Aaron Levenstein once said “Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital.”

I was reminded of this quip while reading a very insightful article: Jared Strong’s “Racism is bred — not born — into society” column on Feb. 13.

In this column, Mr. Strong writes about his “friends” who “willingly assume a black man is more dangerous than a white man” and who offer the following as support: “Look at the data, more blacks are in jail.”

Mr. Strong does a good job of demolishing this argument. I simply wanted to draw your readers’ attention to another related point. Imagine a country where people either have green-colored hair or yellow-colored hair. Also assume that all police officers in that country are racist in the sense that, for some reason (also see below), they believe only yellow-colored hair people are drug dealers who transport illegal drugs in their cars.

Consequently, they only stop yellow-colored hair people on routine highway stops and search their cars. Imagine it is also the case that some yellow-colored hair people do in fact carry drugs in their car.

Over time, the cops keep arresting all the yellow-colored hair drug dealers; in fact, the jails are filled with them.

Since the cops do not stop the green-colored hair drug dealers, there will be no green-colored hair people in jail even though, in reality, it may well be the case that green-colored hair people comprise the overwhelming majority of drug dealers.

Police officers who are new on the job will then use the jail data to argue they should go after yellow-colored hair people even more aggressively than their previous generation of colleagues.

Now think about why Mr. Strong’s friends are so wrong!

Helle Bunzel

Assistant Professor

Economics