Conservatives Say This Study Disproves Systemic Racism

In 2016, Harvard economist Roland Fryer made headlines when he published a <a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">paper</a> claiming that there was in fact no racial disparity in police shootings of white and black suspects. Conservative media picked up the story and ran with it. On Fox News, <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2023/02/hannitys-dubious-claim-about-studies-showing-no-systemic-racism-in-policing/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Sean Hannity</a> referenced the paper to argue that “based on both academic studies and actual data, there is no systemic racism in policing. It doesn’t exist.” The fact that Fryer was Black and that he characterized his findings as “the most surprising result of my career,” convinced conservatives not only that he was not biased against them (a reasonable assumption), but that his findings must therefore be true (a more dubious one). And three years later, when Harvard suspended Fryer after allegations of sexual harassment came out, right-wing media immediately <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/03/25/harvard-cancels-a-black-academic-who-debunked-woke-orthodoxy/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">assumed</a> he was being “canceled” for daring to question leftist orthodoxy. <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/conservatives-say-this-study-disproves-systemic-racism-501c45c408c2">Read More</a>