Unless you have lived under a rock for the last four years, you will be very familiar with the claim that black Americans are disproportionately victims of police shootings compared with their white counterparts.
But a nearly eight-year-old study challenging this narrative is enjoying renewed attention thanks to a recent high-profile interview of the study’s author, African American economist Roland Fryer, by journalist Bari Weiss of The Free Press.
Professor Fryer published the controversial findings in 2016 while on the faculty of Harvard University. Regarding police shootings of civilians, the study concluded, “We are unable to detect any racial differences in either the raw data or when accounting for controls.”
While the study did find racial disparities in the use of nonlethal force in police encounters with black Americans, when it came to shootings, Fryer’s results were emphatic. In fact, after controlling for variables, Fryer and his team found that black Americans were slightly less likely to be shot by police than whites, though that difference was not statistically significant.
The finding flatly contradicts the claims by Black Lives Matter and other activist groups that racism drives police officers to use deadly violence against African Americans at far higher rates.
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