race discrimination case study

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• 30 May 2024
• Research & Ideas

Racial Bias Might Be Infecting Patient Portals. Can AI Help?

Doctors and patients turned to virtual communication when the pandemic made in-person appointments risky. But research by Ariel Stern and Mitchell Tang finds that providers' responses can vary depending on a patient's race. Could technology bring more equity to portals?

• 26 Apr 2024

Deion Sanders' Prime Lessons for Leading a Team to Victory

The former star athlete known for flash uses unglamorous command-and-control methods to get results as a college football coach. Business leaders can learn 10 key lessons from the way 'Coach Prime' builds a culture of respect and discipline without micromanaging, says Hise Gibson.

• 04 Mar 2024

Want to Make Diversity Stick? Break the Cycle of Sameness

Whether on judicial benches or in corporate boardrooms, white men are more likely to step into roles that other white men vacate, says research by Edward Chang. But when people from historically marginalized groups land those positions, workforce diversification tends to last. Chang offers three pieces of advice for leaders striving for diversity.

• 02 Jan 2024
• Cold Call Podcast

Should Businesses Take a Stand on Societal Issues?

Should businesses take a stand for or against particular societal issues? And how should leaders determine when and how to engage on these sensitive matters? Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Hubert Joly, who led the electronics retailer Best Buy for almost a decade, discusses examples of corporate leaders who had to determine whether and how to engage with humanitarian crises, geopolitical conflict, racial justice, climate change, and more in the case, “Deciding When to Engage on Societal Issues.”

• 21 Nov 2023

Cold Call: Building a More Equitable Culture at Delta Air Lines

In December 2020 Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian and his leadership team were reviewing the decision to join the OneTen coalition, where he and 36 other CEOs committed to recruiting, hiring, training, and advancing one million Black Americans over the next ten years into family-sustaining jobs. But, how do you ensure everyone has equal access to opportunity within an organization? Professor Linda Hill discusses Delta’s decision and its progress in embedding a culture of diversity, equity, and inclusion in her case, “OneTen at Delta Air Lines: Catalyzing Family-Sustaining Careers for Black Talent.”

• 31 Oct 2023

Beyond the 'Business Case' in DEI: 6 Steps Toward Meaningful Change

Diversity and inclusion efforts that focus on business outcomes alone rarely address root causes. Jamillah Bowman Williams, a visiting fellow at the Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society, offers tips for companies navigating their next stage of the DEI journey.

• 24 Oct 2023

When Tech Platforms Identify Black-Owned Businesses, White Customers Buy

Demand for Black-owned restaurants rises when they're easier to find on Yelp. Research by Michael Luca shows how companies can mobilize their own technology to advance racial equity.

• 16 Oct 2023

Advancing Black Talent: From the Flight Ramp to 'Family-Sustaining' Careers at Delta

By emphasizing skills and expanding professional development opportunities, the airline is making strides toward recruiting and advancing Black employees. Case studies by Linda Hill offer an inside look at how Delta CEO Ed Bastian is creating a more equitable company and a stronger talent pipeline.

• 10 Oct 2023

In Empowering Black Voters, Did a Landmark Law Stir White Angst?

The Voting Rights Act dramatically increased Black participation in US elections—until worried white Americans mobilized in response. Research by Marco Tabellini illustrates the power of a political backlash.

• 26 Sep 2023

Unpacking That Icky Feeling of 'Shopping' for Diverse Job Candidates

Many companies want to bring a wider variety of lived experiences to their workforces. However, research by Summer Jackson shows how hiring managers' fears of seeming transactional can ultimately undermine their diversity goals.

• 08 Aug 2023

Black Employees Not Only Earn Less, But Deal with Bad Bosses and Poor Conditions

More than 900,000 reviews highlight broad racial disparities in the American working experience. Beyond pay inequities, research by Letian Zhang shows how Black employees are less likely to work at companies known for positive cultures or work-life balance.

• 18 Jul 2023

Diversity and Inclusion at Mars Petcare: Translating Awareness into Action

In 2020, the Mars Petcare leadership team found themselves facing critically important inclusion and diversity issues. Unprecedented protests for racial justice in the U.S. and across the globe generated demand for substantive change, and Mars Petcare's 100,000 employees across six continents were ready for visible signs of progress. How should Mars’ leadership build on their existing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and effectively capitalize on the new energy for change? Harvard Business School associate professor Katherine Coffman is joined by Erica Coletta, Mars Petcare’s chief people officer, and Ibtehal Fathy, global inclusion and diversity officer at Mars Inc., to discuss the case, “Inclusion and Diversity at Mars Petcare.”

• 01 Jun 2023

A Nike Executive Hid His Criminal Past to Turn His Life Around. What If He Didn't Have To?

Larry Miller committed murder as a teenager, but earned a college degree while serving time and set out to start a new life. Still, he had to conceal his record to get a job that would ultimately take him to the heights of sports marketing. A case study by Francesca Gino, Hise Gibson, and Frances Frei shows the barriers that formerly incarcerated Black men are up against and the potential talent they could bring to business.

• 31 May 2023

Why Business Leaders Need to Hear Larry Miller's Story

VIDEO: Nike executive Larry Miller concealed his criminal past to get a job. What if more companies were willing to hire people with blemishes on their records? Hise Gibson explores why business leaders should give the formerly incarcerated a second chance.

From Prison Cell to Nike’s C-Suite: The Journey of Larry Miller

VIDEO: Before leading one of the world’s largest brands, Nike executive Larry Miller served time in prison for murder. In this interview, Miller shares how education helped him escape a life of crime and why employers should give the formerly incarcerated a second chance. Inspired by a Harvard Business School case study.

• 08 May 2023

How Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Crushed Crowdfunding for Minority Entrepreneurs

When public anxiety about immigration surges, Black, Asian, and Hispanic inventors have a harder time raising funds for new ideas on Kickstarter, says research by William Kerr. What can platforms do to confront bias in entrepreneurial finance?

• 03 May 2023

Why Confronting Racism in AI 'Creates a Better Future for All of Us'

Rather than build on biased data and technology from the past, artificial intelligence has an opportunity to do better, says Business in Global Society Fellow Broderick Turner. He highlights three myths that prevent business leaders from breaking down racial inequality.

• 21 Feb 2023

What's Missing from the Racial Equity Dialogue?

Fellows visiting the Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society (BiGS) at Harvard Business School talk about how racism harms everyone and why it’s important to find new ways to support formerly incarcerated people.

• 31 Jan 2023

Addressing Racial Discrimination on Airbnb

For years, Airbnb gave hosts extensive discretion to accept or reject a guest after seeing little more than a name and a picture, believing that eliminating anonymity was the best way for the company to build trust. However, the apartment rental platform failed to track or account for the possibility that this could facilitate discrimination. After research published by Professor Michael Luca and others provided evidence that Black hosts received less in rent than hosts of other races and showed signs of discrimination against guests with African American sounding names, the company had to decide what to do. In the case, “Racial Discrimination on Airbnb,” Luca discusses his research and explores the implication for Airbnb and other platform companies. Should they change the design of the platform to reduce discrimination? And what’s the best way to measure the success of any changes?

• 03 Jan 2023

Confront Workplace Inequity in 2023: Dig Deep, Build Bridges, Take Collective Action

Power dynamics tied up with race and gender underlie almost every workplace interaction, says Tina Opie. In her book Shared Sisterhood, she offers three practical steps for dismantling workplace inequities that hold back innovation.

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The race case summaries are grouped into two categories: court and tribunal decisions, and conciliated outcomes.

• Race discrimination: summaries of court and tribunal decisions
• Race discrimination: summaries of conciliated outcomes

Court and tribunal decisions are made after all the evidence is heard, including details of loss and damage. The full text of court and tribunal decisions is available from:

• AustLII website
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Conciliated outcomes are where the parties have reached an agreement through conciliation at the Queensland Human Rights Commission.

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Comments to be taken in context, derogatory racial descriptions of workers, conciliated outcomes, demeaning racial comments ignored, racist comments and sexual harassment leads to resignation, different pay rate based on race, entertainment venue excluded asian customers, worker called offensive racist names, racial abuse and threats at work.

Studies find evidence of systemic racial discrimination across multiple domains in the United States

Harvard Pop Center faculty member Sara Bleich and her colleagues have published two studies examining experiences of racial discrimination in the United States.

One study found substantial black-white disparities in experiences of discrimination in the U.S. spanning multiple domains including health care, employment, and law enforcement, while a separate study found similar discrimination among Latinos in the United States. Given the connection between racial discrimination and poor health outcomes in both groups of Americans, the study calls for more interventions to address broad racial discrimination.

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Who Discriminates in Hiring? A New Study Can Tell.

Applications seemingly from Black candidates got fewer replies than those evidently from white candidates. The method could point to specific companies.

By Eduardo Porter

Twenty years ago, Kalisha White performed an experiment. A Marquette University graduate who is Black, she suspected that her application for a job as executive team leader at a Target in Wisconsin was being ignored because of her race. So she sent in another one, with a name (Sarah Brucker) more likely to make the candidate appear white.

Though the fake résumé was not quite as accomplished as Ms. White’s, the alter ego scored an interview. Target ultimately paid over half a million dollars to settle a class-action lawsuit brought by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of Ms. White and a handful of other Black job applicants.

Now a variation on her strategy could help expose racial discrimination in employment across the corporate landscape.

Economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago this week unveiled a vast discrimination audit of some of the largest U.S. companies. Starting in late 2019, they sent 83,000 fake job applications for entry-level positions at 108 companies — most of them in the top 100 of the Fortune 500 list, and some of their subsidiaries.

Their insights can provide valuable evidence about violations of Black workers’ civil rights.

The researchers — Patrick Kline and Christopher Walters of Berkeley and Evan K. Rose of Chicago — are not ready to reveal the names of companies on their list. But they plan to, once they expose the data to more statistical tests. Labor lawyers, the E.E.O.C. and maybe the companies themselves could do a lot with this information. (Dr. Kline said they had briefed the U.S. Labor Department on the general findings.)

In the study, applicants’ characteristics — like age, sexual orientation, or work and school experience — varied at random. Names, however, were chosen purposefully to ensure applications came in pairs: one with a more distinctive white name — Jake or Molly, say — and the other with a similar background but a more distinctive Black name, like DeShawn or Imani.

What the researchers found would probably not surprise Ms. White: On average, applications from candidates with a “Black name” get fewer callbacks than similar applications bearing a “white name.”

This aligns with a paper published by two economists from the University of Chicago a couple of years after Ms. White’s tussle with Target: Respondents to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago had much better luck if their name was Emily or Greg than if it was Lakisha or Jamal. (Marianne Bertrand, one of the authors, testified as an expert witness in the trial over Ms. White’s discrimination claim.)

This experimental approach with paired applications, some economists argue, offers a closer representation of racial discrimination in the work force than studies that seek to relate employment and wage gaps to other characteristics — such as educational attainment and skill — and treat discrimination as a residual, or what’s left after other differences are accounted for.

The Berkeley and Chicago researchers found that discrimination isn’t uniform across the corporate landscape. Some companies discriminate little, responding similarly to applications by Molly and Latifa. Others show a measurable bias.

All told, for every 1,000 applications received, the researchers found, white candidates got about 250 responses, compared with about 230 for Black candidates. But among one-fifth of companies, the average gap grew to 50 callbacks. Even allowing that some patterns of discrimination could be random, rather than the result of racism, they concluded that 23 companies from their selection were “very likely to be engaged in systemic discrimination against Black applicants.”

There are 13 companies in automotive retailing and services in the Fortune 500 list. Five are among the 10 most discriminatory companies on the researchers’ list. Of the companies very likely to discriminate based on race, according to the findings, eight are federal contractors, which are bound by particularly stringent anti-discrimination rules and could lose their government contracts as a consequence.

“Discriminatory behavior is clustered in particular firms,” the researchers wrote. “The identity of many of these firms can be deduced with high confidence.”

The researchers also identified some overall patterns. For starters, discriminating companies tend to be less profitable, a finding consistent with the proposition by Gary Becker, who first studied discrimination in the workplace in the 1950s, that it is costly for firms to discriminate against productive workers.

The study found no strong link between discrimination and geography: Applications for jobs in the South fared no worse than anywhere else. Retailers and restaurants and bars discriminate more than average. And employers with more centralized personnel operations handling job applications tend to discriminate less, suggesting that uniform rules and procedures across a company can help reduce racial biases.

An early precedent for the paper published this week is a 1978 study that sent pairs of fake applications with similar qualifications but different photos, showing a white or a Black applicant. Interestingly, that study found some evidence of “reverse” discrimination against white applicants.

More fake-résumé studies have followed in recent years. One found that recent Black college graduates get fewer callbacks from potential employers than white candidates with identical resumes. Another found that prospective employers treat Black graduates from elite universities about the same as white graduates of less selective institutions.

One study reported that when employers in New York and New Jersey were barred from asking about job candidates’ criminal records , callbacks to Black candidates dropped significantly, relative to white job seekers, suggesting employers assumed Black candidates were more likely to have a record.

What makes the new research valuable is that it shows regulators, courts and labor lawyers how large-scale auditing of hiring practices offers a method to monitor and police bias. “Our findings demonstrate that it is possible to identify individual firms responsible for a substantial share of racial discrimination while maintaining a tight limit on the expected number of false positives encountered,” the researchers wrote.

Individual companies might even use the findings to reform their hiring practices.

Dr. Kline of Berkeley said Jenny R. Yang, a former chief commissioner of the E.E.O.C. and the current director of the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which has jurisdiction over federal contractors, had been apprised of the findings and had expressed interest in the researchers’ technique. (A representative of the agency declined to comment or to make Ms. Yang available.)

Similar tests have been performed since the 1980s to detect discrimination in housing by real estate agents and rental property owners. Tests in which white and nonwhite people inquire about the availability of housing suggest discrimination remains rampant.

Deploying this approach in the labor market has proved a bit tougher. Last year, the New York City Commission on Human Rights performed tests to detect employment discrimination — whether by race, gender, age or any other protected class — at 2,356 shops. Still, “employment is always harder than housing,” said Sapna Raj, deputy commissioner of the law enforcement bureau at the agency, which enforces anti-discrimination regulations.

“This could give us a deeper understanding,” Ms. Raj said of the study by the Berkeley and Chicago researchers. “What we would do is evaluate the information and look proactively at ways to address it.”

The commission, she noted, could not take action based on the kind of statistics in the new study on their own. “There are so many things you have to look at before you can determine that it is discrimination,” she argued. Still, she suggested, statistical analysis could alert her to which employers it makes sense to look at.

And that could ultimately convince corporations that discrimination is costly. “This is actionable evidence of illegal behavior by huge firms,” Dr. Walters of Berkeley said on Twitter in connection with the study’s release. “Modern statistical methods have the potential to help detect and redress civil rights violations.”

Eduardo Porter joined The Times in 2004 from The Wall Street Journal. He has reported about economics and other matters from Mexico City, Tokyo, London and São Paulo.   More about Eduardo Porter

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Race, ethnicity, and discrimination at work: a new analysis of legal protections and gaps in all 193 UN countries

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

ISSN : 2040-7149

Article publication date: 1 February 2023

Issue publication date: 18 December 2023

While only one aspect of fulfilling equal rights, effectively addressing workplace discrimination is integral to creating economies, and countries, that allow for everyone's full and equal participation.

Design/methodology/approach

Labor, anti-discrimination, and other relevant pieces of legislation were identified through the International Labor Organization's NATLEX database, supplemented with legislation identified through country websites. For each country, two researchers independently coded legislation and answered questions about key policy features. Systematic quality checks and outlier verifications were conducted.

More than 1 in 5 countries do not explicitly prohibit racial discrimination in employment. 54 countries fail to prohibit unequal pay based on race. 107 countries prohibit racial and/or ethnic discrimination but do not explicitly require employers to take preventive measures against discrimination. The gaps are even larger with respect to multiple and intersectional discrimination. 112 countries fail to prohibit discrimination based on both migration status and race and/or ethnicity; 103 fail to do so for foreign national origin and race and/or ethnicity.

Practical implications

Both recent and decades-old international treaties and agreements require every country globally to uphold equal rights regardless of race. However, specific national legislation that operationalizes these commitments and prohibits discrimination in the workplace is essential to their impact. This research highlights progress and gaps that must be addressed.

Originality/value

This is the first study to measure legal protections against employment discrimination based on race and ethnicity in all 193 UN countries. This study also examines protection in all countries from discrimination on the basis of characteristics that have been used in a number of settings as a proxy for racial/ethnic discrimination and exclusion, including SES, migration status, and religion.

• Discrimination
• Migration status

Heymann, J. , Varvaro-Toney, S. , Raub, A. , Kabir, F. and Sprague, A. (2023), "Race, ethnicity, and discrimination at work: a new analysis of legal protections and gaps in all 193 UN countries", Equality, Diversity and Inclusion , Vol. 42 No. 9, pp. 16-34. https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-01-2022-0027

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2023, Jody Heymann, Sheleana Varvaro-Toney, Amy Raub, Firooz Kabir and Aleta Sprague

Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

Introduction

Work plays a fundamental role in shaping the conditions of people's lives. Earnings from employment are the predominant source of income for most people; income in turn shapes access to a wide range of necessities including housing, transportation, and food, as well as non-essentials that impact quality of life and access to opportunities. In many countries where health insurance is partial or incomplete, work shapes access to healthcare. And by affecting where families live and whether caregivers can take time off to meet the developmental needs of children, the availability and conditions of work can have profound impacts on child development and education. Likewise, as adults age, as well as at the end of life, work histories can and do shape retirement income in most countries, and working conditions influence the ability of adults to care for aging family members.

As a result, when discrimination impedes work opportunities or results in loss of income, the consequences affect not only the quality and equality of work lives, but also of many other spheres of life. Moreover, when certain groups of workers routinely face bias in the workplace, this discrimination widens other inequalities in the economy, with ripple effects that have impacts on health, housing, children's access to quality education, and equal rights more broadly.

Given these vast and intergenerational impacts, the extent and persistence of workplace discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity worldwide—which occurs at each stage of employment, including hiring, promotions, demotions, pay, working conditions, and terminations—represents a significant threat to both individual households and societies as a whole, as well as a clear violation of fundamental human rights. Moreover, studies in countries around the world have documented how employment discrimination on the basis of race/ethnicity commonly intersects with discrimination based on migration status, socioeconomic status, gender, and other characteristics, compounding other forms of inequality. While only one aspect of fulfilling equal rights, effectively addressing workplace discrimination is integral to creating economies, and countries, that allow for everyone's full and equal participation.

In this article, we review the research evidence on employment discrimination based on race and on the impact of anti-discrimination legislation, and then present the methods and results of the first study of anti-discrimination protections in all 193 UN countries.

Discrimination in hiring

A wide range of studies have demonstrated racial and ethnic discrimination in hiring, including studies in which researchers submit fictitious CVs and applications that reflect similar credentials and experience, but that vary with respect to photos, names, and/or experiences suggestive of different racial or ethnic identities. These “correspondence studies,” which improved on prior methods of testing for racial discrimination by making candidates substantively identical except for markers of race/ethnicity ( Bertrand and Duflo, 2017 ), find that presumed race/ethnicity influences the likelihood that a particular candidate receives an invitation to interview, with those representing historically marginalized racial or ethnic groups consistently receiving fewer callbacks ( Baert, 2018 ).

Other research approaches include direct interviews with hiring managers and simulations in which study participants rate the strength of hypothetical job candidates based on their photos and descriptions of their experience and characteristics where, again, the principal aspect varied is race/ethnicity, either on its own or together with intersectional characteristics like migration status or gender.

These research approaches also document the persistence of discrimination in hiring across jobs and geographies. For example, research in Nigeria found that managers of both public and private organizations were more likely to hire applicants from their own ethnic group ( Adisa et al. , 2017 ). A study spanning five European countries—Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the United Kingdom—demonstrated discrimination in the hiring of Black and Middle Eastern men ( Di Stasio and Larsen, 2020 ).

