations (excepting those with marijuana legalization or decriminalization) are deliberately punishing crimes for which one has not yet been caught. Our discussion took place under the assumption that punishments reflect only the crime for which one was convicted.

California Blacks Split Over Marijuana Measure

New York Times article "California Blacks Split Over Marijuana Measure" (July 19th, 2010) provides a very incorrect conclusion about alleged discrimination against African Americans in marijuana arrests:

Rob MacCoun, a professor of law and public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied marijuana use in America, said there was little doubt that blacks — particularly black men — bore the brunt of arrests for marijuana.

“The arrest statistics are disproportionate with respect to African-Americans and disproportionate with respect to use,” said Mr. MacCoun. “And that’s very hard to justify in any way.”

On the contrary, it's easy to justify. For example, if African-Americans who smoke marijuana are conspicuous in their dress, while caucasians who smoke are not. In this case, even if 40% of both African-Americans and 40% of caucasians smoked marijuana, we would expect African-Americans to be stopped more often on suspicion of possession. Why? Because African-Americans arise suspicion at a higher rate than caucasians due to (continuing with the example) their dress code. So conditional on suspecting marijuana use, a police officer will be correct more often with African Americans. Certainly the police arrest those who arise the highest suspicion first--otherwise they would be wasting more of their time on innocent people, and so with sufficient constraints on how many people they can arrest, we would expect police to arrest a higher proportion of African-Americans than caucasians.

Nobel Laureate Gary Becker says immigrants should pay

Daily Telegraph article "Nobel Laureate Gary Becker says immigrants should pay" (June 16th, 2010) suggests an interesting revenue-raiser for governments:

Professor Gary Becker will say that it would be up to individual governments to set a price, adding that a charge of $50,000 (£34,000) per immigrant could generate $50bn a year in the US.
The same sum could generate about £17bn a year in Britain, based on Office for National Statistics data which showed 503,000 immigrants arrived between October 2008 and September 2009.

The Telegraph's re-calculations from Becker's figures do not make sense if the Law of Demand holds. Once you raise the price of immigration (from $0 to $50,000), fewer immigrants will enter the country legally. Thus, the revenue to the government is strictly less than the number of immigrants times the entry price.

This policy may have two additional effects: 1) it may increase the number of illegal immigrants and 2) it may reduce the amount of discrimination against members of large immigrant minorities. The first point is simply because the cost of legal entry has increased, so some who were willing to go through the legal system before will be unwilling to do so now. They may instead substitute into illegal immigration. One positive spillover to illegal immigrants, however, will be that the perception of immigrants will improve, as Becker notes:

He said the programme would also reduce opposition to immigration, by eliminating the sense that immigrants were getting "a free ride"

Because it will be difficult to distinguish those getting a free ride from those not doing so, the reputation of all immigrants (legal or not) will improve.

America's 'casualty gap'

Los Angeles Times opinion editorial "America's 'casualty gap'" (May 28th, 2010) reports the difference between the percentage of total wartime casualties suffered by members of poor communities relative to members of rich communities.

Nationally, in the Korean, Vietnam and Iraq wars, communities in the lowest three income deciles suffered 35%, 36% and 38% of the casualties, respectively. Yet communities in the top three income deciles sustained significantly fewer casualties — 25%, 26% and 23% of the casualties, respectively.

The United States has a volunteer army. Soldiers are compensated by regular pay, hazard pay, enlistment bonuses, government benefits, and well-earned gratitude from present and future generations. When the United States has a volunteer army, which it has since December 1972, the last month in which an individual was conscripted into the U.S. Armed Forces, it is an exercise in futility to argue any sort of discrimination. Individuals freely choose the Armed Services over their other options. They further choose their branch of service, as well as their military occupational specialty, generally speaking. If poorer people choose the military, it would appear, in a rough analysis, that they are benefitting more from its presence.

