The online right-wing news entertainment disinformation complex responded with glee to “The Reverse Racism Effect‘s” findings. This new research satisfies their delusions of “white oppression”—its title alone causes a political paroxysm for white conservatives. In a moment of spectacular and well-documented police thuggery and violence against black Americans, “The Reverse Racism Effect” can also be spun by the right-wing news entertainment disinformation complex as a rebuttal to Black Lives Matter. Moreover, the findings by Lois James, Stephen M. James, and Bryan J. Vila (as well as the article’s suggestion that police are somehow hamstrung in their decisions to use lethal force against non-whites) fit neatly with how racist authoritarians fetishize police and wallow in tired and empty slogans such as “police have one of the most dangerous jobs in America” and that “police are not treated fairly.”

Of course, reality is much more complicated.

The past informs the present. Modern policing in America has its origins in the slave patrols of the antebellum South. The slave patrollers were agents of white supremacy who profited economically and psychologically from terrorizing black Americans. As they continue to do today, police represent and enforce the interests of elites over those of the masses; whites over non-whites; rich over poor; and target other marginalized peoples and communities for harassment and violence.

In all, the law in the United States is not neutral relative to class nor is it blind in terms of race. Michelle Alexander documents this relationship to devastating effect in her book The New Jim Crow. As demonstrated by Alexander as well as other researchers and activists, the American legal system discriminates against black and brown people at (almost) every level from arrest through to sentencing, incarceration, and parole. As a result of this cycle, black people are more severely punished than whites for committing the same crimes. The effects of this racism are also cumulative: Once released from prison, black men and women find it more difficult than white ex-convicts to find work and housing, and they also return to communities that exist in a state of “custodial citizenship” where its denizens are politically and economically disenfranchised.

While “The Reverse Racism Effect’s” findings may suggest that white police are exercising “restraint” in their decision to shoot black people, such a conclusion has to be reconciled with other evidence.

According to research by The Guardian, 1,134 people were killed by America’s police in 2015, blacks were killed at twice the rate as Hispanics and whites, and 25 percent of black victims were unarmed as compared to 17 of whites. These are conservative estimates that do not take into account how the New York Times reports that “…black males aged 15 to 19 were 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white males in that age group. The Washington Post also reports that unarmed black men were seven times more likely to be killed by police this year than unarmed white men.

And as explained by Malcolm K. Sparrow’s essay over at Salon on race, policing, and guns:

According to the Washington Post’s analysis of 385 police shootings that occurred during the first five months of 2015, officers had been charged in only three cases. Officer Slager in North Charleston was one of these. In all three cases that led to indictments against police officers, video evidence had surfaced that showed officers shooting suspects during or at the end of pursuits on foot. In a different study using multiyear data, the Washington Post examined the rate at which police officers were charged as a result of fatal shootings. They found only fifty-four cases where officers had been charged since 2005, representing a tiny fraction of the thousands of police shooting incidents that had occurred in a decade. The Post’s analysis showed that in most of the cases where prosecutors did press charges the victim was unarmed, and there were also “other factors that made the case exceptional, including: a victim shot in the back, a video recording of the incident, incriminating testimony from other officers, or allegations of a cover-up.” According to prosecutors interviewed by the Post, to charge a police officer requires “compelling proof that at the time of the shooting the victim posed no threat either to the officer or to bystanders.” Absent one of these exceptional factors, it seems generally impossible to disprove officers’ claims that they felt themselves endangered. According to Philip Stinson, one of the criminologists working with the Post on the study, “To charge an officer in a fatal shooting, it takes something so egregious, so over the top that it cannot be explained in any rational way.”

America’s militarized police treat black and brown inner-city and poor communities as potential battlegrounds. For many police, the people who live there are “insurgents” that must be “neutralized.” A police culture of violence, racism, and classism encourages hyper-aggressive tactics, the unconstitutional and quasi-legal “stop and frisk” harassment of innocent black and brown youth and adults, as well as an environment of intimidation and humiliation against people of color. Because America’s police bully and harass non-whites—especially those who are poor and working class—the opportunities for violence against innocent and unarmed citizens is dramatically increased. Moreover, there are few if any consequences for police who kill or brutalize people of color, the poor and working classes, mentally ill people, the handicapped, and homeless persons.

“The Reverse Racism Effect” also has to be reconciled against the video, photographic, audio, and other evidence of police thuggery, illegal violence, racism, intimidation, carelessness, and killings that have come to greater awareness among the general (white) public in the Age of Obama. How does the cold abstraction of a laboratory experiment explain the many hundreds and thousands of black people, both armed and unarmed, who have been killed by America’s police?

“The Reverse Racism Effect” will not resurrect them. Lois James, Stephen M. James, and Bryan J. Vila’s conclusions are no comfort to their families, friends, and community.

Despite how the right-wing media trumpeted “The Reverse Racism Effect,” its conclusions cannot explain away the culture of racism that permeates America’s police departments. This is not conjecture. Investigations of police departments in Chicago, San Francisco, Ferguson, and elsewhere have found a culture where “the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color,” racism is rampant, and officers operate a debt peonage racket where they are personally enriched by pillaging the communities and people they are supposed to protect and serve.

During the upcoming months and years, “The Reverse Racism Effect” will be critiqued by other scholars and its findings evaluated relative to other research in the field. Lois James, Stephen M. James, and Bryan J. Vila will likely face questions and critical interventions such as how their sample of police—which was drawn from a city where approximately 2 percent of the residents are black—impacts how readers can generalize the findings.

There are other questions as well.

A small number of police officers are responsible for a high percentage of misconduct claims in cities such as Chicago. Perhaps those officers are more likely (and faster) to use their weapons against black and brown people than they are whites? Most importantly, do the results obtained under the controlled conditions of a laboratory (and where the officers are being watched) mimic the “real world” outcomes of when white police make a decision to use deadly force against non-whites?

But let us assume that the results in “The Reverse Racism Effect” can be replicated across different police departments in various parts of the United States. Imagine how much worse the outcomes would be if police were not exercising the “restraint” posited by the authors of “The Reverse Racism Effect.” Ultimately, police in the United States are out of control, and in many ways a menace towards a public they are supposed to protect and serve equally and fairly.