Discrimination based on common proxies for race or ethnicity can likewise shape job prospects. In Canada, for example, migrants from sub-Saharan Africa report that their accents can be a barrier to becoming employed and having career mobility ( Creese, 2010 ), while in the US, numerous court cases have illustrated how Black women commonly face barriers to employment because their natural hairstyles are found to violate “neutral” grooming codes ( Greene, 2017 ).

Discrimination is also often intersectional. In Germany, a 2020 study found that women with Turkish names were less likely than those with German names to receive interview invitations, and this gap widened further for women wearing headscarves ( Weichselbaumer, 2020 ). Similarly, in a Mexico study, both marital status and skin color affected women's chance of receiving an interview ( Arceo-Gomez and Campos-Vasquez, 2014 ). In Belgium, women from minority ethnic groups were less likely to be considered for a “high-cognitive demanding job” than either native women or minority ethnic men ( Derous and Pepermans, 2019 ).

Discrimination in promotions

Studies have also documented racial and ethnic discrimination in promotions across professions, from police forces to law firms to universities ( Tomlinson, 2019 ; Zempi, 2020 ). From Finland to South Africa to the United Kingdom and the United States, workers from marginalized racial and ethnic groups report discrimination in promotion, consistent with the research evidence based on multilevel multivariate studies of discrimination, as well as based on implicit bias testing of supervisors ( Hatch et al. , 2016 ; Mayiya et al. , 2019 ; Stalker, 1994 ; Yu, 2020 ; Zempi, 2020 ). In Canada, research has documented that visible minorities have less upward mobility even after controlling for education, work experience, time with the employer, and other factors ( Javdani, 2020 ), including both supply- and demand-side factors ( Javdani and McGee, 2018 ; Yap, 2010 ; Yap and Konrad, 2009 ).

Aside from direct discrimination in promotions, employer practices that evaluate employee conduct differently or otherwise deny opportunities for professional advancement based on race or ethnicity can affect opportunities within the workplace. For example, a study that experimentally changed the race/ethnicity of an employee in a photo while asking study participants to evaluate their performance demonstrated that simple acts such as being late for work led to a significantly greater negative impact on the appraisal of hypothetical employees when the photo showed a Black or Latinx employee than when the photo showed a white employee ( Luksyte et al. , 2013 ). Visible minorities are also less likely to receive training opportunities that can influence upward mobility in the labor force ( Dostie and Javdani, 2020 ).

Discrimination in terminations

Both direct discrimination by employers and structural discrimination that cuts across economies can make workers from marginalized racial and ethnic groups more vulnerable to terminations. For example, studies have found that during economic downturns, immigrants and workers from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups face heightened risks of labor market discrimination and job loss ( Couch and Fairlie, 2010 ; Lessem and Nakajima, 2019 ). Moreover, the consequences of past discrimination and exclusion from economic opportunities mean that workers from underrepresented groups are less likely to have seniority within a given organization or company. As a result, in addition to direct racial/ethnic discrimination that may lead to higher rates of termination, “last hired, first fired” policies can result in indirect discrimination against workers from historically excluded groups.

Impacts of discrimination in hiring, job positions, and promotions on pay inequality

Discrimination in hiring can impact initial salaries and level and type of starting position. When individuals are hired into jobs below their skill level because of bias based on race and ethnicity, they earn less than they would have earned had there been no discrimination ( Coleman, 2003 ). Likewise, when discrimination results in the overrepresentation of workers from historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups in limited employment capacities, including temporary or seasonal jobs, gaps in both pay and benefits further widen. Survey research across 30 European countries showed that even after controlling for education, experience, occupation, and other categories, racial and ethnic minorities were more likely to end up in jobs where their skills were underutilized, leading to lower wages than if they were in a position more matched to their skills and offering reduced pathways for advancement ( Rafferty, 2020 ). In Chile, qualitative research has found that Peruvian migrants simultaneously experience limited employment trajectory due to their external migrant status alongside racialization by local Chileans who perceive them to be more fit for low-status and low-income positions due to assumptions about their physical and cultural traits ( Mora and Undurraga, 2013 ).

Direct pay discrimination

Even for the same job position, the “unexplained” wage differential after taking experience into account gives an indication of the amount of the wage differential that could be due to discrimination and bias. One-half to two-thirds of wage differences across racial and ethnic groups in some studies have been estimated to be due to bias ( Drydakis, 2012 ; Piazzalunga, 2015 ). While the data clearly demonstrates the existence of bias and discrimination in pay against specific groups in a range of countries, there has not been a comprehensive look across countries and racial/ethnic groups to document in detail when and where the wage gaps are greatest and lowest, before and after taking into account the impact of bias throughout the work lifecourse.

The documented and potential impacts of national laws addressing discrimination

Individual countries that have passed antidiscrimination laws have seen improvements including greater equality in hiring and lowering of wage disparities ( Leck et al. , 1995 ). While antidiscrimination laws alone do not eliminate discrimination in hiring, pay, promotions, or terminations, studies both across countries and across populations have demonstrated that antidiscrimination laws can make a difference. In Canada, for example, studies of the Employment Equity Act found that the share of visible minorities who were employed in the private sector increased to much closer to the percentage of the population following the law's adoption ( Agocs, 2002 ; Leck and Saunders, 1992 ). In the United States, studies have found that antidiscrimination laws contributed to wage and income increases for Black workers ( Collins, 2003 ; Donohue and Heckman, 1991 ) and a narrowing of the racial/ethnic pay gap ( Chay, 1998 ).

These findings on laws' impacts on employment outcomes by race parallel those observed for other groups of marginalized workers. For example, one study of 141 countries found that laws prohibiting gender discrimination in employment increased women's labor force participation in formal jobs ( del Mar Alonso-Almeida, 2014 ), while in the UK, legislation guaranteeing equal pay and non-discrimination in employment on the basis of sex resulted in a 19.4% increase in women's earnings and a 17% increase in women's employment rates relative to men's ( Zabalza and Zafiris, 1985 ). Moreover, explicitly prohibiting all forms of workplace discrimination matters to norms. In addition to their practical or applied value, laws prohibiting discrimination have important expressive value that can shape workplace expectations as well as societal views of equality more broadly, with the potential to affect rates of both explicit and implicit bias ( Sunstein, 1996 ). At the same time, the past several decades of antidiscrimination law have revealed important gaps to address. First, as many of the studies cited in the previous section illustrated, racial and ethnic discrimination commonly co-occurs with discrimination based on migration status, foreign national origin, social class, and other characteristics, highlighting the cumulative and often intersectional impacts of key facets of identity on work-related experiences around the world. Clearly banning all common grounds of discrimination, including those used as proxies for race or ethnicity or that commonly intersect with race or ethnicity, is a critical first step.

Second, prohibitions of indirect discrimination can offer important protection against racial/ethnic discrimination, including in instances where discrimination based on an unprotected ground has disparate impacts on the basis of race or ethnicity. This is true both for common grounds of discrimination that would ideally be explicitly covered by domestic labor laws (as they are by international treaties, e.g. national origin) ( Demetriou, 2016 ), as well as proxies for racial/ethnic discrimination that are not generally addressed on their own (e.g. accents and hairstyles) ( Justesen, 2016 ). In contrast, when discrimination laws take an overly formal approach to discrimination that only covers acts that were direct or intentional, they fail to account for the extensive evidence demonstrating that policies and practices that are racially neutral on their face may have disproportionate consequences for workers from historically marginalized groups.

Third and finally, while protections against employment discrimination are essential, more attention must be paid to implementation. While a range of actions are needed, evidence shows that having legal protections in place against retaliation may increase reporting rates by reassuring workers that their careers will be protected if they report discrimination ( Bergman et al. , 2002 ; Gorod, 2007 ; Keenan, 1990 ; Pillay et al. , 2018 ).

This is the first study to examine legislation in all 193 UN countries to map the extent to which each country in the world has protections against racial and ethnic discrimination in hiring, promotions, training, demotions, and terminations, as well as whether they proactively support implementation through clear legislative prohibitions of retaliation for reporting. Further, we examine to what extent countries not only address direct discrimination based on race/ethnicity, but also indirect racial/ethnic discrimination and/or direct discrimination based on grounds that can serve as proxies depending on the historical and societal context for racial discrimination, including religion, migration status, and socioeconomic status. Further, we highlight examples where countries explicitly address intersectionality. Finally, we examine whether there were gains over the past five years in the number of countries that are prohibiting each type of discrimination.

Methodology

Data source.

We constructed a database of prohibitions against discrimination in private sector labor in all 193 UN member states as of January 2021. Labor, anti-discrimination, and other relevant pieces of legislation were identified through the International Labor Organization's NATLEX database, supplemented with legislation identified through country websites. A coding framework was developed to systematically capture key policy features. This coding framework was reviewed by researchers, lawyers, and other leaders working on employment discrimination and tested on a subset of countries before database coding commenced.

For each country and protected characteristic studied, two researchers independently read legislation in its original language or a translation and used the coding framework to assess whether legislation specifically prohibited discrimination in each aspect of work or broadly, whether there were any exceptions to prohibitions of discrimination based on employer characteristics, and whether there were specific provisions in place to support effective implementation. In countries where anti-discrimination protections are legislated subnationally, the lowest level of protection across states or provinces was captured. Answers were then reconciled to minimize human error. When the two researchers could not arrive at an agreement based on the codebook framework, the full coding team met to discuss, and the coding framework was updated to reflect the decision. When updates were made, countries that had already been coded were checked for consistency with the update.

Once coding was complete, systematic quality checks were conducted of variables that proved challenging for researchers during the coding process. Randomized quality checks were conducted of variables that were more straightforward, checking first twenty countries to ensure no errors were identified and a larger subset of countries if there were errors. Finally, outlier verifications globally and by region or country income level were conducted for all variables. In order to assess whether legislative provisions have strengthened over time, similar methods were used to construct measures of laws in place as of August 2016.

Strength of prohibitions of discrimination

We examined legislation across six areas: hiring, pay, training, promotions and/or demotions, termination, and harassment. For each area, we assessed the strength of protection against racial and ethnic discrimination. We classified countries as having a “specific prohibition of racial or ethnic discrimination” if legislation either: 1) explicitly addressed racial and ethnic discrimination in that aspect of work (“racial discrimination in hiring is prohibited”); or 2) broadly prohibited racial discrimination at work (“there shall be no discrimination at work based on race”) and guaranteed equality in the specific area (“no one shall be discriminated against in hiring decisions”). For equal pay, we further distinguished between countries that guaranteed equal pay for equal work and those that had a stronger provision guaranteeing equal pay for work of equal value which would prohibit differences in pay when there is occupational segregation.

Countries were classified as having a “broad prohibition of racial or ethnic discrimination” if legislation broadly prohibited discrimination based on race or ethnicity, but did not address specific aspects of work. Countries were coded as having a “general prohibition of discrimination” if legislation did not explicitly address race or ethnicity but banned discrimination in an aspect of work for all workers. “No explicit prohibition” denotes when legislation did not take any of the approaches above. We separately analyzed whether prohibitions of discrimination included indirect discrimination, which would protect against seemingly neutral practices or criteria that have disparate impacts across race and/or ethnicity.

Intersecting characteristics

In many countries racial and/or ethnic discrimination is deeply intertwined with other characteristics, including social class, migration status, foreign national origin, and religion. Accordingly, we assessed whether laws prohibit discrimination based on both race and/or ethnicity and these intersecting characteristics.

Employer responsibilities

We assessed whether legislation required employers to take measures to prevent racial or ethnic discrimination in the workplace. In doing so, we distinguished between legislation that made it a general responsibility and legislation that outlined specific steps for employers to take. These specific prevention steps included requirements to create a code of conduct to prevent racial discrimination, establish disciplinary procedures, raise awareness of anti-discrimination laws, or conduct trainings to prevent discrimination.

Prohibitions of retaliation

To capture the extent to which provisions effectively covered the range of forms that retaliation can take, we coded the protections for individuals who reported discrimination, filed a complaint, or initiated litigation (any adverse action, disciplinary action, or retaliatory dismissal only) and whether prohibitions of retaliation covered all workers participating in the investigation.

Firm-based exceptions

In some countries, prohibitions of discrimination are weakened by provisions that exempt certain employers. We captured exceptions that broadly applied to prohibitions of discrimination or specifically in different aspects of work based on firm type for small businesses, charities and non-profits, and religious organizations.

All analyses were conducted using Stata MP 14.2. Differences were assessed by region using the Pearson's chi-square statistics. Region was categorized according to the World Bank's country and lending groups as of 2020 [ 1 ].

Globally, 153 countries prohibited at least some form of racial and/or ethnic discrimination at work in 2021, a modest increase from 148 countries in 2016 ( Figure 1 ). Three of the countries introducing these new prohibitions were in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mali, South Sudan, and Zambia), one in Europe (Iceland), and one in the South Pacific (Tuvalu). An additional five countries expanded existing prohibitions of racial and/or ethnic discrimination either to broadly prohibit discrimination at work in addition to specific prohibitions in certain areas (Barbados and Honduras) or to comprehensively cover discrimination at work in all areas, as well as indirect racial and/or ethnic discrimination (Andorra, Burundi, and Sao Tome and Principe).

Gaps in prohibitions are found in every region of the world. Countries in the Americas were the most likely to prohibit at least some form of racial discrimination at work, followed closely by Europe and Central Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In each of these regions, only ten percent or fewer of countries lacked at least some form of prohibition. In contrast, a majority of countries lack prohibitions of racial discrimination in East Asia and Pacific and South Asia ( Figure 2 ). Differences were statistically significant between these two regions and the three regions with the highest levels of prohibitions ( p  < 0.01).

In 2016, 107 countries had a law that explicitly prohibited race-based discrimination in hiring. That number increased to 115 countries in 2021 (see Figure 2 ). An additional 27 countries in 2016 and 29 countries in 2021 had either a broad prohibition of race discrimination or a general prohibition of discrimination in hiring. Prohibitions of racial/ethnic discrimination in hiring were most common in Europe and Central Asia (91%) followed by sub-Saharan Africa (62%). In all other regions, fewer than half of countries prohibited racial discrimination in hiring ( Figure 3 ).

Training and promotions/demotions

Eighty countries in 2016 and 88 countries in 2021 prohibited discrimination based on race in training. Eighty-three countries in 2016 prohibited discrimination in promotions and demotions. In 2021, this number increased to 90 countries.

While less than three-quarters of countries prohibited racial discrimination in training in Europe and Central Asia (74%), these prohibitions were still more common than in every other region. Similar trends were found for promotions and/or demotions.

The number of countries guaranteeing equal pay for work of equal value, increased from 34 in 2016 to 41 in 2021. Overall, including guarantees both of equal pay for work of equal value and equal pay for equal work, 91 countries in 2016 and 96 countries in 2021 guaranteed equal pay across racial and ethnic groups. More countries in Europe and Central Asia (77%) prohibited racial discrimination in pay than those in sub-Saharan Africa (56%), the Middle East and North Africa (27%), and South Asia (27%).

Terminations

In 2016, 106 countries prohibited racial discrimination in terminating employment. That number increased to 112 countries in 2021. Prohibitions of racial/ethnic discrimination in terminations were most common in Europe and Central Asia (74%), Sub-Saharan Africa (71%), and the Americas (60%). In contrast, less than a third of countries prohibited racial discrimination in terminations in East Asia and Pacific (30%) and South Asia (25%).

Only 66 countries explicitly prohibited workplace harassment based on race/ethnicity in 2016. By 2021, that number had increased to 72. Only a minority of countries prohibited racial and/or ethnic harassment in all regions except Europe and Central Asia.

Indirect discrimination

Sixty-three countries prohibited indirect discrimination based on race and/or ethnicity in 2016, increasing to 71 countries in 2021. Only a third of countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a fifth of those in East Asia and Pacific and the Americas, and an eighth of those in South Asia explicitly addressed indirect racial/ethnic discrimination. No countries in the Middle East and North Africa did so.

Intertwined, multiple and intersectional discrimination

Prohibitions of discrimination based on both race and/or ethnicity and religion were widespread: 151 countries prohibited at least some aspect of workplace discrimination based on both characteristics in 2021. However, only 117 countries prohibited at least some aspect of workplace discrimination based on both race and/or ethnicity and social class. Even fewer prohibited discrimination based on both race and/or ethnicity and foreign national origin (90 countries) or migration status (81 countries).

Countries in sub-Saharan Africa were most likely to prohibit discrimination based on race and social class, as well as discrimination based on race and foreign national origin. While prohibitions of racial discrimination and religion, social class, or foreign national origin were comparatively high in the Americas, prohibitions of discrimination based on migration status were markedly lower. While nearly two-thirds of countries in Europe and Central Asia addressed migration status alongside race, only half prohibited discrimination based on foreign national origin ( Figure 4 ).

Finally, a minority of countries explicitly addressed the concepts of intersectionality or multiple discrimination in their discrimination legislation. Kenya's National Gender and Equality Commission Act recognizes intersectionality in defining marginalized groups to be people “disadvantaged by discrimination on one or more of the grounds in Article 27(4) of the Constitution” which includes “race, sex, pregnancy, marital status, health status, ethnic or social origin, colour, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, dress, language or birth” ( 2012 ). Australia's Racial Discrimination Act prohibits “acts done for 2 or more reasons” where “one of the reasons is the race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin of a person” ( 1975 ). In Macedonia, the Law on Prevention of and Protection Against Discrimination defines multiple discrimination to be a severe form of discrimination ( 2010 ).

Only a smaller minority of countries (38) took the additional step of requiring employers to take one or more specific measures to prevent racial discrimination. An additional 8 countries had general language requiring employers to take preventative steps, without specifying what those steps would look like.

Protections in the event of discrimination

In the event that discrimination occurred and employees filed a report or initiated litigation, a modest majority of countries took the important step of prohibiting retaliation against the employee who filed the complaint. Seventy-eight countries prohibited employers from retaliating in any way, an additional 7 prohibited harassment or any disciplinary action, and 26 only prohibited dismissing the employee ( Table 1 ). A similar number of countries (76) protected employees who participated in investigations from being retaliated against.

Are any employers exempt?

When countries had laws in place prohibiting discrimination, they overwhelmingly applied to all employers. In rare cases small businesses were exempt, including in 5 countries in the case of hiring, 4 countries in the case of training and terminations, and 3 countries in the case of pay and promotions and demotions ( Table 2 ). Charities and nonprofits had similarly uncommon exemptions. The group that was most frequently exempted from these prohibitions of racial discrimination were religious organizations. Fourteen countries exempted religious organizations from bans on discriminations based on race in hiring, training, and terminations, 13 exempted religious organizations in terms of racial discrimination in promotions and demotions, and 9 in the case of pay.

Around the world there has been an explosion of demonstrations and attention to the critical issue of racial discrimination over the past two years, building on the many decades of activism urging action on racial injustices that came before. And while catalyzed by state violence, these recent demonstrations also clearly took aim at the deeply entrenched economic disparities across race that persist across countries, which were on full display as workers from marginalized racial and ethnic groups lost jobs in historic numbers two months into the pandemic.

In response, governments and companies worldwide pledged action. Ensuring that discrimination is clearly prohibited in every country is an essential first step both for changing norms and attitudes and for giving people who are discriminated against more tools to combat the discrimination. Modest progress has been made over the past five years in increasing guarantees of equality, regardless of race and ethnicity, around the world. Between 2016 and 2021, the number of countries legally prohibiting racial and ethnic discrimination in the workplace increased and the strength of provisions improved. Eight more countries prohibited discrimination in hiring and 6 more in terminations. Seven more countries guaranteed equal pay for work of equal value based on race. Moreover, 8 more countries prohibited indirect discrimination based on race and ethnicity.

Yet unconscionable gaps remain. More than 1 in 5 countries have no prohibition of workplace discrimination based on race. Moreover, more than 1 in 4 countries, 54 in total, have no prohibition against racial discrimination in pay. Furthermore, more than a dozen countries provide for exceptions to the prohibition of racial discrimination for religious organizations.

