Sorry but this N=1 is barely interesting and is nothing more than fodder for confirmation bias. At best it's an indication of a research direction.
I get that there's lots of evidence that Black people get discriminated against but putting anecdotes on a pedestal to drive clicks and outrage should be stopped.
Imagine an article about a recent mugging in the park. The point is to inform residents so they know to be wary, not necessarily to present study data on crime rates.
So you understand that it happens, you just wish people would stop talking about it?
This is your classic N=1 sample size. But what can explain why one had a tour, and the other was lied to? You can invent a lot of things if you insist on giving them the benefit of the doubt, but the easiest explanation is discrimination.
In the case of the OP, there's no reason provided to suspect racism. Merely the correlation created by two or three data points. That's grossly insufficient for drawing such a link and it's also where the article crosses over into outrage stoking and irresponsible borderline misinfo more than anything.
Now doing the above is quite a bit of work, so it's believable that appraisers simply use their experience and 'gut instinct' to determine the value of the neighborhood without actually going out and doing research. If their past experience tells them that houses in black neighborhoods sell for less, then they'll appraise a house with a black owner as valuable.
This isn't racism per se by the appraiser, but it is however discrimination based on race.
It's quite possible that a less lazy appraiser would have realized the neighborhood still rated X price instead of 2X price.
It is discrimination in your hypothetical where you've presupposed that discrimination played a causal role in the appraisal price.
There's no reason to suspect that discrimination played a role in this actual particular case, absent additional information.
Incompetence of the final appraiser or any number of explanations could fit.
You have to realize the layers of selection filters that are at work here:
- Someone is on the lookout for evidence of discrimination
- Someone reports a suspect case to a journalist
- Journalist decides to write an article
- HN user decides to post the article
- HN article gets upvoted and gets to front page
It's like a sales funnel. At each step, even if there isn't any discrimination, it's only the cases that are the most egregious (due to any number of causes, chance being a large one) that do not get pruned by the filters and therefore make it to the final step. Statistical variance can push through a large number of such articles.
That's why this isn't evidence, not even suggestive evidence. We're ignorant of all the filters that led to this last step. The only way to address cases like this where there isn't explicit evidence of discrimination (e.g. chat logs, recording, whatever), is to precommit to a methodology and then go from there. This is what's been done to good effect with things like policing.
This is all fine by me, as we're in a casual setting but if you do demand rigor in general.
I see that you're not convinced, but isn't this annectodate enough to prompt an actual study of discrimination in house appraisals carried out by government agents with a strict methodology like you'd prefer?
Last year I saw the following story, this seemed a second data point:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/25/realestate/blacks-minorit...
To me the salient point is that property appraisals are clearly bullshit in the U.S. if they vary this widely in such a short timespan.
And thus ripe for disruption with tech that provides a mere ounce of accountability on the appraiser / appraisal process.
If you have decided that discrimination is the most likely explanation and don't bother collecting information or looking at other possibilities, of course it will end up being the best fitting explanation.
This is circular logic.
The wife spoke with another buyer who tricked her.
The agent was busy or lazy around 3PM
The agent didn't like something about the wife other than race, e.g. attitude, attire, cheap car ect.
I remember when this same approach was employed until police bodycam footage taught us some cops do just go into a black neighborhoods and plant drugs on poor black people that are innocent, etc...
I guess some people find it unbelievable that one of the most racist countries in human history is the same country they live in, must be nice. Whitewashing history helps in this process.
It's merely variance that gets attributed to racism post hoc. That's why in an example like this you need large N to establish what's actually going on.
If you have a large N and the price goes up 150/200 times and down 50/200 times, then you have some evidence.
Unless of course there's some extra information pertaining to the N=1 case that can help you make that determination with a small N. But such info wasn't provided in the article.
I've found no kind of federal regulation, no industry/trade/lobbying groups, only state-based certification bodies perfectly positioned for corruption and lack of checks on their work.
This would seem to have implications for every U.S. property owner.