This may be especially true during wartime. Corrections cobbled together military pay for E-2 (an enlisted pay-grade corresponding to a Private in the Army, PFC in the Marine Corps, Airman in the Air Force, and Seaman Apprentice in the Navy and Coast Guard. It is a pay grade relatively rapidly achieved for enlisted men. Military pay sheets for every year were not easily available. Corrections imputed pay for those years in which it is not, denoted by a circle. Years featuring a war in which more than one-hundred Americans died (as well as the first three years of Operation Enduring Freedom, in which fewer than 100 Americans died) are denoted in red, while years without such a conflict are denoted in blue. It appears to Corrections, generally speaking, that post-draft wartime has caused more rapid increases in inflation-adjusted military pay. Therefore, it is difficult to discern without more careful calculus whether or not individuals are being compensated for the risks they are taking--with heterogeneous valuations, we might expect wartime military service to be better for poorer Americans who choose to serve, rather than worse. Our data is displayed graphically below (click to enlarge).

We note the sharp spike in pay occurred when Richard Nixon was engaged with the idea of an all-volunteer army.

Corrections should further add that including Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn in their analysis, without including the enrollment, average length of service, and rate of ascent figures for each income decile is egregiously misleading. In fact, both the lower class and the upper class are underrepresented in enrollment--this article's analysis would suggest that the middle class suffers disproportionately the costs of war.

In addition, a low-income recruit may not be identical to a high-income recruit, making it difficult to compare their wartime outcomes directly. For example, it is well known that income is correlated with education. If the army recruits more "high-quality" soldiers from higher income brackets, then we would expect these "high-quality" recruits to more quickly achieve higher and higher military rank, making them potentially less likely to be in the line of fire than their low quality counterparts. In this sense the article may be taking issue with the fact that more intelligent soldiers are less likely to die in battle. Similarly, if the poor serve longer than the rich, these statistics could be driven by the relative density of poor servicemen. Ultimately, the number of confounds in this analysis make it completely incredible.

Five myths about college admissions

Washington Post article "Five myths about college admissions" (May 23rd, 2010) offers a silly argument while claiming discrimination. Specifically it cites as a myth the idea that: "Admissions officers have figured out how to reward merit above wealth and connections." Attempting to dispel the myth, it states that:

A 2004 Century Foundation study found that at the most selective universities and colleges, 74 percent of students come from the richest quarter of the population, while just 3 percent come from the bottom quarter. Rich kids can't possibly be 25 times as likely to be smart as poor kids, so wealth and connections must still matter.

This argument is disingenuous. There are a number of reasons why we might expect poorer individuals would do more poorly at University than wealthier students, on average. Human capital accumulation does not begin in college. Cognitive and non-cognitive skill development start at a young age. Conditional on wealth alone, we should expect wealthier students to be better adapted to college. We should further see budget constraints being less impactful.

Furthermore, the Post's statistics are abysmal. In order for us to have zero poor students going to College, all rich students have to be is some tiny epsilon smarter than the smartest poor student. A ratio of three percent to seventy five percent does not have to be generated by a "high income" distribution with a mean twenty-five times higher than that of the "low income" distribution.

New York Minorities More Likely to Be Frisked

New York Times article "New York Minorities More Likely to Be Frisked" (May 12th, 2010) speaks of New York's Terry stops and how minorities are more often subjected to them. The article largely contains interviews of individuals who are against this disparity. However, the data the article cites indicates that police may be efficiently using discrimination.

According to the analysis of the 2009 raw data by the Center for Constitutional Rights, nearly 490,000 blacks and Latinos were stopped by the police on the streets last year, compared with 53,000 whites.

But once stopped, the arrest rates were virtually the same. Whites were arrested in slightly more than 6 percent of the stops, blacks in slightly fewer than 6 percent.