Many countries also fail to offer adequate legal protection against both direct racial discrimination and other forms of discrimination that often occur simultaneously, have disparate impacts on the basis of race, and/or serve as proxies for racial discrimination. For example, in many countries around the world, marginalized racial and ethnic groups are also disproportionately poor due to historic and ongoing economic exclusion. In settings where racial and ethnic discrimination is prohibited but social class-based discrimination remains allowed, class-based discrimination can be used to practically discriminate based on race and ethnicity, particularly if indirect discrimination is likewise unaddressed in the law. Yet 76 countries fail to prohibit discrimination based on both social class and race and/or ethnicity; 121 lack protections against indirect discrimination; and 58 countries lack either protection.

Similarly, while discrimination based both on race/ethnicity and migration status is pervasive, many countries lack comprehensive protections addressing these and related grounds. The evidence illustrating why stronger laws are needed is compelling. For example, a study on labor force participation in Western Europe found that migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia earned over 20% less income than Western European internal migrants. Compared to internal Western European migrants, external migrants from MENA and sub-Saharan Africa regions were also less likely to be employed and part of the labor force in Europe ( Kislev, 2017 ). National laws that formally and explicitly prohibit multiple forms of discrimination may help protect more individuals and reduce inequalities in employment opportunities. Yet, 112 countries fail to prohibit discrimination based on both migration status and race and/or ethnicity and 103 fail to do so for foreign national origin and race and/or ethnicity.

Finally, even when legal protections are in place, it is crucial that there are both prevention and enforcement mechanisms. 107 countries prohibited racial and ethnic discrimination but did not place any explicit requirements on employers to try to prevent discrimination. Only 38 countries required employers to take specific steps and only an additional 8 required employers generally to work towards prevention.

The critical need to accelerate progress

The significant overall gaps in protections, alongside the findings that the expansion over the past five years of laws prohibiting racial discrimination at work has been slow, underscores the need to accelerate the pace of change on legal reforms—as a matter of human rights, an important determinant of individual and household incomes, and a prerequisite for countries to reach their full potential. Ensuring equal opportunities in employment on the basis of race and ethnicity has vast implications for individuals, families, and their broader communities. A significant body of literature has documented how access to employment, job quality, and adequate income shape mental and physical health, overall life satisfaction, and the ability to meet material needs ( Calvo et al ., 2015 ; Murphy and Athansou, 1999 ). When work opportunities are unevenly distributed by race due to both individual and structural discrimination, these disparities drive broader inequalities.

Moreover, all countries have agreed to do so. The Sustainable Development Goals, adopted by all UN member states in 2015, commit governments to “empower and promote the social, economic and political inclusion of all, irrespective of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion or economic or other status” and “[e]nsure equal opportunity and reduce inequalities of outcome, including by eliminating discriminatory laws, policies and practices and promoting appropriate legislation, policies and action in this regard” ( United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015 ). By adopting the SDGs, countries worldwide agreed to realize these commitments by 2030. To meet that timeline, accelerating the pace of change on fundamental anti-discrimination protections is essential.

This builds on a long history of international agreements guaranteeing equal rights regardless of race or ethnicity, including in the field of employment. Many of these have been in place for decades. Foremost among them is the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination ( United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1965 ), which has been ratified by 182 countries ( United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2021c ), declares that States Parties have a duty to “prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, or national or ethnic origin, to equality before the law, notably in the enjoyment of (…) The rights to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work, to protection against unemployment, to equal pay for equal work, to just and favourable remuneration” ( United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1965 ).

In fact, nearly every major global human rights agreement commits countries to treating all people equally regardless of race or ethnicity. These include, among others, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted as the first global agreement of the United Nations and considered binding on all countries ( United Nations General Assembly, 1948 ), the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, a binding treaty ratified by 171 countries ( United Nations General Assembly, 1966 ; United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 2021b ), and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, ratified by 173 countries ( United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, 1966 , 2021a ).

Finally, beyond its importance to individuals, families, and communities and deep intrinsic value as a matter of human rights, ending racial discrimination in the labor market has significant implications for economies and companies. For example, in the US alone, estimates from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco find that closing the racial gaps in employment-to-population ratios between 1990 and 2019 would have boosted 2019 GDP by over $150 billion ( Buckman et al. , 2021 ), while other research has forecast that closing the racial earnings gap by 2050 would boost GDP by 22% ( Turner, 2018 ). Likewise, a significant body of evidence demonstrates that greater racial and ethnic diversity within companies, including on boards, improves their financial performance and degree of innovation ( Erhardt et al. , 2003 ; Herring, 2009 ; Cheong and Sinnakkannu, 2014 ; Thomas et al. , 2016 ; Hunt et al. , 2018 ). For example, a study of 492 firms found a strong relationship between ethnic and linguistic diversity and total revenue, dividends, sales and productivity ( Churchill, 2019 ). Particularly as more companies work and hire trans-nationally, the extent to which laws in all countries prohibit racial and ethnic discrimination at work matters to overall performance.

Research limitations and the need for a broader research agenda on policies and outcomes

While this study provides an important first look at prohibitions against racial and ethnic discrimination at work in all the world's countries, it has important limitations. This study did not quantify laws related to intersectional discrimination, including, among others, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Yet as past scholarship and case law have shown, addressing each individual basis for discrimination still may not be enough to reach the unique forms of discrimination that arise when multiple grounds of discrimination intersect, particularly if workers are required to prove each of their discrimination claims discretely and sequentially. Explicit protections against intersectional discrimination, and judiciaries willing and trained to apply them, may be needed ( Crenshaw, 1989 ; Fredman, 2016 ).

Future research should also examine prohibitions of discrimination in working conditions, given the evidence of inequalities. For example, research has shown that non-Hispanic Black workers and foreign-born Hispanic workers are disproportionately hired into jobs with the higher injury risk and increased prevalence of work-related disability ( Seabury et al. , 2017 ). Another study on COVID-19 job exposures found that Latinx and Black frontline workers were overrepresented in lower status occupations associated with higher risk and less adequate COVID-19 protections, contributing to the higher prevalence of infection in these populations ( Goldman et al. , 2021 ).

Further, we need to measure laws that reduce bias in informal as well as formal mechanisms that play a large role in the recruitment, hiring, and promotion processes, as well as in determining working conditions. Evidence has shown social networks and informal relationships can not only impact recruitment, but also can contribute to inequities in salary negotiations and mentorship at the hiring stage ( Seidel et al. , 2000 ; Spafford et al. , 2006 ).

These expansions on the law and policy data presented here should be part of a broader research agenda on racial equity in the global labor market that examines not only which laws and policies are in place but what impacts they are having. As with other policy areas, developing longitudinal quantitative, globally comparative measures of anti-discrimination laws helps make it possible for researchers to rigorously analyze the relationship between policy change and outcomes, producing actionable evidence about “what works” across countries ( Raub et al. , 2022 ). However, even with the new policy data we have developed, improvements in outcomes data will be essential to measure the impact globally of advances and legal gaps. Globally comparative data on experiences of racial discrimination across countries which is essential for measuring the impact of legal change globally has been limited to date for several reasons including the wide range across countries of who suffers racial and ethnic discrimination and the variability of country willingness to collect data.

Addressing discrimination: a global responsibility

While the workplace is only one location where racial and ethnic discrimination occurs, it is a crucial one. Ensuring equal opportunity to be hired and equal treatment in pay, working conditions, and promotions together influences whether individuals can lead full work lives, contribute to household income, and not only meet basic needs but also invest in the future of their families and communities. Moreover, global agreements have committed countries around the world to combatting discrimination based on race and ethnicity, including in the specific context of employment.

For these international instruments to have full impact, however, specific country-level legislation that operationalizes their commitments and prohibits discrimination in the workplace is essential. To accelerate progress toward ending racial and ethnic discrimination in employment worldwide—a basic human right—we need to monitor the steps countries are taking to address and eliminate discrimination in all aspects of work, including hiring, promotion, pay, and terminations. While legal guarantees are not enough—and norm change, leadership, and social movements are likewise critical to successfully eliminating discrimination both at work and more broadly—clear stipulations that companies are not allowed to discriminate are essential, as are strong and regularly updated accountability mechanisms.

Do countries prohibit racial and/or ethnic discrimination in all aspects of work?

Number of countries prohibiting racial and/or ethnic discrimination at work by aspect of work and year

Percentage of countries prohibiting racial and/or ethnic discrimination at work by region and aspect of work

Number of countries prohibiting at least some discrimination at work based on race and/or ethnicity and intersecting characteristics by region

Countries with prohibitions of retaliation against those reporting discrimination

Countries with exceptions to prohibitions of racial and/or ethnic discrimination

The World Bank's (WB) regional classifications can be found here: https://datahelpdesk.worldbank.org/knowledgebase/articles/906519-world-bank-country-and-lending-groups . While Malta is classified as part of the Middle East and North Africa by the WB, it is also a member of the European Union (EU) and therefore more likely to have legislation reflecting the EU's principles and directives. Thus, we classified Malta as a part of Europe and Central Asia. All other countries retained their WB classifications.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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Article contents

Culture, prejudice, racism, and discrimination.

• John Baldwin John Baldwin School of Communication, Illinois State University
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.164
• Published online: 25 January 2017

Prejudice is a broad social phenomenon and area of research, complicated by the fact that intolerance exists in internal cognitions but is manifest in symbol usage (verbal, nonverbal, mediated), law and policy, and social and organizational practice. It is based on group identification (i.e., perceiving and treating a person or people in terms of outgroup membership); but that outgroup can range from the more commonly known outgroups based on race, sex/gender, nationality, or sexual orientation to more specific intolerances of others based on political party, fan status, or membership in some perceived group such as “blonde” or “athlete.” This article begins with the link of culture to prejudice, noting specific culture-based prejudices of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. It then explores the levels at which prejudice might be manifest, finally arriving at a specific focus of prejudice—racism; however, what applies to racism may also apply to other intolerances such as sexism, heterosexism, classism, or ageism.

The discussion and analysis of prejudice becomes complicated when we approach a specific topic like racism, though the tensions surrounding this phenomenon extend to other intolerances such as sexism or heterosexism. Complications include determining the influences that might lead to individual racism or an atmosphere of racism, but also include the very definition of what racism is: Is it an individual phenomenon, or does it refer to an intolerance that is supported by a dominant social structure? Because overt intolerance has become unpopular in many societies, researchers have explored how racism and sexism might be expressed in subtle terms; others investigate how racism intersects with other forms of oppression, including those based on sex/gender, sexual orientation, or colonialism; and still others consider how one might express intolerance “benevolently,” with good intentions though still based on problematic racist or sexist ideologies.

• discrimination
• intolerance
• heterosexism
• stereotypes
• ethnocentrism

Introduction

One of the causes that gave rise to the postmodern revolution in France in 1968 was the failure of modern science and philosophy—liberalism, social science, reason, and so on—to remedy problems of war, poverty, and intolerance (Rosenau, 1992 ). As we look around today at the world in general, or even within specific nations, we continue to see a wide range of prejudice, from the 1994 genocide of Tutsis (and many Hutus) by Hutus in Rwanda to the mass killing of 70 people, mostly youths, at a Utøyan youth camp in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik. At this writing, a major refugee problem exists from people fleeing Middle Eastern countries where a strong ISIS influence is leading to the killing of gays, Christians, and Muslims from rival belief systems. In many European countries, hate groups and right-wing politicians are gaining ground. The Southern Poverty Law center tracks 1,600 hate groups within the United States (“Hate and Extremism,” n.d. ), classifying 784 that were active in 2014 (“Hate Map,” n.d. ), and the FBI reports nearly 6,000 hate crimes in the United States, with the greatest numbers due to race (48.5%), religion (17.4%), and sexual orientation (20.8%; FBI, 2014 ). These statistics reveal some interesting things about intolerance. For example, the “race”-based hate crimes include crimes based on anti-white sentiment as well as against people of color; and about 61% of hate crimes based on sexual orientation target gay males.

Both the international events and the statistics relevant to any specific nation prompt difficult questions about intolerance. In a white-dominant society, can or should we call anti-white crimes by people of color “racist”? If someone commits a hate crime based on sexual orientation, why are gay men more often the target than lesbians? Would hate crimes in other countries reflect the same axes of difference, or might hate crimes be based differently? German hate crimes might be based more on ethnicity (e.g., against Turkish immigrants, who by most racial classifications would be Caucasian). Why do people commit such acts at all?

One mistake we often make is thinking of prejudice and discrimination only in extreme terms such as genocide and hate crimes. In many countries and cultures, where overt expression of racism (and other intolerances) has become socially unacceptable, intolerances have gone “underground,” hidden in subtle forms. Further, intolerance can rely upon a wide variety of identity groups, including some that are (supposedly) biologically based, like racism, or based on other aspects, such as political party, fan status, or membership in some perceived group such as “blonde” or “athlete.” In sum, we must consider the relationship between different forms of intolerance, including but not limited to prejudice, racism, and discrimination; but these must always be understood within specific cultural contexts.

Culture and Intolerance

(re)defining culture.

As we look to the cultural influence on intolerance, we must first consider the definition of culture. The study of culture has deep roots in anthropological and linguistic research, especially as seen in the work of Franz Boaz and his students Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Edward Sapir, as well as in the early work of Edward Tyler, itself based on earlier traditions of ethology (Darwin) and social evolution (Marx). This work influenced the work of anthropologist E. T. Hall (Rogers & Hart, 2002 ) and others who laid the groundwork for the study of intercultural communication (Leeds-Hurwitz, 1990 ). Scholars have debated whether culture is a shared mental framework of beliefs, norms for behavior (i.e., the expectations for behavior rather than the behaviors themselves), values, and worldview, or whether culture should also include actual behaviors, texts, and artifacts of a group. In 1952 , A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn synthesized over 150 definitions of culture into a single definition that focuses on “patterns, explicit and implicit, of and for behavior,” along with “ideas and especially their attached values” (p. 181). These are influenced and created through symbolic behavior, action, and other aspects of the environment (history, geography). The definitional dimensions of culture described by Kroeber and Kluckhohn explained well many of the definitions of culture up until the 1980s. After that time, some scholars (especially in communication) began to treat culture more as a set of symbols and meanings. Others framed culture as a process of constructing social meanings and systems through communication. As people sing, speak, play, tell jokes, and conduct business, they are constantly (re)creating their culture—both relying upon it and changing it.

More pertinent to the study of intolerance is a new approach to culture that sees culture neither as “suitcase” of things (be those beliefs and values or texts and artifacts) passed down from one generation to the next nor as a neutral process of mutual symbolic creation through time, but as having vested power interests that seek to influence what is seen as accepted or normal within a culture. For example, Moon ( 2002 ) defines culture as a “contested zone”:

Thinking about culture as a contested zone helps us understand the struggles of cultural groups and the complexities of cultural life … If we define culture as a contested zone in which different groups struggle to define issues in their own interests, we must also recognize that not all groups have equal access to public forums to voice their concerns, perspectives, and the everyday realities of their lives” (pp. 15–16).

That is, every cultural manifestation, such as the framing of Australian culture as “individualistic” or saying that “Australian men have such-and-such characteristics,” highlights what one should not be within that culture and establishes bounds for group-based intolerance.

With this diversity of definitions in mind, one is not sure what to think culture is or should be. Baldwin, Faulkner, Hecht, and Lindsley ( 2006 ) present a series of essays on the definition of culture by authors from six different disciplines (e.g., multicultural education, anthropology, political science), as well as 313 definitions of culture from an even greater number of disciplines, which they analyze. While they are reluctant to settle on a single definition of culture, this definition embraces most trends:

The way of life of a group of people, including symbols, values, behaviors, artifacts, and other shared aspects, that continually evolves as people share messages and is often the result of a struggle between groups who share different perspectives, interests, and power relationships (Baldwin, Coleman, González, & Shenoy-Packer, 2014 , p. 55).

This definition of culture, like most definitions that take a symbolic, process, or critical approach, does not treat cultures as “nations,” but as people groups who share symbolic or speech codes, with multiple cultural groups—defined not by demographic constitutions such as race, sex, or age, but by shared communicative realities—sharing single geographic areas. It is in the creation and defending of cultures—from countries to local and virtual communities—that intolerance often becomes apparent.

The Role of Culture in Prejudice

Of various schools of thought about the nature and origins of intolerance, only one approach suggests that intolerance is biological or in some way inherited, and that is sociobiology, or evolutionary theory. This approach suggests that intolerance is based on such things as preservation of the purity of the gene pool of one’s group, an inherent fear of strangers, or an inherited need for group identity. But even evolutionary theorists cannot explain all intolerance based on a theory of inherited impulse. Meyer ( 1987 ) argues:

Xenophobia and ethnocentrism as extreme forms of this search for identity cannot be attributed to [human] biology … Their very existence is a result of [human’s] attempts towards understanding the world, and [their] strong affective need to delimit a cosmos of conspecifics with whom [they] can share interpretations of [their] socially construed world (p. 93).

Research on intolerance in 90 preindustrial societies suggests that, when there are clearly psychological causes for intergroup conflict, groups ultimately use communication to create who the enemy is and how one should demonstrate or show intolerance (Ross, 1991 ). In sum, there is a strong cultural component determining which intolerances are felt or expressed in a given place or time.

Culture, however one defines it, can affect tolerance. Culture might be a set of values and beliefs, such as the value of loyalty to one’s group, combined with a belief that people who belong to a particular group have particular characteristics, are unlikeable for some reason, or merit mistreatment and the application of a different set of standards than we apply to ourselves (Opotow, 1990 ). If culture is a process, then we might look at how a culture creates both identity and intolerance through the ongoing structures of language, including word choices (“babe,” “hunk,” “faggot”), conversational structure (interruptions, etc.), joke- and storytelling, and so on. For example, West and Zimmerman’s ( 1987 ) notion of “doing gender” (i.e., gender as an everyday accomplishment of language) has led to countless studies of gender construction in several nations, as well as a focus by others on how we also “do race” and other identities. The way that we construct our identities through communication is inherently linked to how we construct the identities of those in outgroups, as we shall see; but they are also linked to behavior within our group. Social constructionist approaches to culture thus often become critical in their focus on power relations. Critical approaches look at how cultures, through communication, architecture, law, literature, education, and so on create a sense of the “other”—and of the self—that constrains us and pits us against one another in group conflict.

“Culture”-Based Prejudices: Ethnocentrism, Xenophobia

The purpose of this article is primarily to look at racism and discrimination as forms of prejudice; however, these cannot be understood without a larger understanding of prejudice in general and other forms or types of prejudice. Allport ( 1979 ) defines prejudice as an antipathy one has or a tendency to avoid the other, based on the other person’s group. For Allport, prejudice is a cognitive or psychological phenomenon:

Prejudice is ultimately a problem of personality formation and development; no two cases of prejudice are precisely the same. No individual would mirror his [or her] group’s attitude unless he [or she] had a personal need, or personal habit, that leads him [or her] to do so (p. 41).

Based on the Greek word that means “fear of strangers,” xenophobia refers to “the fear or hatred of anything that is foreign or outside of one’s own group, nation, or culture” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 235). The idea is frequently applied to a mistrust or dislike (rather than merely fear) of outgroups or those perceived to be different, especially in national terms. While the Greek translation suggests the psychological component of fear, recent researchers have treated the concept in behavioral or message terms. Historical research on xenophobia links it to anti-Semitism and, more recently, to Islamophobia, though it does not have as clear a historical trajectory as ethnocentrism; many more recent studies look at South Africa as a model nation in attempting to strategically reduce xenophobia. Researchers use a variety of methods to look at xenophobia, depending on their research assumptions and background disciplines. Rhetorical media research, for example, analyzes how Czech newspapers code anti-Roma sentiment through subtle terms such as “inadaptable citizens” ( nepřízpůsobivý občan , Slavíčková & Zvagulis, 2014 , p. 159); and psychological survey research investigates how, among Southern California students, ethnocentrism is positively associated with both language prejudice and feelings of being threatened by immigrants (Ura, Preston, & Mearns, 2015 ).

