データリテラシー

Esquireのニュースレターでニューヨークタイムズの興味深い記事を知りました。警察が拳銃を使う相手は黒人よりも白人の方が多いという、一般的感覚とは違った調査結果が出たというのです。

This Study on Race and Policing Is Fascinating for Many Reasons
White citizens get shot more; black citizens get literally everything else more.
BY CHARLES P. PIERCE
JUL 11, 2016

A Harvard economist named Roland Fryer, Jr. may or may not know this, but he's managed to step, yes, from the frying pan into the fire. As The New York Times explains, Fryer decided to go data-diving into the numbers regarding the possible racial disparities in law enforcement, especially in the fatal shooting by police officers of their fellow citizens. The results are fascinating, scary, and more than a little surprising.

In brief, it seems that African-American citizens are far more likely to be harassed, stopped, bullied, assaulted, and beaten by the police, but less likely to be shot by them than white citizens are.

ニューヨークタイムズの記事は以下です。

Surprising New Evidence Shows Bias in Police Use of Force but Not in Shootings
By QUOCTRUNG BUI and AMANDA COX JULY 11, 2016

ニューヨークタイムズの記事でも慎重に書いています。限られた都市でデータ数も多くないのでこの結果を絶対視できないし、検問されたり、嫌がらせを受ける確率は黒人の方がはるかに高いというデータ結果がでているようです。それに警察発表のデータを分析しているので、都合の悪いデータを発表していないのではないかと疑いが残るでしょう。

そういう意味でこのようなデータは慎重に扱わなくてはいけません。Esquireの記者は保守メディアにいいように使われるのではないかと心配して記事を締めていました。

I have no doubt that, very soon, our friends in the conservative media will jump all over Fryer's results to prove that all those people in the streets are wrong in their "mental images" of the deaths of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. I wish Fryer luck in keeping his data safe from the general political hooley. Maybe, when it all calms down, we can wonder how in the world Fryer had 1330 officer-involved shootings to study in the first place. Maybe we all ought to be marching.