A check on whether or not there is discrimination is if the marginal Terry stop yields the same arrest rate. If marginally frisked whites are arrested at two times the rate than marginally frisked blacks, then this is an indication that there is statistical discrimination against blacks (not whites!)--it would be more efficient to stop more whites. But if marginal stops in the two groups yielded the same arrest rates, then we are efficiently discriminating.

While we cannot observe margins, the fact that we are gaining the same proportion of arrests post-stop is encouraging--if the average stop is approximately the marginal, then the article gives evidence that police in New York are discriminating efficiently.

Getting even on crack vs. powder

Boston Globe editorial "Getting even on crack vs. powder" (March 27th, 2010) discusses a possible gap between legal penalties for possession of crack cocaine and possession of powdered cocaine. It discusses the penalties between the two, and how there was a "100-to-1" penalty for holding crack. Corrections sees the matter as slightly more nuanced than the Globe allows.

The political wheels have begun to turn on correcting the imbalance in sentencing those who possess crack and powder cocaine, but more attention is necessary. Under current law, a person caught with five grams of crack gets the same five-year mandatory prison sentence as someone possessing 500 grams of powder. The 100-to-1 crack-to-powder ratio was enacted at a time that crack was thought to be far more addictive than powder and would spark unprecedented crime waves. Studies long ago disproved both notions, but the law remains on the books, and its burden falls disproportionately on black defendants. More than 80 percent of those incarcerated for possession of crack are black.

We noted in a previous post that addictive substances such as crack cocaine were a technological advancement on cocaine. It allowed for small cheap, unobtrusive, mass distribution in a way cocaine did not, a point lifted from Roland Fryer, Paul Heaton, Steven Levitt, and Kevin Murphy’s 2005 NBER working paper “Measuring the Impact of Crack Cocaine.” It is not immediately clear whether or not this phenomenally destructive drug would have been as prevalent as it was were cocaine itself not illegal. On the one hand, cocaine is an input into crack cocaine production. On the other hand, cocaine is a substitute to crack cocaine itself, one whose competitive availability is likely increased much more than crack cocaine’s, in light of crack’s popularity being in part due to cocaine’s inefficient illegal distribution system.

Crack cocaine is a technological advancement on cocaine--distribution is made easier. Therefore, it may make sense to "tax" it at a higher rate, if one catches individuals who deal in it much less often. That is, if one is caught half as often with crack cocaine, then a doubling of the sentence may "equalize" the penalties between the two crimes, an objective the Globe seems to pursue.

Corrections might further add that the law-race discrepancy may have less to do with politician racism than it might have to do with endogenous selection into drug markets. Let us imagine that individuals have three choices: to work for wages in the "above ground" economy (legal), to work selling powdered cocaine (powder), and to work selling crack cocaine (crack). Every job choice has two wages that are taken as a bundle--the average wage per hour and the expected years in prison one receives. A fortiori, assume wages are the same between the two groups.

Finally, imagine that while the wages of both whites and blacks are the same, blacks lose less from prison (as we shall see, a more reasonable assumption is that their outside wages are different). Let us say that a "conversion factor" between years in prison and wage is $2/year for whites and $1/year for blacks.

Then we display our hypothetical wages graphically below (click to enlarge):



In this case, we should see blacks specializing in crack, even though the sentence is higher, while whites split between legal work and powdered cocaine. The law itself caused blacks to enter into crack, rather than attempting to punish them unfairly. It's not clear whether or not sentencing caused racial segregation of this particular crime or discrimination by politicians caused the disparity in sentencing.

Finally and briefly, we might view this slightly differently and come up with an even more interesting result. Imagine that blacks and whites are two agents producing one of three goods--legal work, powdered cocaine, or crack cocaine. Each individual has an endowment of two inputs--money, and sentencing time. In this assumption, blacks have a larger endowment of the input "sentencing time," so they specialize in the good that is relatively more intensive in sentencing time. If we eliminate the disparity, then the rents they were accruing because they held more of a relatively rarer input go away--blacks could be made worse off if we eliminate the disparity by Stolper-Samuelson Theorem (note that eliminating the disparity essentially floods the market with an infinite amount of "sentencing time" and returns to possessing it become zero). Stolper-Samuelson gives the idea behind why an unskilled worker in a country such as the U.S. may have their standard of living harmed by international trade because they are much less rare an input.

Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn't Bark

Jewish Daily Forward article "Antisemitism and This Recession: The Dog That Didn't Bark" (March 24th, 2010) speaks of how this recession is an exception, in that a connection between individuals who practice Judaism and economic downturns is normally made. Corrections suggests that if anything, the opposite is the case, and that Jewish bankers are mentioned when GDP goes up, but bankers in general are mentioned when GDP goes down.

With unemployment stuck at about 10%, and few expecting this to change anytime soon, we are still suffering the effects of a cataclysmic recession, one that seems to have its origins, in good part, in the nation’s financial institutions. Not surprisingly, Jews have pricked up their ears, waiting for the howls of the antisemitic hounds.

Corrections used Lexis-Nexis to find any mentions of "Jewish Banker" since 1976 in major global news sources. We used Google's news search to find news articles on "bankers" over the same period. Google's news search was used because Lexis-Nexis had too many results to count for "banker." We expect our results to be robust to this methodology. We then compared the difference in mentions of Jewish bankers to difference in log GDP. If an decrease in U.S. GDP was met with a increase in the mentions of "Jewish Banker" in news sources, we expect there to be a negative correlation between them. To make sure there was a connection between bankers and GDP at all, we also used our Google search. We display the results graphically below.

First, we have U.S. GDP and the number of "Jewish Banker" mentions in Lexis-Nexis over time (click to enlarge).



Second, we have the difference in log GDP against the difference in number of mentions of "Bankers" (click to enlarge).



Finally, we have the difference in log GDP against the difference in number of mentions of "Jewish Bankers" (click to enlarge).



As it turns out, the correlation between difference in log GDP and difference in number of mentions of "Jewish Banker" is .0053. The correlation between difference in log GDP and difference in the number of mentions of "Banker" is -.0328. This would suggest that while "bankers" are mentioned more in times of low GDP, "Jewish Bankers" are mentioned more in times of high GDP.

The Forward claims that this is a recession was a case of "the dog that didn't bark." Corrections would first ask to see the dog; in order for it not to bark, it had to exist in the first place. As the only evidence on the table is weak evidence that there is reverse-discrimination, a Correction appears to be in order.

Jim Crow Policing

By its title at least, a recent New York Times editorial--"Jim Crow Policing" (February 1st 2010)--suggests that the New York City police department is racist:

An overwhelming 84 percent of the stops in the first three-quarters of 2009 were of black or Hispanic New Yorkers. It is incredible how few of the stops yielded any law enforcement benefit. Contraband, which usually means drugs, was found in only 1.6 percent of the stops of black New Yorkers. For Hispanics, it was just 1.5 percent. For whites, who are stopped far less frequently, contraband was found 2.2 percent of the time.

In this analysis lies a fundamental mistake. We have not been provided with the correct statistic to determine whether the department is actually racist. Suppose, as in the figure below (click to enlarge), that minority members of the population and majority members of the population factually have a different distribution of "suspiciousness."

For example, the x-axis could represent the level of "suspicious dress" (let's suppose that this is not endogenous). The top chart represents the distribution of the majority population, while the bottom chart represents the distribution of the minority population.  In this example, there is little signaling differentiation among the minority population.  However, there is a great deal among the majority population.  In this sense, although the population averages are the same, and although the "level of suspiciousness" trigger is the same, a much larger proportion of the minority population appears suspicious.

If suspiciousness is correlated with commission of crimes, the New York Police would not be discriminating by stopping more black men.  Moreover, if suspiciousness in the majority population is so rare that it strongly signals criminal behavior, we would expect a larger proportion of police stops of majorities to lead to arrest.