Van Dijk ( 1993 ) notes how groups can use language such as hyperbole of differences to marginalize immigrants, often through appeals to so-called democratic values. He notes that in some countries, such as in Central Europe, where claims of racism are often forcefully resisted due to conceptual ties of the term to Hitler’s Holocaust, Ausländerfeindlicheit (fear of foreigners) takes its place, though this fear of foreigners is frequently aimed at Turks and other (often darker-skinned and religiously different) people who resist adoption of traditional Germanic culture.

Ethnocentrism

Some types of prejudice relate specifically to the larger and more traditional notion of culture (i.e., cultures as nations). Ethnocentrism gained prominence as an area of research following sociologist Robert Sumner’s 1906 definition of the term as gauging others in reference to one’s own culture ( 1975 ), though other sociologists soon began to distinguish between this notion of “centrality” and the idea of “superiority”—that one’s culture or group is superior to those of others. If one sees ethnocentrism strictly as a feeling of superiority, nationalism (or school spirit, or religious loyalty, etc.) might not in and of itself be ethnocentric if it focuses only on being loyal to or highlighting the benefits of one’s own group, without denigrating others, though some might argue that it is impossible to feel pride in one’s own group without, at some level, disdaining or thinking less of other groups. The possibility of an ethnocentric bias in research led many early anthropologists to suggest ethnography—spending extended time within a culture to see things from cultural members’ point of view—as a way to reduce ethnocentrism in research.

A consideration of ethnocentrism has implications for other forms of bias as well, as the factors that predict national cultural ethnocentrism—and solutions that address it—could apply equally to one’s perception of life within one’s own community. The Hmong-descended people of the Pacific Northwest in the United States will likely feel that their ways are superior to those of Moroccan- or Guatemalan-descended peoples, as well as to those of the dominant culture. Auestad ( 2013 ) presented a series of essays on the rise of political discourses across the world that highlighted elements of national security and identity (tradition), as well as the building of cultures of fear by focusing on the negative aspects of foreigners or those of different religious groups within single countries. Some elements of the U.S. presidential race rhetoric of 2015–2016 exemplified this xenophobic and ethnocentric trend.

Within the field of intercultural communication, at least two lines of research have focused on ethnocentrism. The first is by Jim Neuliep, who, with colleagues, has revisited the measurement of ethnocentrism in the classic 1950 work by the Frankfurt School, The Authoritarian Personality , with a new measure of ethnocentrism. After applying the measure to white Americans, Neuliep ( 2012 ) continues to test the relationship of ethnocentrism to other important intercultural variables, such as intercultural anxiety and communication satisfaction. The second is Milton Bennett’s ( 1993 ) consideration of ethnorelativism. In this approach, a range of attitudes reflects either ethnocentrism or ethnorelativism. Ethnocentric stances include denial (e.g., indifference toward or ignorance of any difference at all), defense (traditional ethnocentrism of denigrating the culture of the other or feeling one’s own culture is superior, but also in “going native”), and minimization (focusing on similarities and ignoring differences, by claiming “color blindness,” or focusing on how we are all the same, be that as “God’s children” or in the Marxist struggle against oppression; 43). As one grows more “ethnorelative,” or accepting of difference, one exhibits one of three stages: acceptance (being respectful of and even appreciating the value and behavioral differences of others), adaptation (actually adopting behaviors or views of other groups), or integration (adopting a worldview that transcends any single culture). This approach has gained ground around the world and in different disciplines, from Finland to Iran, with applications from cultural sensitivity to interreligious tensions.

One of the difficulties of discussing prejudice is the conceptual overlap between terms (e.g., xenophobia conflates with racial or ethnic prejudice; ethnocentrism might refer to any people group, such as ethnic groups, and not just nations). At the root of our understanding of prejudice is the very goal of “tolerance.” In fact, the notion of tolerance for diversity may be limited: It is often treated merely as “the application of the same moral principles and rules, caring and empathy, and feelings of connections to human beings of other perceived groups” (Baldwin & Hecht, 1995 , p. 65). That is, it is similar to Bennett’s ( 1993 ) notion of acceptance, of respect for difference, though that respect sometimes (a) occurs at a difference and (b) sometimes exists in behavioral form only, but is not internalized. Communication of tolerance is a worthwhile pursuit in our behavior and research; however, we argue that we can go beyond tolerance to appreciation—even to the behavioral and attitudinal integration of elements of the other culture (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). There is a danger of such appreciation, as borrowing (e.g., “cultural hybridity”) occurs within power relations. We are not talking about a dominant group borrowing from subordinate or subaltern groups in a colonizing or folklorizing way, but about cultural learning and dialogue.

Limited Perspectives of Prejudice

That consideration of tolerance/prejudice should be treated as a dichotomy or a range is only one of the difficulties that has haunted the study and conceptualization of prejudice. Debates have swirled around the nature of prejudice, the causes of prejudice, and the “locus” of certain prejudices (such as racism or sexism), among other things. Allport ( 1979 ) suggests that prejudice is a “generalized” attitude—that if one is prejudiced, say, toward Jewish people, she or he will also be prejudiced toward communists, people of color, and so on. It is possible, however, that one might be prejudiced toward some groups, even in some contexts, but not toward other groups (Baldwin & Hecht, 1995 ).

The nature of prejudice

Allport ( 1979 ) defines prejudice as “an avertive [i.e., avoiding] or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he [or she] belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to the group” (p. 7). By this definition, prejudice is an aspect of affect , or feeling toward a group, though it is closely related to cognitions , or thoughts about the group, referring to stereotypes. Also, prejudice is inherently negative, following the primary definition common in modern dictionaries, though a secondary definition includes any sort of prejudgment based on group belonging, such as prejudice toward one’s own group. Most dictionary definitions follow the attitudinal approach, though in common usage, people often use the term to refer to things like racism, which carry behavioral and even policy implications that are not strictly attitudes. By strictest definition, prejudice is an attitude that favors one group over another, based on or related to cognitions, and both leading to and influenced by behaviors (including communication), texts (e.g., media, rhetoric), and policies (following the notion of structuration, in which social structures guide social behavior, but social behavior in turn creates and changes social structures).

Causes of prejudice

Allport ( 1979 ) recognized a series of influences that impact a particular incident of prejudice, such as police brutality based on racial group/social class divisions or anti-Islamic bullying in secondary schools around the Western world. These include historical, sociological, situational, psychodynamic, and phenomenological (i.e., perceptual) influences. But ultimately, for Allport, a social psychologist, prejudice is “a problem of personality formation and development” (p. 41). For Althusser ( 1971 ), a Marxist philosopher, prejudice would likely, in the last instance, be an issue of economic and social class considerations. Ultimately, a cross-disciplinary perspective is more useful for understanding a complex phenomenon like prejudice (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). A broader consideration should consider multiple causes (Baldwin, 1998 ), including evolutionary causes, psychological causes (both psychodynamic and perceptual), sociological causes, and rhetorical causes. Communication and behavior become central in each of these causes, highlighting the need for a communicative understanding of prejudice.

Evolutionary causes, often referred to under the rubric of sociobiology, focus on the way in which prejudice might be an inherited trait, possibly even genetic (see, e.g., essays in Reynolds, Falger, & Vine, 1987 ). This approach includes the idea that groups seek to preserve themselves (e.g., by preservation of a supposedly pure gene pool or because of fear of the stranger), the ethnocentrism already noted. Behaviors that exclude have a sense of “naturalness” in that they help a group to survive, and such exclusion of strangers may help to preserve a group’s existence. Some scholars have criticized this approach as a rationale for conservative politics that create a notion of “us” and “them” as natural and that exclude the other, often in racial or religious terms, in order to preserve the way of life of a dominant group within a culture or nation.

Psychological explanations of prejudice fall into at least two major divisions. The first, psychodynamic, suggests that prejudice serves as a mechanism for individuals to meet psychological needs. Thus researchers have long linked it to things such as ambivalence toward parents, rigid personality structure, and a need for authority (Allport, 1979 ; Adorno et al., 1950 ). We see this indirectly through Kenneth Burke’s ( 1967 ) approach to rhetoric in his analysis of Hitler’s campaign against Jewish people as a means to divert negative emotions related to economic and political difficulties from the mainstream German people to Jews, and in Edward Said’s ( 2003 ) Orientalism , which notes how Medieval Europe cast negative images of lust and vice on Middle Easterners that the Europeans did not see in themselves.

A second aspect of the psychological approach concerns perception or cognition. This contains a range of possible influences on prejudice, including such things as selective attention, perception, and recall of the negative behavior of outgroup members, or the notion of attributional biases that impact how we give meanings to the behavior of those of our ingroup and those of outgroups. At the center of many of these explanations is the notion of categorization of people (i.e., dividing them into cognitive groups such as ingroups and outgroups). Social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986 ) suggests that we cannot think of ourselves apart from the groups to which we belong; we engage in intergroup comparison as a means to make us feel better about our group; and, if our group does not compare well to a group we admire or must rely on in some way—often the dominant group—we engage in strategies to reclaim a sense of pride for our group or distance ourselves from it.

Categorization, in social identity theory, is not a form of prejudice—it is simply the mental placing of people (or things, actions, characteristics, etc.) into mental boxes. However, those boxes are closely related to the stereotypes that cling to groups. Stereotypes are overgeneralizations we make about groups that we apply to individuals in those groups (Herbst, 1997 ). Although these stereotypes provide a mental shortcut for processing information about others, they interfere with our encoding, storage, and recall of information about members of our own group and other groups (Stephan, 1985 ). Countless studies of stereotypes suggest that stereotypes, like ethnocentrism, can serve positive ingroup functions, that they sometimes have at least some basis in an actual behavior or custom (a “kernel of truth”), and that we stereotype both our own group and other groups. Devine (e.g., Devine & Sharp, 2009 ) has found that even people who report lower prejudice, if mentally occupied, still rely on stereotypes, suggesting that everyone is aware of societal stereotypes toward certain groups (e.g., the elderly, athletes, the deaf). It is likely that if we are on auto-pilot or in a state of mindlessness, we will resort to stereotypes. But individuating people (i.e., taking them out of the group we perceive them to be in and treating them as individuals; Dovidio, Gaertner, & Kawakami, 2003 ) may require deliberate cognitive effort.

Group-based, or sociological, approaches, like psychological approaches, are varied. These include Marxist approaches, which are themselves varied in form (see various essays in Rex & Mason, 1986 ). Some hold tightly to a “vulgar” vision of Marxism, framing intolerance like racism as a creation of the elite to divide the working classes and distract them from revolution through “false consciousness.” Few Marxists take such a severe approach, choosing to see looser relations between capital and the construction of intolerance, but in the “last instance,” seeing intolerance as linked to social class and economic systems. “Capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchal social systems are frequently identified as producing inherent race and gender inequalities which, in various ways, serve the needs of the systems they perpetuate” (Knowles & Mercer, 1992 , p. 110). Weberian approaches see a wider variety of classes than workers and elite, with prejudice linked not just to labor forces but to the struggle over goods, services, and prestige (Gerth & Mills, 1946 ). Other group-based factors also impact prejudice, such as perceived group competition for jobs and resources in times of economic upheaval (e.g., the 1970s oil crisis in the United States), known as realistic group conflict (Bobo, 1983 ); immigration reasons (refugees versus those seeking economic opportunity, patterns of settlement; Omi & Winant, 1986 ); and historically developed class statuses between groups that link immigrants or members of a minority group to a certain class (Wilson, 1978 ), such as the Gastarbeiter (guest-worker) Turks in Germany or the Algerian-descended French.

In a classic “chicken-egg” argument about which came first, it is fruitless to debate whether psychology leads to sociological causes or vice versa, and, in turn, whether these lead to the communicative expression of intolerance, or whether it is the communicative construction of group identities and intolerance that creates the attitudes (Ruscher, 2001 ). It is more likely that mental structures and communicative practices co-create each other, through forms we shall examine in more detail. One possible metaphor for understanding these influences, the impact of historical situations (such as the longstanding antipathy between Turkish and Greek Cypriots, Broome, 2005 ), and specific incidents (such as the attack on the World Trade Towers in New York City in 2001 ), is as layers building upon one other, or even as a hologram, in which we can imperfectly see some semblance of a complex prejudice through a single image—an experimental study on racial perceptions and media use, an analysis of an anti-Irish speech or a pro-nationalist song, or interviews with women who are victims of catcalling (Hecht & Baldwin, 1998 ). But, as a complete hologram provides the most faithful image, the most complete view of an intolerance will come through multiple views (e.g., disciplines), using multiple methods.

Racism: A Case Study in Prejudice

Racism as a specific type of prejudice is one of the most hotly discussed and debated sites of intolerance in contemporary times in the United States and beyond. Even countries that once imagined themselves as “racial democracies” in which racially different people lived side by side (like Brazil) are now admitting the harsh reality of entrenched and historic racism. Even though many there argue that class, not race, is the primary social distinction, as racism has become officially illegal, forms of overt racism, from social media to abuse and killing of unarmed blacks by police continue to receive recent focus in U.S. news.

Racism is a form of intolerance that is based on the supposedly biological distinction of race, but many authors today argue that race is a social construct, sometimes defined differently from country to country and even over time within a single country. Different authors have outlined the history of the notion of race in the English language, noting that at different times, it has referred to an ancestral clan (the race of Abraham), to supposed biological differences, and, more recently, to culture (Banton, 1987 ; Omi & Winant, 1986 ). Those who see a biological component cannot agree on how many races there are and, historically, politics and rhetoric have done as much to construct who belongs in a particular race as biology (e.g., in the early U.S., the Irish were considered “colored”). In the United States, race was based on racist assumptions, on one having even a small degree of colored blood in one’s ancestral lineage; in other cultures, race is based strictly on physiological features, regardless of lineage. Ethnicity , in contrast, is related more to the cultural origins of one’s background or ancestry, sometimes linked to a specific time and place. To emphasize its social constructedness, many authors bracket “race” with quotation marks.

Who Can Be Racist? The Locus of Racism (and Other Intolerances)

Can minority members be “racist”.

Beyond the nature of race itself, researchers and educators debate the very nature of racism. Some contend that racism is an intolerance based on the construction of race that is perpetrated and held by the support of the dominant system. For example, Malott and Schaefle ( 2015 ) define racism as “a system of oppression, whereby persons of a dominant racial group (whites in the United States) exercise power or privilege over those in nondominant groups” (p. 361). According to this argument, only whites can be racist in a white-dominated system (whether that dominance is by numbers or in political and social power). Others contend that racism is any system of beliefs—“held consciously or otherwise”—that treats members of a group that is different on supposedly biological grounds as “biologically different than one’s own” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 193). By this definition, anyone who sees another race group as inferior would be racist.

The locus of racism: Individual or structural?

This distinction in racism also applies to definitions of sexism or to the delineation between homophobia as a personal dislike or fear of LGBT individuals and heterosexism as a social structure that reinforces prejudice against them (Nakayama, 1998 ). The debate is similar to the definitional debate of prejudice in general—is it something that is strictly an individual trait, or is it something that is socially built into the structures of society—the laws, the media, the educational system, the church, and so on? Associated with this question is the nature of what racism is: The “individual-level” definition treats racism as a system of beliefs (i.e., a psychological construct), and the other treats it as a system of oppression that goes beyond individual psyche and personality to consider racism embedded within social structures. The question of where we see racism (and other intolerances) is vitally important. Those who see racism and other intolerances as primarily individual-level (stereotypes, personal dislikes, etc.) tend to address intolerance through training and educational programs in organizations and schools; those who see it as systemic believe that such approaches ignore larger issues of policy, law, segregation, discrimination, and media/rhetoric that produce and reproduce racist beliefs or create an environment that makes them grow. We see this tension, for example, in Rattansi’s ( 1992 ) discussion of the debate between multicultural education—an educational solution to tolerance focused on educating about differences—and antiracism, which addresses political and social structures that propagate and support racism.

Racism: Defined by intent or result?

A related definitional distinction regarding racism concerns whether an intent of harm or exclusion is necessary to define thoughts or actions as racist. Miles ( 1989 ) criticizes earlier notions of racism, largely in that they re-inscribe the notion of race as if it were a concrete reality rather than a social construction. He weaves together a new approach to racism that begins with discourses that serve to exclude the “other” (based on supposed biological differences); for Miles, “the concept of racism should refer to the function, rather than the content of the discourses” (p. 49), allowing racism to include things that may not sound racist but still seek to exclude the other. Miles differentiates racism from racialization , the categorization of people based on supposed biological differences. He argues against the use of racism and disagrees with a stance that would have only whites being racist, such that “all ‘white’ people are universally and inevitably sick with racism” (p. 53), as this concept may ignore the specifics of racism in particular countries, cultures, or circumstances; however, he notes the need to consider institutional racism—racism built into organizational, legal, and social structures—that does favor whites in many countries. By this, one could speak of racism as something any person could hold or express, but institutional racism would be reserved for a group that has power in a particular context. Finally, he bases racism not on the intent of an action, but on the result. He argues that racism is an ideology, based on differentiation, that leads to “exclusionary practices” (pp. 77–78), such as differential treatment or allocation of resources and opportunities, regardless of one’s intent or even awareness of the ideological underpinnings of one’s actions. Goldberg ( 1993 ) argues that we should allow racism to include either intent or result.

Including resulting exclusionary practice in our definition of racism has implications for redressing or addressing racism. First, it suggests a limitation in addressing overt racist thoughts and stereotypes only through education, as policies, laws, and social structures foster an environment for the presence of such thoughts and their communication. Miles ( 1989 ) advocates that “strategies for eliminating racism should concentrate less on trying exclusively to persuade those who articulate racism that they are ‘wrong’ and more on changing those particular economic and political relations” (p. 82). A second implication is that, even as we seek to address racism through everyday interactions and social media, because racism is such a charged topic, we will advance our cause little by calling an action, a joke, or a Facebook or Twitter posting “racist.” The poster, holding a more traditional view of racism as intentionally harmful in some way, will deny racist intent, and a charge of racism will move the discussion into the original communicator’s attempts to avoid the charge of racism (or sexism, etc.), rather than addressing the specific policy, image, or statement. Instead, we might discuss and demonstrate through evidence the way that the policy or image excludes others based on race. Without invoking the “r-word,” we may have a better chance at engaging in dialogues about policies, laws, and communicative behaviors that exclude others.

Intersectionalities of Racism

As we have begun to notice, one thing that complicates the concept of racism is its overlap with other terms, such as prejudice (with racism being a subset of prejudice). So, although xenophobia and ethnocentrism are distinct and separate from racism, the “other” within these concepts is often articulated or perceived in terms of race. A focus on racism and antiracism, unfortunately, often excludes other bases of intolerance that may be even more prominent within a given area, such as religious intolerance, sexism, or heterosexism. At the same time, it is useful to see how racism intersects with and sometimes leads to other intolerances, all of which have received much thought in recent years.

In some cases, feminists and antiracists have been at odds, proponents of each claiming that their sphere of oppression is the one that merits the most attention. Feminism is defined as “the belief that men and women are equal and should have equal respect and opportunities in all spheres of life—personal, social, work, and public” (Wood, 2008 , p. 324). Feminist communication research seeks to make the voices of women heard, to highlight their experiences within the social construction of gender, and “their experiences of oppression and of coping with and resisting that oppression” (Foss & Foss, 1994 , p. 39). Recent feminists consider how patriarchy, or male power or hegemony over the realities and voices of women, is not something maintained only by men nor is it deliberate. Rather, it is held in place by systems often beyond the awareness of men and women, and consented to and participated in by women themselves (Zompetti, 2012 ). Each of these ideas could also apply to racism, revealing a similarity between sexism and racism. But racism and sexism are also joined in the experiences of women of color, whose specific life situations are not fully addressed by either antiracist efforts or feminism. Collins ( 1990 ), for example, argues that African American women in the United States live in a site of triple oppression—by race, sex, and class, with these oppressions articulated by both the dominant white community and within the black community.

Queer theory

Queer theory seeks to challenge the way in which society passes on heterosexuality as the norm. Warner ( 1991 ) sees oppression of gays and lesbians in every aspect of society and in “a wide range of institutions and ideology” (p. 5). But even more so, he feels that the academy’s silence regarding oppression of sexual identity participates in that oppression. Chávez ( 2013 ) supports this claim, noting that at the writing of her article, no major journal in the National Communication Association had devoted a full issue to queer studies. Again, recent scholars have been looking at the intersection of race and sexual orientation (Yep, 2013 ), such as the representations and experiences of older gay male adults, Latina lesbians, and transgender blacks.

