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This is of little surprise to me (and I'm sure a lot of other black folks) but it does throw a wrench in the media narrative that's for sure. The idea of biased black cops is something that has always been talked about in the black community. But that's way too complex of a story to try and dig in to that psychosis, it's much easier to keep it at racist white cop.
KASTE: Johnson takes pains to say that this study is not trying to deny the role of race. Instead, what they're trying to do is narrow down where it's having its effect on policing. He says it also raises some questions about a common fix for biased policing, the push to hire more minority officers because if this study is right, just hiring more black cops will not mean fewer black people get shot. And that fits with what implicit bias trainers say.
LORIE FRIDELL: People can have biases against their own demographic groups. Women can have biases about women. Blacks can have biases about blacks. It is incorrect to assume that any issue of bias in policing is brought to us by white males.
KASTE: Lorie Fridell is a criminologist as well as a bias trainer. She says academics have been wrestling with this question for decades, and this latest paper is not about to settle things.
FRIDELL: The defenders of police, of course, will cherry-pick the studies that show no bias. And the other side will cherry-pick the ones that do. But we don't have any definitive studies on this.
KASTE: She thinks people should be more open to the idea that bias and demographics can both play a role. And that's something that the authors of the paper and their critics both seem to agree on.