Ultimately, what determines discrimination is not the average number of police stops that lead to arrest of minorities vs. majorities.  The proportion of marginal stops that lead to arrest , which we do not observe, determine the level of discrimination on the police force.  If the marginal (last) stop of a minority is less likely to lead to arrest than the marginal (last) stop of a majority, then the police department would be discriminating by stopping the minority. The only way the statistics we are given could actually lead us to the conclusion that the New York Police Department is racist is if they were the results of marginal, not average stops. This is not the case; the Times is mistaken.

Foreign interpreters hurt in battle find U.S. insurance benefits wanting

Los Angeles Times article "Foreign interpreters hurt in battle find U.S. insurance benefits wanting" (December 18th, 2009) provides an interesting observation without explanation. Specifically, Iraqi interpreters, injured in Iraq while running the same risks as American soldiers there, are not given the same benefits.

Payments intended to provide a decent standard of living in Iraq or Afghanistan leave the recipients below the poverty level in this country.

and

'When we were in Iraq, we were exactly like the soldiers,' Hadi said. 'Why are we treated differently now?'

After establishing that Iraqi interpreters are paid less, the article deepens the question. A normal, reflex response might be to say that Iraqi interpreters were paid less because they were worth less. After all, in competitive markets, people are paid at least what their second-best-offer is. The article gives evidence that interpreters were worth just as much, in terms of productivity, as U.S. soldiers on the ground.

Retired U.S. Army Col. Joel Armstrong, who served in Iraq and was a leading proponent of the 2007 troop buildup, or 'surge,' that helped reduce violence in the country, said Iraqi interpreters were crucial to the strategy's success.

'Without them, you really can't operate effectively as a force. It's just impossible,' Armstrong said.

Taking the Times at its word, the lapidary answer to Corrections is that when it comes to interpreters of Iraqi Arabic living in Iraq, the U.S. Army is all but a monopsony, a single consumer of a good for which there are many producers. In that vein, Iraqi interpreters will not be given their marginal product of labor, while U.S. soldiers, for which the U.S. Army is not the sole option, shall.

We note that even though contractors hire interpreters, we view them simply as intermediaries, and the article's concern about AIG disputing insurance payments will be reflected in higher ex ante wages rather than ex post coverage. This is true especially if private insurance can be purchased, while risk aversion makes the system less efficient.

10 years after its implementation, One Florida defies its critics

Miami Herald article "10 years after its implementation, One Florida defies its critics" (November 13th, 2009) may be correct in its noting that the critics of ending affirmative action were wrong, it fails to provide adequate evidence.

A decade after Gov. Jeb Bush announced his controversial plan to end race-based university admissions, the number of minority students statewide has risen, according to a Miami Herald/St. Petersburg Times review of enrollment figures.

`That certainly flies in the face of those who were predicting Armageddon all those years ago,' said universities chancellor Frank Brogan.

However, as the article notes, the number of minorities in Florida has also risen. It is unclear from the article if the ratio of the proportion of minorities in college to minorities in state and the proportion of whites in college to whites in state has similarly risen.

Additionally, the article notes that there has been an increase at some colleges but not in others. An increase at minorities at poorer schools with a decrease in minorities at better schools would be relevant.

Finally, we should note that the report fails to have any attempt at a proper counterfactual. If college minority representation around the country went up 25%, while at Florida it only rose by 15%, then it is possible that ending affirmative action was indeed a catastrophe.

The Herald's failure to report the ratio of minority proportion in college against minority proportion in state, the total quality units of minority education (rather total units), and a proper counterfactual gives it little latitude to conclude the ending of affirmative action did not drastically harm minorities. They do, perhaps, have latitude to condemn critics of ending affirmative action if their predictions were off-base.