Whiteness studies

Based on the early writings of Richard Dyer ( 1997 ) and Ruth Frankenberg ( 1993 ), researchers have highlighted the notion of whiteness —a hidden system of ideology and social structure that maintains whites in a position of advantage—but one that is often invisible to, and yet defended by, whites (Wander, Nakayama, & Martin, 1999 ). Whiteness studies call attention to areas of white privilege. “By exposing the ‘invisibility’ of whiteness, the study of whiteness helps us understand the way that white domination continues” (p. 22). A current search for “whiteness” in a communication library search engine reveals over 800 articles on the topic. Many of these are media studies on how whiteness is promoted and/or challenged in a wide variety of texts, including South Park , the Rush Hour movies, The Hunger Games , and Glee . But whiteness is also analyzed in areas of education, everyday language, and health and organizational communication, as well as in many different countries.

Orientalism/postcolonialism

whiteness studies owe part of their heritage to postcolonialism, which has its own roots in the conceptualization of Orientalism by Edward Said ( 2003 ). Said analyzes European art and literature to reveal the construction of the Arab or Middle Easterner as “other.” He notes how the Western ideology of the East (referring to the Middle East) folklorizes and sexualizes Middle Easterners, treating them as backward, in a way that justifies European colonization and paternalism. Thousands of books now deal in some way with Orientalism, and Said’s notion of the “other” has become a stock theme in how we consider the racial other. For example, though not framed explicitly in Orientalism, James Baldwin’s famous 1955 essay “Stranger in the Village” talks about the rage of the black man as he confronts white America and the naiveté of whites—a naiveté that they work hard to preserve (thus relating Baldwin’s ideas to whiteness). When whites arrive in Africa, blacks are astonished:

The white man takes the astonishment as tribute, for he arrives to conquer and to convert the natives, whose inferiority in relation to himself is not even to be questioned; whereas I, without a thought of conquest, find myself among a people whose culture controls me, has even, in a sense, created me, people who have cost me more in anguish and rage than they will ever know, who yet do not even know of my existence … The rage of the disesteemed is personally fruitless, but it is also absolutely inevitable: the rage, so generally discounted, so little understood even among the people whose daily bread it is, is one of the things that makes history.

Postcolonialism, building upon Orientalism, considers all locations where one nation or people group has colonized another group, considering the cultural, political, and social ramifications of that colonization and seeking to remedy social ills that it has brought about. Shome and Hegde ( 2002 ) call the approach “interventionist and highly political” (p. 250). Postcolonialism notes how much of the world is forced to work within thought systems created by the Western world (an effect only magnified through the rise of the internet and globalization). Postcolonial writers are often interested in issues such as migration of people groups (including diasporic groups); the hybrid (but power-laden) mixture of ideas, artifacts, and behaviors between cultures; the liminal spaces between cultures; and the imperialism of ideas (Bhabha, 1994 ). Thus, postcolonialism is inherently about prejudice and oppression beyond racism, though it also has links to racism specifically, as authors consider the ways that some have used racial categories to colonize others (e.g., see essays in Nakayama & Halualani, 2010 ).

Discrimination: Considering the Form(s) of Intolerance

As we have seen, it is difficult to discuss prejudice in general or racism specifically without moving into issues of institutionalized prejudice, media representations, school and government policies, and so on. In this sense, both prejudice and racism are intricately intertwined with discrimination. Discrimination specifically refers to “behavior that denies equal treatment to people because of their membership in some group” (Herbst, 1997 , p. 185). It is based on the “beliefs, feelings, fantasies, and motivations of prejudice” (p. 185), but these mental or social concepts are not in themselves discrimination. Discrimination involves behavior.

Institutional Discrimination

When we think of institutional-level discrimination, many examples come to mind. These include things like not allowing certain groups housing or refusing other privileges, resources, or opportunities to them. At the writing of this chapter, a popular U.S. media topic is the county clerk, Kim Davis, who refused to give marriage licenses to gays or lesbians based on her faith, despite a state law that allowed her to do so. The Jim Crowe laws of the United States, which gave unequal educational and public access rights to blacks and whites is a classic example, with many facilities being for “whites only.” The website Global Issues (Shah, 2010 ) details instances of racism and racial discrimination around the world, such as racism against white farmers in Zimbabwe and discrimination against the Dalits—the “untouchables” in India.

Genocide and ethnic cleansing

At the extreme end of discrimination, we have genocide and ethnic cleansing . For example, around 1915 , the Ottomon (Turkish) empire slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians (75% of the Turkish Armenian population). The Turkish government took Armenian (largely Christian) children and converted them, giving them to Islamic families. Even today, Turkey defends this “Turkification” of Turkey as a necessary act of war and has resisted the U.S. and other nations defining it as genocide (Armenian genocide, n.d. ). Other genocides have occurred in Central Europe (the Holocaust) in the 1930s–1940s, Rwanda in 2003 , Cambodia in the 1970s, and the Greek/Pontic genocide of World War I. Extreme discrimination includes hate crimes and overt hate groups. The introduction of this chapter noted the prevalence of hate crimes and hate groups within the United States and other nations.

Redlining and racial profiling

In many countries, overt forms of discrimination for many (but seldom all) groups have been outlawed. Institutional discrimination itself may take forms that are harder to name and prove, such as redlining , the process by which banks give fewer mortgages to people of color, based on the belief that they are less able to repay loans. Some real estate agents may steer people of color away from rentals in upscale neighborhoods; school advisers may tell people of color that their children are more suited for trade school rather than college or graduate school. In the United States in 2014–2015 , there was a spate of cases surrounding potential police brutality against unarmed black men, leading to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. There is also racial profiling , such as when police pay more attention to people of color, stopping and/or searching them more frequently than they do whites (what some people of color call “DWB” or “driving while black”). A growing and complex array of academic studies examine whether or not profiling exists and, if so, what its nature is (e.g., is it pro-white, or does it depend on the race of the officer?). A similar phenomenon experienced by many people of color is being followed through stores by security guards, regardless of their attire or appearance. Notably, some aspects of discrimination, such as redlining, might be done, at least in the minds of the banker, real estate agent, or high school counselor, without a notion of racial discrimination; but here, Miles’s ( 1989 ) notion of racism defined by exclusionary outcome would classify the behaviors as racist, as they exclude based on supposed biological differences.

Intolerant Communication

Redneck racism/prejudice.

Central to our discussion is the way that discrimination and racism can occur through communicative behavior. Brislin ( 1991 ) outlined several forms of discriminatory communication. In addition to hate crimes and ethnic cleansing, he mentions redneck racism —the expression of blatant intolerance toward someone of another race. He applies these categories to racism, but we can apply them to any group. These might include jokes, statements (e.g., about the inferiority or backwardness of a group), or slurs or names for people of another group (also called ethnophaulisms ). Conventional wisdom, for example, suggests that there are many more slurs for women then there are for men, and most of these have some sexual connotation.

Sometimes, the intolerance is slightly veiled though still present, as when we resort to “us/them” language or talk to someone from another group about “your people.” Brislin’s ( 1991 ) notion of arm’s-length prejudice occurs when someone voices tolerance for a group, typically of being accepting of them in the neighborhood or workplace, but wants to restrict them from closer relationships, such as marrying a family member (related to Bogardus’s notion of social distance ; Allport, 1979 ). Prejudice might manifest in statements like “She’s very smart for an ‘X’” or “I have a friend who is a ‘Y,’ and he is very articulate,” since such statements assume that most Xs are not smart and most Ys are not articulate.

Prejudiced colloquialisms

Prejudice also manifests in our use of colloquialisms that play upon a particular aspect of identity or ability, such as calling something “lame” or “retarded.” Both the harm and use of such phrases has been established. For example, one study found that hearing the phrase “That’s so gay” made gays and lesbians feel less accepted in the university setting and, to a lesser degree, increased reported health problems. Over 45% of the participants had heard the word “gay” linked to something “stupid or undesirable” (Hall & LaFrance, 2012 , p. 430) ten or more times within the last year. Hall and LaFrance ( 2012 ) find a complex interplay between identity—males’ endorsement of gender identity norms andthe desire to distance themselves from homosexuality, as well as the social norms around them, and their likelihood to use the expression.

Prejudice built into language

We might well say that intolerance can be embedded in every level of language. In one classic study, men interrupted women much more than women interrupted men. If women overlapped men, men continued their turn speaking, but if men interrupted women, women yielded their turn speaking (Zimmerman & West, 1975 ). Coates’s ( 2003 ) analysis of narratives told by men in mixed company (such as around the family dinner table) notes that men are both the target and subject of most stories, with dinner table discussion typically centering on patriarchal authority. Research has explored prejudice through verbal and nonverbal behaviors toward people of different ages, people with disabilities, people with different languages or dialects, and other groups, including much theory and research on how we adjust or do not adjust our behavior toward those we perceive to be of different groups (communication accommodation theory; Gallois, Ogay, & Giles, 2005 ) or how minority members must negotiate their communication with dominant group members because of contexts of power and prejudice (co-cultural theory; Orbe & Spellers, 2005 ).

Bar-Tal ( 1990 ) and Zur ( 1991 ) note the way that we use rhetoric to create a sense of others (i.e., to create the identity of the enemy in a way that then justifies discrimination) resonates with Burke’s ( 1967 ) analysis of Hitler’s rhetorical construction of the Jewish people. Collins and Clément ( 2012 ), summarizing research from a special 2007 issue of Journal of Language and Social Psychology on language and discrimination up to the present, summarize the role of language as it pertains to prejudice:

Language is the primary means through which prejudice can be explicitly and implicitly communicated and is, therefore, a major contributor to its transmission and maintenance. But language can also play a more rooted and integral role in prejudice: changing perceptions by distorting the information it carries, focusing attention on social identities, and being a factor in the definition of group boundaries (p. 389).

Intolerance gone underground: Subtle forms of prejudice

As early as the mid-1980s, authors began to argue that in Western societies, racism and other forms of intolerance were going underground (i.e., aware that the redneck varieties of intolerance were socially unacceptable, people expressed less overt intolerance but continued to show intolerance through racism in ways that were “subtle” and “everyday”—a new and modern racism). People might express such forms of racism (and by extension other intolerances) through nonverbal behaviors, such as placing change on the counter instead of in an outgroup member’s hand, or through subtle sayings and word usages that exclude or put down the other person in some way that is not clearly distinguishable as prejudice. In the new racism, minority groups are not spoken of as inferior but as “different,” “although in many respects there are ‘deficiencies,’ such as single-parent families, drug abuse, lacking achievement values, and dependence on welfare and affirmative action—‘pathologies’ that need to be corrected” (van Dijk, 2000 , p. 34). Today, researchers and social activists refer to these subtle manifestations of prejudice as microagressions .

Symbolic racism is similar to subtle racism (Sears & Henry, 2005 ), though it relates more to political attitudes. Researchers have framed symbolic racism to include elements of anti-black sentiment hidden by political attitudes (e.g., that affirmative action has gone too far, that blacks are demanding too much; McConahay, 1986 ). Political research has a corollary in communication in that often, as whites talk about economic or political issues, there is at least a mental if not an explicit verbal coding of race or ethnic “othering.” International ownership of business becomes an issue when Japanese or Chinese companies start buying U.S. businesses, regardless of the large and long-term Dutch and English business holdings in America; discussions about welfare, gangs, and urban decay are often subtly about race. Similar verbal coding may also hold true with other identity groups.

Finally, in terms of face-to-face communication, researchers have explored the notion of “benevolent” intolerance. Discussions of things such as benevolent racism or sexism are often based on a larger notion of benevolent domination, whereby one nation or group seeks to dominate another, supposedly in its best interests (based on Rudyard Kipling’s notion of the “white man’s burden”). For example, Esposito and Romano ( 2014 ) contrast benevolent racism to other forms of post-U.S.-civil-rights forms of racism, such as laissez-faire racism, symbolic racism, and color-blind racism. Each might oppose affirmative action, for example, but for different reasons. Laissez-faire would oppose it based on ideas of meritocracy and free enterprise, blaming blacks themselves for lack of economic progress. Symbolic racism would hold that “the United States is a fair and equitable society where everyone has ample opportunity to succeed through hard work and talent” (p. 74), and that blacks who use the “race card” are hypersensitive—they are “too pushy, too demanding, too angry” (McConahay & Hough, 1976 , p. 38). Color-blind racism starts with what seems to be a reasonable assumption, that all people are the same, but then moves to assume that lack of progress of minority members is due to their personal choices, low work ethic, or lack of ability, and ignores structural support for inequalities.

Benevolent racism has a long history, even into slavery, a time in which some whites felt they were doing blacks a favor by controlling them and “providing” for them. More recently, it involves a seemingly positive attitude toward blacks that then opposes any social reforms like affirmative action as belittling blacks and working against their natural progress as citizens (Esposito & Romano, 2014 ). Benevolent sexism holds the same basic idea: Rather than sexism being based on anti-woman attitudes, it can also be supported by putting women “on a pedestal,” characterizing them as “pure creatures who ought to be protected, supported, and adored, and whose love is necessary to make a man complete” (Glick & Fiske, 2001 , p. 109). Extensive research has linked such benevolent ideas about women to negative outcomes for them.

Intolerance in the media and on the internet

Finally, many volumes have been written on the issues of stereotypes and intolerance in the media. This includes both social scientific work, such as the cultivation theory research that analyzes both representation of minorities in the media in different countries and the research that considers the effects of such representation. It also includes a wide array of critical and cultural analyses from the cultural studies school. Many of these analyses use the principles discussed—feminism, postcolonialism, critical race theory, whiteness, and so on. They work to demonstrate how the media systematically ignore, oversimplify, or negatively represent particular groups. One line of research in this field is the focus on the symbolic annihilation of race (Coleman & Chivers Yochim, 2008 ), which notes how, unlike stereotypes in the media that focus on the presence of some characteristic associated with a group, symbolic annihilation also considers “the meanings associated with absence, omission, or even inclusion that is not so obviously problematic (negative)” (p. 2), in terms of what such absences and seemingly benign images mean.

With the growth of the internet and video gaming, a final area of importance in understanding, researching, and working against prejudice includes all new media. The internet gives impetus for new research to understand hate groups on the media, flaming (e.g., in comments on video-hosting websites such as YouTube), and social media. We see examples of the use of social media for racist purposes in the flurry of racist twitters that followed the crowning of Nina Davuluri, an American of East Indian descent. Research considers both the presence of stereotypes in such media, as well as their effects.

The potential of communication

Unlike some early critical writers, who felt that media imagery (including new media) only produce and reproduce prevailing (prejudiced) ideologies, we must also consider the potential of face-to-face, mediated, and new media as places to challenge oppression. In terms of face-to-face communication, we can work through education to dispel stereotypes. That education can be simply on cultural differences and accomplishments, though changing cognitions alone may not change deeply felt affective prejudice, and only time (as more tolerant individuals assume positions of leadership) will lead to changes in discriminatory social structures. This is why some advocate for political education that addresses both personal and structural prejudice more directly, as well as political action and intervention in media systems.

Many scholars represent interpersonal contact as one of the best ways to address prejudice. Contact theory holds great potential for the planning of interventions to reduce intergroup tensions, as it describes how interpersonal contact with people from outgroups under the right conditions can work by changing both attitudes and affect, especially if people can see the other person as both a member of a new group while still recognizing their original group identity (Dovidio et al., 2003 ). Thomas Pettigrew ( 2016 ) outlines the history of research on authoritarianism (the desire and support for strong authority structures) and relative deprivation (the feeling that one’s group is disadvantaged in comparison to another group) as two of the main predictors of intergroup prejudice. He notes how, while personality factors like authoritarianism and cognitive rigidity are related to greater intolerance and make the likelihood of meaningful intergroup contact more unlikely, even in the presence of these variables, contact programs can have a positive effect for people with prejudice A meta-analysis of 515 contact studies suggests that contact works specifically by increasing knowledge of the other group, decreasing anxiety when one is with the other group, and increasing empathy for the other group (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2008 ).

In terms of media, we see both a growth in the production of media that challenges and resists stereotypes, rigid gender constructions, and so on, as well as a growth of grassroots efforts to highlight such oppression. One such effort is the website Fat, Ugly, or Slutty , a site composed of posts contributed by women who are stereotyped or verbally assaulted by men in video gaming websites, usually when the women have beaten them. The women are able to post comments made by other players, their own avatars, and even videos that the men sometimes send them. Efforts like these highlight forms of oppression that occur throughout the internet, but they also highlight the potential of the internet for addressing these forms of oppression in creative ways.

Conclusions

We have seen throughout this article that culture, prejudice, racism, and discrimination are related in complicated ways. Some people even see the characteristics of a particular culture (e.g., mainstream America’s conception of male and female beauty, the definition of a “good” education, or the focus on individualism) as negotiated between people with economic and power interests. Cultures (using the term much more widely than “nation”) are always ethnocentric, with individuals sometimes being xenophobic. But these forms of intolerance are frequently linked to other forms of intolerance—religious, racial, ethnic, and otherwise. Prejudice, most technically, is an affect—a desire to avoid someone because of her or his group, as opposed to stereotypes, which are more cognitive associations with a group—and efforts to reduce prejudice should focus on both affect and cognition. But intolerance is also clearly linked to higher-order manifestations of prejudice, such as discrimination through legal and organizational policies, symbolic annihilation of groups in the media, and everyday forms of discrimination, be they overt or subtle. More likely, communicative and policy forms of prejudice (and their manifest effects in terms of housing, education, job opportunities, and so on) “create” prejudicial perceptions, which in turn create the conditions of discrimination. Racism serves as an example—but only one of many—of the links among attitude, communicative action, policy, and social structure. With this complex view in mind, we can see that any attempts to redress or ameliorate racism or any other intolerance must include not only education, or even merely a wide array of communicative responses (media and face-to-face), but also efforts at addressing social inequalities at the structural and policy levels.

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Patient-Reported Experiences of Discrimination in the US Health Care System

1 Department of Health Management and Policy, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor

Minakshi Raj

2 Department of Kinesiology and Community Health, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign

Melissa Creary

Sharon l. r. kardia.

3 Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan School of Public Health, Ann Arbor

Jodyn E. Platt

4 Department of Learning Health Sciences, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor

Accepted for Publication: October 23, 2020.

Published: December 15, 2020. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.29650

Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License . © 2020 Nong P et al. JAMA Network Open .

Author Contributions: Ms Nong and Dr Raj had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Concept and design: Nong, Creary, Platt.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: Nong, Raj, Kardia, Platt.

Drafting of the manuscript: Nong, Raj, Creary, Platt.

Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: Raj, Creary, Kardia, Platt.

Statistical analysis: Nong, Raj, Kardia, Platt.

Obtained funding: Kardia, Platt.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Creary, Kardia.

Supervision: Platt.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Dr Kardia reported receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health during the conduct of the study. No other disclosures were reported.

Funding/Support: This work was funded by grant 5R01 CA214829-03 from the National Cancer Institute.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The funder had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Associated Data

eFigure 1. Five Most Common Reasons for Experiencing Discrimination, by Gender

eFigure 2. Five Most Common Reasons for Experiencing Discrimination, by Race

eAppendix. Sampling and Recruitment

What are the national prevalence, frequency, and main types of discrimination that adult patients report experiencing in the US health care system?

In this nationally representative cross-sectional survey study, 21% of 2137 US adult survey respondents indicated that they had experienced discrimination in the health care system, and 72% of those who had experienced discrimination reported experiencing it more than once. Racial/ethnic discrimination was the most frequently reported type of discrimination respondents experienced.

Experiences of discrimination in the health care system appear to be more common than previously recognized and deserve considerable attention.

Although considerable evidence exists on the association between negative health outcomes and daily experiences of discrimination, less is known about such experiences in the health care system at the national level. It is critically necessary to measure and address discrimination in the health care system to mitigate harm to patients and as part of the larger ongoing project of responding to health inequities.

