The bias-detecting Eye of Sauron

A team of economic experts¹ recently concluded that the computer algorithms used by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) are structurally biased against Blacks, even though no racial information is contained in a tax return.

How can anyone, let alone a computer algorithm, be biased if there’s nothing to be biased about?

One explanation is that the algorithms were primarily designed to analyze easy-to-process tax returns. For example, returns that do not include business income. So if you don’t have business income on your return, you’re more likely to get audited. This would be true regardless of race, obviously, but since a disproportionately large number of Blacks do not include business income on their returns, their returns are ‘biased’ and so more likely to be audited.

So bias – in this sense – doesn’t have to be conscious (no human auditors were involved) or intentional (no racial identifiers on tax returns); but if we look at the numbers and review proportions, then we see that bias happens.

What happens when we turn the bias-detecting Eye of Sauron away from the IRS and shine it on other courts? Amazingly, we see a world rife with bias.

For example, during basketball season it’s obvious that Blacks are disproportionately favored over Asians on the basketball court, even though there is nothing to be gained by being biased. What does it mean to be disproportionately favored?

It means that one group, for whatever reason (a complicated tax return, for example), appears to get more than they ‘deserve’, and this disproportionality is what is meant by structural bias.

What numbers do we see in basketball that reveal a disproportionality? The United States, by population, is 6% Asian and 13% Black. In a structurally unbiased world we expect to see similar proportions of the population represented throughout society (maybe not exactly the same proportions, but certainly not wildly out of whack proportions). And yet, incredibly, when we look at the percentage of players by race participating in the National Basketball Association, we find that 1% are Asian and 73% are Black.

That’s a glaring disproportionality if ever there was one. Obviously Blacks are being favored whether they realize it or not. But why is that?

Does a legacy of slavery and racism somehow give Black players an unearned advantage on the basketball court. Maybe, that’s one explanation, but truth be told, we don’t actually know.

And even if we don’t know, i.e., regardless of the reason, glaring disproportionalities like these strike many as unfair and socially unjust. How do we fix the wrong and stamp out the injustice? How do we paper over nasty reverberations from society’s past and renovate our world today?

One solution is to change the rules of basketball and give Asians five points per basket instead of the usual two. Doing so would likely encourage NBA team owners to employ more Asians.

Another solution is to allow Asians to wear elevator stilt-shoes² during the game to bring them closer to the hoop, to make it easier to score, to even the playing field so-to-speak. One small equity stretch for Asian men, one giant structural bias solution for mankind.

Would that make basketball games more interesting? Maybe. I’m sure those elevator shoes would be a trip. But the point is, eliminating structural bias wherever we find it is seen by many to be something worth doing.

Whether it’s tax returns at the IRS or employment at the NBA, the bias-detecting Eye of Sauron sees all.