Aurora neighbors buy golf course to preserve their view

Denver Post article "Aurora neighbors buy golf course to preserve their view" (December 1st, 2009) offers a curious possibility concerning discrimination that was not reported upon. It is merely a hypothetical possibility to be noted, (given a severely flawed media), rather than a reporting mistake per se.

As of today, residents of homes surrounding Heather Ridge Country Club can stop worrying that their scenic golf course will be turned into condominiums and high-rise apartments.

Three years after forming a special district to preserve the view, residents will take ownership of the golf course on East Iliff Avenue near Interstate 225. The group purchased the 90-acre golf course for $3.1 million and plans to spend another $1.5 million on improvements.

The article further notes the cost:

The 1,127 homeowners who now line the course will pay about $35 a month in taxes for bonds that are structured to be paid off in 30 years, although district members expect them to be paid off much sooner.

What better way to discriminate, if you live in an area that was, according to the 2000 Census, around 88% white, surrounded by an area that was 57% white? When the median household income for your census tract in 1999 was $40,907, this purchase of a golf course represents a 1% tax on income per year for those who don't value a golf course at anything.

If nonwhites don't particularly care for golf, then this is, hypothetically, a thoughtful way to discriminate and segregate.

Holder targets racial profiling in Detroit speech

The Detroit News article "Holder targets racial profiling in Detroit speech" (November 20th, 2009) highlights U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's misunderstanding of optimizing use of law enforcement resources.

"Racial profiling is simply not good law enforcement," said Holder, who told the crowd that he was racially profiled in the 1970s as a college student.

Holder is wrong. One should further say that racial profiling is not racially discriminatory, insofar as it is not marked by unfair distinction between different categories of people. This is not to say that racism isn't possible. Let us take traffic stops. The marginal arrest of a black man should yield the same result as a marginal arrest for a white man. Let us say that the police have 10 traffic stops to make, between 10 black and 10 whites. If the 7th worst black man is equally likely to be bad as the 3rd worst white man, then we can say that pulling over 70% of blacks and 30% of whites is not racist--it's treating all criminals equally.

Where are the Doctors to Implement ObamaCare?

Wall Street Journal editorial "Where are the Doctors to Implement ObamaCare?" (November 17th, 2009) is mistaken in its causal conclusion concerning the need for more minority doctors. Specifically, it drew the conclusion that because (obstensibly) white doctors tend to practice in white communities and minority doctors tend to practice in minority communities, that we need to emphasize more minority doctors because minority communities are more in need of doctors.

Furthermore, the physician workforce does not reflect the ethnicity of the population, underscoring health disparities that result in a higher incidence of chronic diseases and higher mortality in minority and low-income populations. Because minority physicians are more likely than non-minority physicians to practice in ethnically diverse communities, it is vital for medical schools to train a diverse workforce of physicians to practice with a clear emphasis on prevention, and with cultural competency and sensitivity.

Let's imagine a world in which doctors of different races are choosing where to serve. If we imagine a world with the weakest possible racism, where I don't care where/who I serve, but as a tiebreaker, all other things being equal, I use race. I'm not willing to pay one penny to be a racist. In essence, no one is a racist, and only uses race as a tiebreaker. Then we should still see perfect segregation for one race. The figure below indicates our matching model (click to enlarge).



But in this model, if we wanted to serve underserved minority areas, how might we go about doing it? The economic answer appears to be that we can train Ku Klux Klan members just as easily as we could Black Panthers. Why? Because it is only the marginal racist that matters. The KKK members will certainly serve white areas, and doctors who don't care will be pushed to serving minorities. We can see this in our new figure (click to enlarge).



Our "no racism exists" model above doesn't change our conclusion that it doesn't necessarily matter if a new doctor is minority or not--it is the marginal racist that matters, and if, at the margin, we have doctors who aren't racist, then we shouldn't care what race doctor we introduce--teaching Ku Klux Klan members may help minorities as much as teaching Black Panthers.