To (1) identify the national prevalence of patient-reported experiences of discrimination in the health care system, the frequency with which they occur, and the main types of discrimination experienced and (2) examine differences in the prevalence of discrimination across demographic groups.

Design, Setting, and Participants

This cross-sectional national survey fielded online in May 2019 used a general population sample from the National Opinion Research Center’s AmeriSpeak Panel. Surveys were sent to 3253 US adults aged 21 years or older, including oversamples of African American respondents, Hispanic respondents, and respondents with annual household incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Analyses drew on 3 survey items measuring patient-reported experiences of discrimination, the primary types of discrimination experienced, the frequency with which they occurred, and the demographic and health-related characteristics of the respondents. Weighted bivariable and multivariable logistic regressions were conducted to assess associations between experiences of discrimination and several demographic and health-related characteristics.

Of 2137 US adult respondents who completed the survey (66.3% response rate; unweighted 51.0% female; mean [SD] age, 49.6 [16.3] years), 458 (21.4%) reported that they had experienced discrimination in the health care system. After applying weights to generate population-level estimates, most of those who had experienced discrimination (330 [72.0%]) reported experiencing it more than once. Of 458 reporting experiences of discrimination, racial/ethnic discrimination was the most common type (79 [17.3%]), followed by discrimination based on educational or income level (59 [12.9%]), weight (53 [11.6%]), sex (52 [11.4%]), and age (44 [9.6%]). In multivariable analysis, the odds of experiencing discrimination were higher for respondents who identified as female (odds ratio [OR], 1.88; 95% CI, 1.50-2.36) and lower for older respondents (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.98-0.99), respondents earning at least $50 000 in annual household income (OR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.60-0.95), and those reporting good (OR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.46-0.75) or excellent (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.31-0.56) health compared with poor or fair health.

Conclusions and Relevance

The results of this study suggest that experiences of discrimination in the health care system appear more common than previously recognized and deserve considerable attention. These findings contribute to understanding of the scale at which interpersonal discrimination occurs in the US health care system and provide crucial evidence for next steps in assessing the risks and consequences of such discrimination. The findings also point to a need for further analysis of how interpersonal discrimination interacts with structural inequities and social determinants of health to build effective responses.

This cross-sectional study examines the responses to a recent National Opinion Research Center survey to assess the prevalence, frequency, and main types of discrimination experienced by adult patients in the US health care system.

Introduction

Health systems in the US are increasingly expressing concern about understanding and responding to social determinants of health (ie, the social and environmental conditions that may influence individual health and the differences in health and health outcomes between groups). 1 , 2 , 3 Considerable analytical work has identified a range of factors associated with inequities in treatments, outcomes, and mortality across race, sex, socioeconomic status, and various other social identities. 1 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 Some of these include patient-clinician discordance, physician bias, and daily experiences of discrimination. 1 , 3 , 12 , 13 Daily experiences of discrimination in other contexts (eg, while shopping, in employment, or in housing) have been studied extensively in association with downstream health outcomes, including but not limited to hypertension, cardiovascular disease, poor sleep, mental health symptoms, lower trust in the health care system, delayed or avoided care, and underuse of mental health services. 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 Despite considerable knowledge about the association between discrimination and health care utilization rates and health outcomes and the relevance of discrimination to health inequity, to our knowledge, experiences of discrimination in the health care system itself are understudied.

More specifically, previous work has provided important insights regarding the association between discrimination and health but has not identified patient-reported lifetime experiences of discrimination in the health care system at a national level in a way that captures the frequency and that allows for a full self-selection of the types of discrimination experienced. For example, some studies have drawn from narrow regional samples or limited respondent reports to the previous 12 months, 19 , 21 , 22 , 23 whereas other studies have asked participants to report discrimination associated with a single aspect of their identity, such as race or sex, as preselected by the research team. 24 , 25 In addition, there is limited information on the frequency of different types of discriminatory treatment, which may be a significant risk factor for chronic disease given the association between discrimination and health over the life course. 26 , 27

To better understand and respond to interpersonal discrimination in the health care system, as well as the potential downstream effects of discrimination in the context of structural inequity, it is necessary to identify these experiences and the frequency with which they occur at the national level. The objective of our study was to characterize patient-reported experiences of discrimination in a nationally representative sample of the US population in terms of (1) prevalence, (2) primary types of discrimination, and (3) frequency. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the prevalence, frequency, and types of discrimination in the health care system using a nationally representative sample that does not limit the respondents’ reporting time frame to 1 year or less.

We used the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) AmeriSpeak Panel probability-based, nationally representative sample of English-speaking US adults to conduct an online survey in May 2019. Prior to data collection, the survey instrument was pretested (n = 320). The research team conducted 17 cognitive interviews to assess comprehension and to improve the clarity of the survey questions, and NORC conducted a pilot survey with 115 respondents. Of 3253 surveys sent, 2157 individuals responded and completed the final survey (for a response rate of 66.3%) after being recruited via the NORC panel. We oversampled African American respondents, Hispanic respondents, and respondents with annual household incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level. Poststratification survey weights were calculated by NORC based on age, sex, educational level, race/ethnicity, housing tenure, telephone status, and Census division from the Current Population Survey. They also included weights for survey nonresponse (eAppendix in the Supplement ). This study followed the American Association for Public Opinion Research ( AAPOR ) reporting guideline for survey studies. The institutional review board of the University of Michigan reviewed and approved this project and waived the requirement to obtain informed consent because the research involved no more than minimal risk to participants, who had already provided informed consent to NORC.

To assess experiences of discrimination, we adapted the Major Experiences of Discrimination measures and the Experiences of Discrimination measures from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults study. 28 , 29 We asked respondents (1) whether they had ever been discriminated against, hassled, or made to feel inferior while getting medical care and, if so, (2) what they believed was the main reason for that experience, and (3) how frequently they experienced this discrimination. A response of “yes” to the first question was defined as an experience of discrimination. Respondents chose from a list of 13 potential reasons for the discrimination, adapted from the Major Experiences of Discrimination measures, including an open-ended response for other reasons not listed. Two research team members (P.N. and M.C.) separately coded the free-text responses under “other” and reconciled any differences with a third team member (M.R.). Those responses were classified under extant categories or under additional categories that emerged through thematic analysis. Remaining free-text responses retained the “other” designation if they remained miscellaneous. After coding, there were 18 total types of discrimination for analysis.

The survey instrument defined the health care system as “the healthcare professionals and institutions that you personally interact with when getting health care.” Respondents self-reported their sex and racial or ethnic identity and reported their current insurance status as a binary measure of whether they currently had health insurance. They also indicated when they last received medical care and reported their health status on a 5-point scale ranging from poor to excellent health. We excluded 20 observations that had missing data for any of the measures included in the analysis.

Statistical Analysis

We analyzed survey responses from 2137 participants with complete data. We first compared respondents who had experienced discrimination in the health care system with those who had not, using various demographic measures, including sex, age, race/ethnicity, educational level, income, health insurance status, rural or urban residency, having a regular source of medical care, having received care in the last 12 months, and self-reported health status. We conducted weighted bivariable and multivariable logistic regressions to examine associations between these variables and reported experiences of discrimination. We defined statistical significance as P  < .05 in 2-tailed tests. Next, we enumerated the reported types of discrimination, identified the most commonly reported types of discrimination, and then assessed the frequency of experiencing the 5 most commonly given reasons for discrimination. All reported percentages are weighted to provide population estimates. All analyses were conducted with Stata, version 14 (StataCorp).

Table 1 summarizes the demographic characteristics and general health status of all 2137 survey respondents and of the 458 respondents who reported experiences of discrimination, with unweighted frequencies and weighted percentages. Based on weighted percentages, approximately half of all respondents (1047 [52.3%]) were male (unweighted, 51.0% female). The mean (SD) age of respondents was 49.6 (16.3) years (range, 21.0-91.0 years), and the sample reflected the racial/ethnic composition of the US. 30 The majority of respondents had at least some college education (1675 [77.9%]), and approximately half (1022 [50.2%]) earned at least $50 000 in annual household income. Most respondents had health insurance (1890 [89.4%]) and lived in metropolitan areas (1899 [89.3%]). A large majority of respondents reported receiving care in the last 12 months (1809 [85.3%]) and having a regular source of care (1708 [81.0%]). Overall, 916 respondents (43.3%) reported being in good health. Just over one-fifth of respondents (458 [21.4%]; SE, 0.009) reported that they had experienced discrimination while getting medical care. The majority of respondents reporting discrimination were female (289 [63.1%]) and reported less than $50 000 in annual household income (279 [60.9%]). Compared with non-Hispanic White respondents (252 [20.3%]), higher proportions of Hispanic respondents (96 [22.9%]), non-Hispanic Black respondents (77 [22.8%]), and non-Hispanic respondents with other racial/ethnic identities (33 [23.4%]) reported experiences of discrimination (eTable in the Supplement ).

We observed statistically significant differences in reported experiences of discrimination across demographic groups and health-related characteristics ( Table 2 ). In bivariable analysis, those more likely to experience discrimination were female (odds ratio [OR], 1.87; 95% CI, 1.52-2.32), had poor or fair self-reported health status (OR, 1.71; 95% CI, 1.34-2.17 compared with good health), or lacked health insurance (OR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.11-2.02). Those less likely to experience discrimination had an annual household income of at least $50 000 (OR, 0.64; 95% CI, 0.52-0.79), were older (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.98-0.99), or had a regular source of medical care (OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.58-0.95). In multivariable analysis, these associations remained statistically significant with the exception of having a regular source of care (OR, 0.91; 95% CI, 0.68-1.14) and insurance coverage (OR, 1.21; 95% CI, 0.87-1.68). In multivariable analysis, the odds of experiencing discrimination were higher for respondents who identified as female (OR, 1.88; 95% CI, 1.50-2.36) and lower for older respondents (OR, 0.98; 95% CI, 0.98-0.99), respondents earning at least $50 000 in annual household income (OR, 0.76; 95% CI, 0.60-0.95), and those reporting good (OR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.46-0.75) or excellent (OR, 0.41; 95% CI, 0.31-0.56) health compared with poor or fair health.

Abbreviation: OR, odds ratio.

The 5 most commonly reported types of discrimination among 458 respondents were based on race/ethnicity (79 [17.2%]), educational or income level (59 [12.9%]), weight (53 [11.6%]), sex (52 [11.4%]), and age (44 [9.6%]). Just over one-quarter of respondents reporting discrimination selected “other reasons” for discrimination (121 [26.4%]). After coding free-text responses, some of which overlapped with extant categories, we identified 6 additional types of discrimination. The most common of these included insurance and health finances or ability to pay for care (21 [4.6%]). One respondent described this type of discrimination by writing “I felt that with Medicaid [you] get pushed aside but when I had Blue Cross Blue Shield I [was seen] immediately.” Drug use and medication use were also sources of discrimination for some respondents (18 [3.9%]). This category referred to stigma and discrimination based on the medications that respondents were taking, prior substance use, or assumed drug-seeking behavior. For example, 1 respondent reported that “I was honest about having a drug addiction. They treated me like I was not important at all and insinuated that I was just trying to get pills.”

Discrimination based on mental health status was also reported by 9 respondents (2.0%) in free-text responses, and lifestyle (eg, having tattoos) was reported by 5 respondents (1.1%). Forty-two respondents (9.2%) who reported discrimination felt hassled or discriminated against because of their clinician’s attitude or behavior. This included feeling dismissed or disrespected by clinicians in a way that was not captured by the multiple-choice responses. Responses coded as “provider attitude” reflected comments that described experiences of being treated poorly, disbelieved, or brushed off while seeking care. Reasons that remained miscellaneous retained the “other” label (18 [3.9%]). Table 3 gives the frequencies for the primary types of discrimination that respondents reported and includes all reported reasons for discrimination as selected by respondents for the entire sample and by race. Although racial/ethnic discrimination was the most commonly reported type of discrimination, race/ethnicity was not significant in the bivariable or multivariable analysis. This is a statistical power issue because non-Hispanic White respondents, predominant in the sample, reported far less racial discrimination (10 [4.0%]) than non-Hispanic Black (42 [54.6%]), Hispanic (21 [21.9%]), and other racial and ethnic minority (6 [18.2%]) respondents. Table 3 also gives the differences in proportions of respondents reporting discrimination by race.

Among 458 respondents who reported discrimination in the health care system, 330 (72.1%) said that they had experienced it more than once. We report the frequency of these experiences in Table 4 . The majority of respondents who experienced discrimination across all 5 of the most commonly reported types of discrimination reported experiencing it 2 or 3 times. In fact, 16 respondents (20.3%) who experienced racial discrimination and 13 respondents (22.0%) who experienced discrimination based on their educational or income level experienced it 4 or more times. Sex (5 respondents [9.6%]) and age discrimination (3 respondents [6.8%]) were less frequently reported as occurring 4 or more times.

Our study estimates that, overall, more than 1 in 5 adults in the US have experienced discrimination at least once while receiving health care. Racial discrimination was the most commonly reported type of discrimination, followed by discrimination based on educational or income level, weight, sex, and age. After conducting multivariable logistic regressions, we found that respondents who were younger, identified as female, had lower annual household income, and reported poor or fair health were statistically significantly more likely to report experiences of discrimination.

Our results are consistent with previous studies examining experiences of discrimination in health care as well as in other settings. For example, prior work has found between 25.2% and 43.5% of survey respondents reporting ever experiencing discrimination in any setting. 31 Estimates of discrimination in the health care system have varied based on the use of different reporting time frames and sampling approaches. For example, one national study of discrimination found that 7.3% of respondents had experienced discrimination in the health care system only in the previous 12 months, whereas a community survey found approximately 14% of respondents reported ever experiencing discrimination in the health care system. This proportion was higher for Black respondents and Latino respondents, which was also true in our sample. 24 , 28 Although there may be a lower prevalence of discrimination in the health care system compared with some other settings, such as housing or policing, discrimination is still a frequent experience among patients, and health care is not immune to larger national trends. 28 , 29 Health care settings are also distinct; for instance, patients may be more forgiving or may not recall discriminatory incidents after a visit if they were very concerned about a serious illness. Patient experiences of discrimination may actually be higher and require further study through mixed-methods approaches.

Experiences of discrimination in the health care system harm patients by negatively impacting trust, communication, and health-seeking behaviors. 13 , 16 , 32 , 33 Our findings underscore the importance of understanding aspects of patient identity, especially with regard to race/ethnicity, not as risk factors for discrimination or the downstream effects of those experiences; rather, exposure to discrimination and racism are the risks. 34 , 35 The prevalence of discrimination identified in this study points to a need to examine discrimination in the health care system as a risk factor for other negative effects. Future work on interpersonal discrimination in the health care system should examine the types of discrimination we have identified herein, with the understanding that they are harms imposed on patients rather than caused by or reflective of patient demographic characteristics. 36 This future work should also explore the ways that discrimination is manifested and where in the health care system it is occurring most often.

Our study analyzes a wide variety of types of discrimination, including several highlighted directly by respondents. Each of these types of discrimination requires focused analysis and particular policy responses. For example, in supplementary analyses (eFigure 2 in the Supplement ), most of the respondents experiencing racial discrimination were Black persons. To effectively respond to the harms of racial discrimination in the health care system, anti-Black racism needs to be specifically analyzed and addressed. Furthermore, recognizing that discrimination is not discrete or necessarily additive, future work should also inform policy responses by building on existing literature to investigate the effects of layered or interacting types of interpersonal discrimination. For example, the vast majority of respondents reporting weight-based discrimination in the present study were women (eFigure 1 in the Supplement ). The intersection between sex- and weight-based discrimination represents only 1 example of how policy will need to respond to intersections of identity and discrimination. Intersectional policy and practice guidance will need to be built on and responsive to these multiple dimensions of discrimination to effectively respond to them. 37 Such work should complement and inform efforts to address systemic inequities.

Patient self-reports of discrimination are challenging to measure because the specific types of discrimination occurring may be unclear. This survey was able to capture only a single type of discrimination, which may mean that the reports underestimated patient experiences of discrimination. Some of these discriminatory experiences may also be internalized and denied, which suggests that reports may further underestimate the prevalence of discrimination. 38 Nevertheless, patient perspectives are critical in analyses and in policy designs that aim to address discrimination and health inequities. The prevalence of discrimination in the health care system that we identified builds on existing evidence that it is a problem requiring large-scale policy responses. As health care institutions throughout the country reckon with how systems interact to produce inequity, our study provides national estimates of the prevalence, frequency, and types of discrimination useful for policy, serving as 1 step in the process of building evidence-based responses.

In addition to a broad reckoning with discrimination, there are also localized approaches that may be appropriate to reduce harm in the shorter term. These include seeking information about experiences of discrimination and using that information to alter system-level policies to address inequality. 39 Health care systems can include measures of experiences of discrimination in their patient surveys to identify the occurrence of discrimination in their organizations and its effects on their patient populations to respond appropriately. Our study may provide guidance on the types of questions to include because the survey items used here build on previously validated measures. Furthermore, our analysis of “other” types of discrimination may suggest additional categories for inclusion in patient surveys. For example, the frequency with which medication or drug use and insurance-based discrimination were reported in this study indicates that further analysis of these health-specific types of discrimination may be warranted. This expanded data collection will enable health care systems to identify the particular types of discrimination occurring in their organizations and, most importantly, address them systematically.

Limitations

There are a few limitations to this study that should be considered in interpreting the results. The survey questions allowed participants to report only 1 primary type of discrimination, which limits our understanding of the multidimensionality of discrimination and the nature of encounters during which experiences of discrimination occurred. 40 , 41 Furthermore, self-reports of discrimination are challenging to measure because some of these experiences may be internalized and denied by individuals, making our estimate of approximately 20% of people who have ever experienced discrimination while receiving health care potentially underestimated. 38 Also contributing to a potential underestimation are the limits of race/ethnicity response categories that did not specifically capture American Indian, Alaska Native, or Middle Eastern identities. The survey was conducted only in English, which may have excluded some potential respondents. Finally, although we include some supplementary analyses that began to analyze across multiple demographic categories and types of discrimination, future analysis will need to address these numerous dimensions of identity and discrimination in more detail.

Conclusions

This is the first study, to our knowledge, that has examined the prevalence, frequency, and types of discrimination in the health care system using a nationally representative sample without limiting respondents’ reporting time frame. We found that experiences of discrimination in the health care system (21.4%) were more common than previously known and that these experiences typically occurred more than once. The 5 most commonly reported primary types of discrimination that we identified were based on race/ethnicity, educational or income level, weight, sex, and age. Addressing the immediate harms of these types of discrimination in the health care system should be an immediate policy and health care system priority.

Supplement.

eTable. Weighted Row Percentages of Descriptive Statistics (n = 2,137)

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New research shows racial discrimination in hiring is still happening at the earliest stages

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A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that systemic racial discrimination during the job application process is still happening.

Researchers sent more than 80,000 fake job applications for entry-level openings to Fortune 500 firms and found that, on average, applications with distinctively Black names were about 10% less likely to get a call back than comparable applications with distinctively white names.

A significant portion of the hiring discrimination documented in the study was associated with a small portion of the 108 companies, according to Evan Rose , a Saieh Family Research Fellow at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the study.

“We find that the top 20% of the firms that we studied here explained about half of the total discrimination against Black applicants in our study,” Rose said during an interview with “Marketplace Morning Report’s” David Brancaccio. “That’s heavily concentrated in a small share of employers.”

Below is an edited transcript of Rose’s conversation with Brancaccio, with details on which sectors are seeing hiring discrimination, how bias also targets gendered names and more.

David Brancaccio: How many of these fake applications did your team send out?

Evan Rose: By the end, we’d sent about 84,000 applications to about 100 large U.S. employers. So you can think about it as sending a pair of resumes where everything on the resumes was equivalent, their job experience or education but one resume might have a name like Emily or Greg, and another resume might have a name like Leticia or Jamal, and we measure how much less likely is the employer to call back the Leticia or Jamal than the Emily or Greg, as well as, by the way, the difference in callback rates between Emilys and Gregs. So this way, we can try to measure both race and gender discrimination, signaling those characteristics to the employers with these distinctive first names.

Brancaccio: And when all was said and done, you found evidence of what many would call systemic discrimination?

Rose: Yeah, that’s right. So on average, there’s a penalty that’s pretty meaningful, about 10%, to applying to a job with a distinctively Black name. But what’s really interesting is that we find that that penalty varies tremendously across the 100 or so large U.S. employers in our study. And in fact, we find that the top 20% of the firms that we studied here explained about half of the total discrimination against Black applicants in our study. That’s heavily concentrated in a small share of employers. And that’s actually even more true for gender, where, on average, we find no difference in the contact rates for distinctively male and female names. But we find that masks a bunch of between-firm differences. Some firms have very strong preference to call back the male names. Other firms have quite strong preference to call back the female names. So gender discrimination is also highly concentrated in a small share of firms.

Brancaccio: And just so we rest on this just for another moment, so people didn’t miss it, the worst actors, according to your data, account for a whole lot of the problem.

Rose: Absolutely, yes, it’s this top quintile of firms, this relatively small share of firms that explain the bulk of the discrimination that we measure in the experiment. And these are, again, large U.S. employers. You know and love them, at least I shop with them regularly. And unfortunately, it seems that there’s widespread patterns of discrimination across their establishments. And one thing we show in the paper is that, in fact, it looks like at least 20% of the actual jobs that we applied to at these firms are discriminating on the basis of race. So, it’s absolutely what the EEOC, or the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], would call a systemic pattern or practice of discrimination.

Brancaccio: So I’m on the edge of my seat here. Name some names. Who’s doing poorly, who’s doing well?

Rose: So we’re thinking about what to do with the identities of those firms. But we want to make sure that we go through academic peer review, engage with our partners in the civil rights community and government to try to make sure we can do the most good with this information.

Brancaccio: All right, so you’re thinking about it. That’s a process. Are you gonna tell the worst-offending companies?

Rose: That’s a possibility. We could be sharing this information directly with the public or with the government or with firms themselves. But again, you know, I think that’s sort of step two – step one here in this research was just figuring out this basic scientific question of whether or not firms matter at all. And our answer to that is definitely yes. And now you’re right. And we’re excited to think about what you could do with the actual information on specific companies’ discrimination.

Brancaccio : Are you seeing patterns in terms of industry, like certain types of companies are doing better or worse?

Rose : Yeah, industry turns out to be quite important and much more important than other factors that we thought might matter, like geography and job title. Interestingly, firms in the auto sector – firms that both sell cars and sell car parts – many of the firms we studied in those sectors exhibit very large race gaps, as well as firms in sort of more general retail and food services. Firms in engineering services, health services and accommodation, interestingly, seem to discriminate much less on the basis of race. And for gender, what we find is that the industry patterns are again very strong and sort of correspond closely to what you might think of as more stereotypically gendered industries. So in heavy industries, like wholesale durables, and construction materials, firms seem to have a preference to call back our male applicants. In apparel, we see a very strong preference to call back our female applicants. So there’s a strong industry skew there as well.

Brancaccio : Is it your hope that this type of data could be used to quell this form of discrimination?

Rose : Yeah, I mean, what we’re showing here is that the identity of the firm matters, and even within an industry like the auto sector, some firms seem to exhibit much more or much less discrimination than others. And that suggests to us that firm policies, practices, structure [and] organization could potentially matter. And if we started looking more closely at what these firms are doing differently, you know, we might be able to identify some of those policies and practices that could help prevent or remedy this kind of discrimination in the future.

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Racial discrimination in hiring remains a persistent problem

Despite new laws and changing attitudes, little has changed in 25 years

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• Release Date: January 31, 2023

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Max Witynski

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Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

EVANSTON, Ill. --- Decades after hiring discrimination was made illegal in many Western countries, experts predicted it would gradually disappear. But according to a major new meta-analysis from Northwestern University, discrimination in hiring has remained a persistent problem.

In fact, with few exceptions, rates of hiring discrimination have changed little since the 1990s, according to a new paper published Jan. 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Lincoln Quillian — a professor of sociology — and former student John J. Lee, a recent graduate of Northwestern’s doctoral program in sociology, co-authored the work.

Quillian and Lee analyzed 90 studies involving 174,000 total job applications from Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the United States to study trends in hiring discrimination among four racial-ethnic origin groups: African or Black, Middle Eastern or North African, Latin or Hispanic, and Asian. The oldest study in the analysis was a British study from 1969, and the most recent was a U.S. study from 2019. 

“The biggest takeaway was that on average, there has been no change in hiring discrimination when aggregating all six countries together,” Quillian said, despite laws passed in the European Union during the study period that aimed to reduce hiring discrimination. 

In four of the six countries and for three of the four racial-ethnic groups examined, discrimination roughly held stable. The researchers did find a few significant trends, however, that were both positive and negative.

France was the only country with a significant decline in discrimination, from very high levels in the 2000s to what are still high levels today, but in line with those of peer nations. There was a slight trend toward higher discrimination rates in all other countries except Canada, though the upward trend was only statistically significant in the Netherlands. 

“Several countries had a slight upward trend, so it was not unique to the Netherlands. It’s possible that more broadly, this increase is tied to things like the growth of right-wing politics and anti-immigrant sentiment,” Quillian said.

Among the racial-ethnic origin groups studied, most saw a constant rate of discrimination, except for Middle Eastern/North African job applicants. That group saw an uptick in hiring discrimination in the 2000s and 2010s as compared to the 1990s, which the researchers said may be attributable to rising bias against this group after terrorist attacks such as 9/11, which occurred during this period.

Other groups for which hiring trends were analyzed included African/Black, Asian and Latin American/Hispanic applicants. Relative to white applicants, applicants of color from all backgrounds in the study had to submit about 50% more applications per callback on average, Quillian said, with some variation between countries and groups. Callbacks are defined as employers expressing interest in interviewing candidates.

This means that if a white applicant must apply to 20 jobs on average to get a callback, an applicant of color would need to apply to 30. Further discrimination can occur later in the hiring process, but was not studied in this case, according to Quillian.

The 90 studies in the analysis were conducted in a similar manner, with minor differences. In most cases, researchers submitted fake application materials to real job openings, tweaking the materials slightly to include racial indicators along with otherwise similar credentials to ensure that differences in callback rates could be attributed to discrimination, rather than candidate qualifications.

Most studies analyzed (about 75%) were conducted since the 1990s, though trends extend back to the 1970s in France, Great Britain and the Netherlands.

Overall, Quillian said, it’s disappointing to see little progress despite anti-discrimination legislation, changing attitudes against open discrimination since the 1970s, and corporate and government policies that have sought to improve workforce diversity. 

According to the authors, further efforts are needed to have a real impact on hiring discrimination. Quillian believes that progress is possible if anti-discrimination policies are enforced, employers are held accountable, and mentorship programs support employees of color who are seeking promotion and advancement in particular fields. 

“Policies that require employers to keep track of and make publicly available the race or ethnicity of the people they're hiring make a lot of sense,” Quillian said. Such policies, he noted, can also encourage companies to take a second look at their own numbers. If their hiring patterns show a preference for white candidates, there is a risk of both bad publicity and discrimination lawsuits. 

Though there has been generational change over the last 50 years, with younger generations reporting less conservative racial attitudes than older ones, that change hasn’t been reflected in reduced hiring discrimination, Quillian said. 

“To make hiring discrimination a thing of the past, we need to be thoughtful and committed to enforcing the law and making changes in hiring practices to promote diversity,” he said.

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Racial discrimination is linked to worse health over ten years later.

Difficulty sleeping and higher inflammation may drive this relationship

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This study provides more evidence that racial discrimination, even in adolescence, may have a lasting influence on health.”

Nia Heard-Garris Pediatrician and IPR associate

A growing body of research shows that racial discrimination can negatively impact physical health. What isn’t fully understood are the mechanisms that link the two.

A new study finds that young Black adults who reported experiencing racial discrimination in their late teens and early 20s had an increased risk of metabolic syndrome—a predictor of heart disease, diabetes, and stroke—at age 31. The study’s authors wanted to understand the relationship between racial discrimination and metabolic syndrome in Black youth over time.

Co-authored by pediatrician and IPR associate Nia Heard-Garris and IPR health psychologists Edith Chen and Greg Miller , the research suggests that inflammation and difficulty sleeping may be pathways that explain how racial discrimination leads to poor health. It also shows that experiencing racial discrimination at a young age can be especially damaging.

“This study provides more evidence that racial discrimination, even in adolescence, may have a lasting influence on health,” said Heard-Garris, first author of the JAMA Network Open study.

The researchers analyzed data from the Strong African Americans Health Adults Project (SHAPE). It has followed a group of Black participants in rural Georgia from age 11 to young adulthood for nearly three decades.

Between 2009 and 2010, 322 participants between 19 and 21 years old answered questions about their experiences with discrimination such as “Have you been treated rudely or disrespectfully because of your race?” When they were 25 years old, participants reported whether they had trouble sleeping. They participated in a biomarker study between the ages of 19–21 and also had blood samples taken at ages 25 and 31 that researchers used to measure inflammation.

This study is one of the first to identify possible pathways that racial discrimination can predispose young Black adults to metabolic syndrome over a long period. The researchers show that at age 25, 19%, or 60 participants, had metabolic syndrome. By age 31—only six years later—metabolic syndrome nearly doubled to 37% (118) among participants.

“This particular research question was interesting to me because we know that racial discrimination is harmful for health,” Heard-Garris said. “But it sometimes can be difficult to isolate the mechanisms that drive this relationship.”

Chen says racial discrimination could impact sleep because it can lead to negative thoughts and emotions about the incident.

“These thoughts and emotions may then disrupt sleep, and in turn, poor sleep over time can contribute to metabolic syndrome,” Chen said.

Heard-Garris says that while the study does not test interventions that could reduce the risk of metabolic syndrome, we know that quality sleep is essential for good health. Because many Black Americans face racial discrimination, she encouraged doctors to consider ways to help their Black patients get longer and better quality sleep.

Heard-Garris and her team at the ARISE Health Lab , which examines the role of adversity and racism on health, recently completed a pilot intervention testing how a racial justice activism intervention affected adolescents. Early results suggest this intervention may reduce depressive symptoms.

Future research, she says, should test whether other interventions can help decrease the impact of racial discrimination. The findings suggest that promoting better nutrition and exercise and increasing access to healthcare will not be enough to reduce or prevent metabolic syndrome among minorities.

“Ultimately, policy and large-scale societal interventions are required to reduce racial discrimination as a whole,” Heard-Garris said.

Miller explains that the results show that even when health issues don’t appear until adulthood, the root problem happens much earlier in a person’s life.

“We can use that knowledge to develop better policies and practices that prevent health problems from emerging,” he said.

Nia Heard-Garris is an assistant professor of pediatrics and an IPR associate. Edith Chen is the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Professor of Psychology and an IPR fellow. Greg Miller is the Louis W. Menk Professor of Psychology and an IPR fellow.

Photo credit: iStock

Published: May 29, 2024.

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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• Research article
• Open access
• Published: 18 November 2020

Racial discrimination and health: a prospective study of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom

• Ruth A. Hackett   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5428-2950 1 , 2 ,
• Amy Ronaldson 3 ,
• Kamaldeep Bhui 4 ,
• Andrew Steptoe 2 &
• Sarah E. Jackson 2  

BMC Public Health volume  20 , Article number:  1652 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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Racism has been linked with poor health in studies in the United States. Little is known about prospective associations between racial discrimination and health outcomes in the United Kingdom (UK).

Data were from 4883 ethnic minority (i.e. non-white) participants in the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Perceived discrimination in the last 12 months on the basis of ethnicity or nationality was reported in 2009/10. Psychological distress, mental functioning, life satisfaction, self-rated health, physical functioning and reports of limiting longstanding illness were assessed in 2009/10 and 2011/12. Linear and logistic regression analyses adjusted for age, sex, income, education and ethnicity. Prospective analyses also adjusted for baseline status on the outcome being evaluated.

Racial discrimination was reported by 998 (20.4%) of the sample. Cross-sectionally, those who reported racial discrimination had a greater likelihood on average of limiting longstanding illness (odds ratio (OR) = 1.78, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.49; 2.13) and fair/poor self-rated health (OR = 1.50; 95% CI 1.24; 1.82) than those who did not report racial discrimination. Racial discrimination was associated with greater psychological distress ( B  = 1.11, 95% CI 0.88; 1.34), poorer mental functioning ( B  = − 3.61; 95% CI -4.29; − 2.93), poorer physical functioning ( B  = − 0.86; 95% CI -1.50; − 0.27), and lower life satisfaction ( B  = − 0.40, 95% CI -0.52; − 0.27). Prospectively, those who reported racial discrimination had a greater likelihood on average of limiting longstanding illness (OR = 1.31, 95% CI 1.01; 1.69) and fair/poor self-rated health (OR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.00; 1.69), than those who did not report racial discrimination. Racial discrimination was associated increased psychological distress ( B  = 0.52, 95% CI 0.20; 0.85) and poorer mental functioning ( B  = − 1.77; 95% CI -2.70; − 0.83) over two-year follow-up, adjusting for baseline scores.

Conclusions

UK adults belonging to ethnic minority groups who perceive racial discrimination experience poorer mental and physical health than those who do not. These results highlight the need for effective interventions to combat racial discrimination in order to reduce inequalities in health.

Peer Review reports

Discrimination is defined as the differential treatment of an individual based on a socially ascribed characteristic [ 1 ]. In the United Kingdom (UK), the 1965 Race Relations Act [ 2 ] outlawed discrimination on the grounds of colour, nationality and ethnic or national origins. Race remains a protected characteristic under contemporary equality law [ 3 ]. Despite this legislative effort, ethnic inequalities in education, work, health and criminal justice remain [ 4 ].

Discrimination on the basis of ethnic origin is regarded as the most common type of prejudice in Europe, with 64% of adults perceiving racial discrimination to be widespread in a survey of 27,718 people [ 5 ]. In Britain in 2017, 26% of a representative sample described themselves as racially prejudiced [ 6 ], and race continues to be the most common motivator for hate crime incidents [ 7 , 8 ]. Against the backdrop of the vote to leave the European Union (Brexit), hostility towards migrants and the growth in right-wing nationalist movements [ 9 ], these figures reflect a rise in reported racial discrimination in both the UK and Europe [ 5 , 6 ].

A growing body of research has investigated discrimination as a determinant of mental health [ 10 , 11 , 12 ] and to a lesser extent physical health [ 11 ]. In an early meta-analysis of 110 studies, discrimination was linked with poor mental health, including psychological distress and decreased life satisfaction [ 11 ]. A sub-set of 36 studies in the review investigated associations with physical health. Significant associations were detected in a pooled analysis with various outcomes including hypertension and acute cardiovascular responses to laboratory discrimination protocols. A more recent meta-analysis of 328 studies focusing on discrimination and mental health outcomes alone, again observed that those who perceived discrimination had poorer mental health [ 12 ]. This finding was also detected in an independent analysis of 211 cross-sectional studies linking racial discrimination with poor mental health [ 12 ].

Racism is a recognised social determinant of health and a driver of ethnic inequities in health [ 13 ]. It can be understood as a complex, organised system embedded in socio-political and historical contexts, that involves classifying ethnic groups into social hierarchies. These groups are ideologically assigned differential value, which drives disparities in access to power, resources and opportunities [ 14 , 15 ]. It occurs at both structural and individual levels (self-reported experiences of racial discrimination) [ 14 , 15 ].

Several reviews and meta-analyses have focused solely on perceived racial discrimination and health outcomes [ 13 , 16 , 17 , 18 ]. The largest study to date meta-analysed the results from 293 studies and assessed both mental and physical health outcomes [ 16 ]. In this analysis, racial discrimination was associated with poorer overall mental health including greater psychological distress, poorer life satisfaction and poorer general mental functioning in independent analyses. Racism was also linked with poorer general health and poorer physical health overall, though few effects remained significant when looking at specific physical health outcomes in separate analyses.

Racial discrimination at the structural and individual level is theorised to impact health through several mechanisms [ 15 ]. At the structural level racial discrimination may operate through the unfair allocation of societal resources that are determinants of health (e.g. education, employment, housing) [ 14 , 15 ] and through differential access to healthcare, as well as perceived poorer quality of care [ 19 ]. Another mechanism linking racial discrimination and health could be through the dysregulation of stress-related biological processes [ 20 ]. Frequent exposure to racial discrimination is a chronic stressor and has been linked with dysregulated cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and inflammatory processes [ 21 , 22 ] which in turn impact both physical and mental health. Individual health risk (e.g. smoking, alcohol consumption) could link perceived racial discrimination and health, as means of coping with or avoiding discrimination [ 23 , 24 ].

Although a growing number of studies have investigated the link between racial discrimination and health, there are still areas where more research is required. In the 2015 racism meta-analysis of almost 300 studies, only 9% of the data included were prospective [ 16 ]. The authors aimed to compare the effect sizes of the cross-sectional and prospective studies included in their review but were unable to conduct this analysis for the physical outcomes data, emphasising the need for more prospective studies on physical health outcomes in particular.

Further, the literature is dominated by United States (US)-based studies drawn from convenience samples [ 12 , 16 ]. In the latest racism and health meta-analysis, over one third of the articles included were drawn from student samples and only nine (2.7%) of the included studies were UK-based [ 16 ]. This is important as the makeup of ethnic minority groups in the UK differs from that of the US, with those of South Asian backgrounds forming the largest minority group [ 25 ]. In addition, all of the UK studies were cross-sectional in nature and focused on mental health, with physical outcomes such as the number of physical illnesses [ 26 ] and self-rated health [ 27 ] included in only two of the studies.

To date, one UK study has assessed the relationship between racial discrimination and health prospectively. In an analysis of the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS), the authors found that those who reported racial discrimination had poorer mental functioning scores 4 years later [ 28 ]. They also reported a dose-response relationship between the experience of racial discrimination and mental health, with those who reported racial discrimination at more than one timepoint over a 3-year period experiencing a greater deterioration in mental functioning.

Overall, there is a dearth of prospective evidence on the link between racial discrimination and health in UK samples, particularly in relation to physical health outcomes.

To address these gaps in the literature, the present study set out to assess cross-sectional and prospective associations between racial discrimination and health in a large community-dwelling UK population cohort. Specifically, we were interested in psychological distress, mental functioning and life satisfaction, as indicators of mental health, as well as self-rated health and physical functioning as markers of physical health, along with limiting longstanding illness as an indicator of impairment. We hypothesised that those who perceived racial discrimination would have poorer health across all measures both cross-sectionally and prospectively.

Study population

The current study uses data from UKHLS [ 29 ]. The study began in 2009/10 (wave 1) with follow-ups yearly. This study uses data from waves 1 (2009/10) and 3 (2011/12) of the data collection. The UKHLS consists of a representative sample of the UK population, as well as an ethnic minority boost sample [ 25 , 30 ]. In this study we use data from ‘extra 5 minutes sample’ of over 8000 individuals who had an additional 5 min of questions on issues of importance to ethnicity research including discrimination. The majority of this sample are drawn from ethnic minority groups ( n  = 6722), in addition to a smaller comparison group of white participants ( n  = 1428) [ 25 ]. We restricted our analyses to those who provided information on racial discrimination at wave 1 ( n  = 5707) and self-reported being of non-white ethnicity ( n  = 4883). The participants included in our study were significantly older ( p  = 0.002) and were less likely to have an educational qualification ( p  < 0.001) than those who did not provide data for the study. They were also more likely to be male ( p  < 0.001) and of South Asian ethnicity ( p  < 0.001) The groups did not differ on income ( p  = 0.136). All participants provided fully informed written consent and the University of Essex Ethics Committee granted ethical approval for UKHLS.

Racial discrimination

To measure perceived discrimination, participants were asked whether in the past 12 months, they had (a) felt unsafe, (b) avoided going to or being in, (c) been insulted, called names, threatened or shouted at, or (d) been physically attacked in 7 different settings 1) At school/college/work, 2) On public transport, 3) At or around bus or train stations, 4) In a taxi, 5) Public buildings such as shopping centres or pubs, 6) Outside on the street, in parks or other public places, or 7) At home. If they answered yes to any one of these questions, a follow-up question asked them to choose an attribution for the discrimination from a list of categories including ethnicity, nationality, age, and sex among others. Participants could choose multiple settings and attributions for the perceived discrimination. Those who attributed any experience of discrimination to their ethnicity or nationality are treated as cases of perceived racial discrimination in our analyses. Those who did not perceive any form of discrimination serve as the comparison group in our analyses. Those who reported other (non-racial) forms of discrimination were not included in the analysis. This measure has been used in previous investigations to look at the link between perceived discrimination and health outcomes [ 28 , 31 , 32 ].

Mental health outcomes

We included 3 mental health measures at waves 1 (2009/10) and 3 (2011/12). Psychological distress was assessed using the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ)-12 [ 33 ], in line with previous studies [ 31 , 32 ]. This tool has been validated as a screening tool to detect psychological distress in community samples [ 34 ]. This measure involved ratings of 12 statements including whether the participant had “ Been able to enjoy your normal day to day activities ” or whether they “ Felt constantly under strain ” with binary response options (yes/no). After totalling, the overall score ranged from 0 (least distressed) to 12 (most distressed). The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.99.

The 12-item short-form health survey (SF-12) mental component summary score was used to measure limitations caused by emotional, mental health and social functioning issues [ 35 ], in keeping with previous studies [ 31 , 32 ]. This tool has been validated for use as a measure of mental functioning in community samples [ 35 , 36 ]. Items included ratings of feelings experienced over the past 4 weeks such as “ Have you felt downhearted or blue ?” or “Accomplished less than you would like” . A total score ranging from 0 (low functioning) to 100 (high functioning) was derived using standard methods [ 37 ]. The Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.98.

One item was used to assess participants’ life satisfaction by asking them how satisfied they were with their “life overall”, on a scale from 1 (completely dissatisfied) to 7 (completely satisfied) [ 38 ]. Single item measures of life satisfaction are widely used in survey studies [ 39 ] This measure has been used in previous investigations to assess the link between discrimination and life satisfaction [ 31 , 32 ].

Impairment outcome

Self-reported limiting longstanding illness at waves 1 (2009/10) and 3 (2011/12) was used as measure of impairment. It was measured using one item “Do you have any long-standing physical or mental impairment, illness or disability?...mean [ing] anything that has … or is likely to trouble you over a period of at least 12 months” with response options of yes or no. Self-reported limiting longstanding illness has been investigated in relation to perceived discrimination in other studies [ 40 , 41 ].

Physical health outcomes

We included 2 measures of physical health that were assessed at waves 1 (2009/10) and 3 (2011/12). The SF-12 physical component summary score was used to measure limitations caused by deficits in physical functioning [ 35 ]. Participants were ask ed “Does your health now limit you a lot, limit you a little or not limit you at all?” in activities such “climbing stairs” or “moving a table, pushing a vacuum cleaner, bowling or playing golf”. Overall scores were derived using standard methods ranging from 0 (low functioning) to 100 (high functioning) [ 37 ]. The Cronbach’s alpha for the scale was 0.98. This tool has been validated for use as a measure of physical functioning in community samples [ 35 , 36 ].

A single item was used to assess self-rated health: “ Would you say your health is … poor/fair/good/very good/excellent?” In keeping with earlier work [ 31 , 32 , 42 ] self-rated health was dichotomised with 0 being “good/very good/excellent” and 1 being “poor/fair”. This single item measure has been shown to have good predictive validity for health outcomes [ 42 ].

Our analyses included covariates that are likely relevant to racial discrimination and physical and mental health. All covariates were assessed at wave 1. Age in years was included as a continuous variable. Self-reported sex was included and coded as male/female. Socioeconomic status is an important contributor to racial disparities in health [ 43 ]. Racial discrimination can compound these inequalities. Therefore, we included education as a 3-level variable, coded as 1 “university degree”, 2 “high school qualification” and 3 “no qualification”. Equivalised monthly household income was computed by dividing total household net income by the modified Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) equivalence scale to account for the effects of household size and composition [ 44 ]. The UKHLS samples the 5 main ethnic minority groups in the UK [ 25 , 30 ]: Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Black African and Black Caribbean. Participants were asked “What is your ethnic group?” with response options standardised in line with the England and Wales 2011 Census [ 25 ]. Response options also accounted for those of “mixed backgrounds”. We included ethnicity as a 6-level variable with these 5 main UK minority groups and 1 additional category of non-white individuals from a range of other minority backgrounds including Chinese, Arab and mixed ethnic backgrounds among others. For our sensitivity analysis, we collapsed ethnicity into a 3-level variable with Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi participants coded as “South Asian” Black African and Black Caribbean participants coded as “Black” and other non-white participants coded as “Other”.

Statistical analyses

The characteristics of those who did and those who did not report racial discrimination at wave 1 were compared using Chi-squared tests for categorical variables and independent samples t-tests for continuous variables. Associations between racial discrimination and the mental and physical health measures were assessed using linear regression for continuous outcomes and binary logistic regression for categorical outcomes. For the mental health analyses, psychological distress, mental functioning and life satisfaction were the outcome variables. For the impairment analysis limiting longstanding illness was the outcome variable. For the physical health analyses, physical functioning and self-rated health were the outcome variables. Age, sex, household income, education and ethnicity at wave 1 were adjusted for in all analyses. Baseline (wave 1) score/status on the relevant outcome variable was included as an additional covariate in prospective analyses. Only those with complete case information at wave 1 ( n  = 4883) and wave 3 ( n  = 2833) were included in the analyses. We tested for interactions between racial discrimination and age, sex, income, education or ethnicity on the mental and physical health outcomes at both waves 1 and 3. No significant effects were detected. Thus, interaction terms were not included in our final reported models.

Results from linear regression analyses are presented as unstandardized B and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results from binary logistic regression analyses are presented as odds ratios (ORs) and 95% CI. The level of significance was set at p  < 0.05. Unstandardized Bs and ORs rather than p values should be used to determine the strength of associations. All analyses were conducted using SPSS v.24.

Sensitivity analyses

To test the robustness of our findings, we conducted three sets of sensitivity analyses. In our first, we investigated whether a certain type of discriminatory experience (i.e. feeling unsafe, avoiding somewhere, being insulted or attacked) contributing to the measure of racial discrimination was driving the results. We tested this by removing each type of discriminatory experience from the exposure variable in turn, as has been done in previous investigations [ 31 , 32 , 40 ]. In the second sensitivity analysis, we assessed whether participants who were lost to follow-up differed from those who provided data at both waves, and tested whether this influenced the findings by conducting the cross-sectional analyses (wave 1) including only those who provided follow-up data at wave 3. In our final sensitivity analysis, we assessed whether the associations between racial discrimination and our health outcomes varied depending on ethnic group (South Asian, Black or Other), as there is currently limited evidence in this area outside of the US context [ 16 ].

A total of 4883 participants were included in our analysis and of these 998 (20.4%) reported ethnicity ( n  = 854) or nationality ( n  = 144) discrimination. The characteristics of the sample at wave 1 in relation to racial discrimination are displayed in Table  1 . Those who perceived racial discrimination were younger on average and were more likely to hold a university degree than those who did not perceive racial discrimination. There were no differences in sex or income, but reports of racial discrimination did vary by ethnic group. Those in the Indian (23.3%) and in the Other ethnic group (24%) were most likely to report experiences of racial discrimination. Further detail on the types of racial discrimination and the settings in which the racial discrimination occurred for the different ethnic groups can be found in Supplementary Table  1 .

Racial discrimination and mental health

The descriptive characteristics of the sample in relation to health outcomes are displayed in Table  2 . The mental health findings from the regression analyses are displayed in the upper panel of Table  3 . Cross-sectionally, those who reported racial discrimination had greater psychological distress ( B  = 1.11, 95% CI 0.88; 1.34, p  < 0.001), poorer mental functioning ( B  = − 3.61; 95% CI -4.29; − 2.93, p  < 0.001) and lower life satisfaction ( B  = − 0.40, 95% CI -0.52; − 0.27, p  < 0.001), than those who did not report racial discrimination, independent of covariates.

In prospective analyses, those who perceived racial discrimination had greater psychological distress 2 years later than those who did not perceive racial discrimination, independent of covariates and baseline psychological distress ( B  = 0.52, 95% CI 0.20; 0.85, p  = 0.002). We detected an association between racial discrimination and poorer mental functioning ( B  = − 1.77; 95% CI -2.70; − 0.83, p  < 0.001), independent of covariates and mental functioning at wave 1. In adjusted analyses, those who reported racial discrimination had slightly lower life satisfaction than those who did not report racial discrimination at follow-up (means = 4.77 vs 4.91), but this difference did not reach statistical significance ( p  = 0.102).

Racial discrimination, impairment and physical health

The impairment and physical health results are displayed in the lower panel of Table 3 . The cross-sectional findings suggest that independent of covariates, participants who perceived racial discrimination were significantly more likely on average to report having a limiting longstanding illness (OR = 1.78; 95% CI 1.49; 2.13, p  < 0.001), and were more likely on average to rate their health as fair/poor (OR = 1.50; 95% CI 1.24; 1.82, p  < 0.001) than those who did not perceive racial discrimination. Those who reported racial discrimination also had significantly poorer physical functioning ( B  = − 0.86; 95% CI -1.50; − 0.27, p  = 0.008) than those who did not report racial discrimination in adjusted analyses.

In prospective analyses, those who reported racial discrimination were significantly more likely on average to have a limiting longstanding illness 2 years later than those who did not report racial discrimination, independent of covariates and limiting longstanding illness at baseline (OR = 1.31; 95% CI 1.01; 1.69, p  = 0.039). A greater proportion of those who reported racial discrimination rated their health as fair/poor on average at follow-up than those who did not report racial discrimination (OR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.00; 1.69, p  = 0.048) in adjusted analyses. However, we failed to detect a prospective adjusted association between racial discrimination and physical functioning ( p  = 0.290).

In the first sensitivity analysis, removing each of the discriminatory experiences from the measure of racial discrimination in turn did not alter any of the cross-sectional results (Table  4 , upper panel). Prospectively, the association between racial discrimination and all the mental health measures and limiting longstanding illness remained the same regardless of the type of discriminatory experience removed from the measure (Table 4 , lower panel). For self-rated health, the association was fairly robust to the type of discriminatory experience, but was slightly attenuated when “feeling unsafe” was removed from the racial discrimination variable ( p  = 0.133). Again, for the most part, no significant prospective associations were detected for physical functioning except when “feeling unsafe” was removed from the racial discrimination variable ( p  = 0.027).

In the second sensitivity analysis (Supplementary Table  2 ), cross-sectional physical and impairment (lower panel) and mental health (upper panel) findings for those who provided complete data at wave 3 were similar to the full-sample at wave 1.

In our final sensitivity analysis (Supplementary Table  3 ), we assessed whether the associations between racial discrimination and our health outcomes varied depending on ethnic group (South Asian, Black, Other). For the cross-sectional analyses, the findings for psychological distress and mental functioning did not vary by ethnic group. However, for life satisfaction ( B  = − 0.23; 95% CI -0.47; 0.02, p  = 0.069), limiting longstanding illness (OR = 1.34; 95% CI 0.93; 1.92, p  = 0.113), physical functioning ( B  = 0.42; 95% CI -0.84; 1.68, p  = 0.511), and self-rated health (OR = 1.01; 95% CI 0.67; 1.53, p  = 0.955) the findings for the Black group were non-significant, with lower point estimates than when the ethnic groups were combined in the main analysis. For the prospective analyses, there was no group difference for the impairment and physical health outcomes. However, the findings for psychological distress ( B  = 0.32; 95% CI -0.18; 0.82, p  = 0.207), and mental functioning ( B  = − 1.37; 95% CI -2.83; 0.09, p  = 0.065), were not significant for the South Asian group, with lower point estimates than in the combined model. Interestingly, for life satisfaction, those in the Other ethnic group had significantly lower life satisfaction at wave 3 ( B  = − 0.39; 95% CI -0.69;-0.08, p  = 0.013), with greater point estimates than in the combined model. This finding remained non-significant for the South Asian and Black groups.

In this large UK-based prospective sample of ethnic minority participants, we detected associations between racial discrimination and poorer health. Cross-sectionally, those who reported racial discrimination had a greater likelihood on average of limiting longstanding illness and poor self-rated health, than those who did not report racial discrimination. Racial discrimination was associated greater psychological distress, lower life satisfaction, and poorer physical and mental functioning. In prospective analyses, those who reported racial discrimination had a greater likelihood on average of limiting longstanding illness and poor self-rated health than those who did not report racial discrimination. Racial discrimination was associated with greater psychological distress and poorer mental functioning over a two-year follow-up period, regardless of baseline health. No significant prospective associations with physical functioning or life satisfaction were detected.

To our knowledge, this is the first prospective UK-based study to investigate both mental and physical health outcomes in relation to racial discrimination. One earlier analysis of the UKHLS found that those who reported racial discrimination had poorer mental functioning over a 1–4 year follow-up period [ 28 ]. The current study also found a prospective association between racial discrimination and poor mental functioning. Our study builds upon previous findings by additionally showing that this association is independent of baseline mental functioning. We also observed a prospective association with psychological distress, another marker of mental health, with those reporting racial discrimination experiencing an increase in psychological distress over time. We did not detect a prospective association between racial discrimination and poorer life satisfaction. Mean scores trended in this direction but the association did not reach statistical significance. A 2015 longitudinal analysis of the US-based Health and Retirement Study with over 6000 participants also failed to detect a prospective association between racial discrimination and decreases in life satisfaction [ 45 ], and pooled analyses have been unable to investigate prospective associations with life satisfaction due lack of sufficient evidence [ 12 , 16 ]. A possible explanation for this null finding, consistent with earlier work, is that racial discrimination is more strongly associated with negative mental health outcomes such as psychological distress than with positive outcomes such as life satisfaction [ 12 , 16 ]. Another potential reason for these findings relates to duration of follow-up, as review evidence suggests that a recent experience of racial discrimination may be more strongly associated with poor mental health and more weakly related to life satisfaction measures [ 16 ]. Our follow-up period of 2 years was relatively short which may have contributed to these results.

Reviews in the field [ 16 , 17 ] have highlighted the need for more prospective evidence, particularly for physical health outcomes [ 16 ]. We found that participants who reported racial discrimination were more likely to report having a limiting longstanding illness and poorer self-rated health, independent of baseline status. Meta-analytic evidence has demonstrated an association between racism and poor general health and worse physical health outcomes [ 16 ]. We built upon this predominately US-based data (a considerable portion of which used convenience sampling) to demonstrate prospective associations between racial discrimination and physical health outcomes in a representative sample of UK adults from ethnic minority groups. We failed to observe a prospective association between perceived racial discrimination and physical functioning, although participants who reported racial discrimination had slightly lower physical functioning scores prospectively than those who did not report racial discrimination. This lack of association may indicate that ongoing experiences of racial discrimination had already made an impact on physical functioning at the time of wave 1 survey, limiting the scope for further significant decreases in this measure over time, particularly as we took baseline physical functioning into account in our analyses. Another possibility, is that the etiological period involved for a decline in physical functioning may differ from that of mental functioning [ 14 ]. These outcomes were measured using the same tool (SF-12) but only mental functioning was significantly associated with racial discrimination over the follow-up period.

Review evidence based on US data suggests that associations between racial discrimination and health may vary depending on ethnic group [ 16 ]. In our sensitivity analysis, the cross-sectional results for life satisfaction and impairment and physical health outcomes were non-significant for the Black group. Prospectively the findings for psychological distress and mental functioning were non-significant for the South Asian group. Whereas, life satisfaction was found to significantly decline for the Other group over the follow-up period. Taken together these results suggest associations with health outcomes are strongest for South Asian and Other groups cross-sectionally, while prospectively racial discrimination appears to most consistently impact mental health outcomes in Black and Other ethnic groups. These findings should be interpreted with caution due to the likelihood that some of our analyses were underpowered.

In our cross-sectional analyses, we found that those who perceived racial discrimination had poorer mental health, with greater psychological distress, poorer mental functioning and lower life satisfaction. Previous work in UKHLS has demonstrated a cross-sectional association with psychological distress using pooled data across three waves of data collection [ 46 ]. To our knowledge no prior UK-based work has reported on cross-sectional associations with poor mental functioning and low life satisfaction. These findings are consistent with earlier work in other countries [ 12 , 16 , 45 ].

We detected links between racial discrimination and poor physical health and impairment. Specifically, we found that those who reported racial discrimination had poorer self-rated health, poorer physical functioning scores and a greater likelihood of having a limiting longstanding illness than those who did not report racial discrimination. Earlier work using the 1993/1994 UK-based Fourth National Survey of Ethnic Minorities survey reported associations between perceived racial discrimination and poor self-rated health [ 27 , 47 ] and limiting longstanding illness [ 47 ]. Our more recent findings from 2009/2010 suggest that these deleterious associations remain an issue for minorities in the UK.

We detected stronger associations between racial discrimination and health for cross-sectional than for prospective comparisons, in keeping with earlier evidence [ 16 ]. However, cross-sectional work cannot determine whether reports of racial discrimination stimulate poor mental and physical health or whether perceptions of racial discrimination are a manifestation of feeling suboptimal mentally or physically. Our prospective findings therefore add to the field in establishing that racial discrimination predicts poor mental and physical outcomes prospectively, net of baseline associations, supporting the hypothesis that racial discrimination has adverse consequences for future health.

With regard to the pathways through which racial discrimination negatively impacts health, there are several possibilities that could help explain our results. One mechanism linking racial discrimination and health may be through the dysregulation of stress-related biological processes. In response to perceived chronic discrimination, stress processes may be frequently activated, which over time may result in disturbances across multiple biological systems, in line with the theory of allostatic load [ 20 ]. Review evidence indicates discrimination is associated with heightened cardiovascular responses to stress [ 11 , 21 ], though it is unclear whether this translates into an increased risk for clinical hypertension [ 48 ]. Another biological mechanism that may link discrimination and health is through activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Several reviews have linked racial discrimination [ 21 , 49 , 50 ] with changes in various cortisol parameters, which in turn have been linked with poorer mental and physical health [ 51 , 52 ]. Deleterious changes in other biological processes such as heightened inflammation [ 22 ] and alterations in DNA methylation of stress-related genes [ 53 ] have been linked with discrimination in recent studies. Alterations in these stress-related biological processes offer a plausible link to negative changes in physical [ 54 , 55 ] and, mental health outcomes [ 51 , 56 ]. Racial discrimination has also been associated with disturbances in neurobiological processes, with alterations observed in brain areas such as the anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex and amygdala which overlap with pathways associated with poor mental health [ 57 ].

Individual health risk (e.g. smoking, alcohol consumption etc.) could link perceived racial discrimination and poor mental and physical health, either as a method of coping with the negative psychological effect of perceiving racial discrimination (e.g. excessive alcohol consumption as a coping mechanism) or as a barrier to engaging in healthy behaviours (e.g. avoiding a health service perceived to be discriminatory). Racial discrimination has been associated with smoking [ 23 , 58 , 59 ], excessive alcohol consumption [ 23 , 60 ], as well as substance abuse [ 61 , 62 ]. Review evidence has linked discrimination with poor sleep [ 63 ] as well as weight gain in prospective studies [ 24 ]. This individual health risk offers a plausible indirect pathway linking racial discrimination with both poor mental [ 64 , 65 ], as well as physical health outcomes [ 66 ].

Another possibility at the broader structural level is that racial discrimination may impact health through differential access to societal resources such as education, employment, welfare and criminal justice [ 14 , 15 ]. In the UK, a 2016 report documented persistent ethnic disparities in educational attainment, employment, access to fair pay and adequate housing, as well the over-representation of ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system [ 4 ]. Further, data from this report highlight inequalities in access to healthcare among ethnic minority groups [ 4 ]. While meta-analytic evidence indicates that racial discrimination is associated with more negative patient experiences of health services, as well as delaying/not getting healthcare and lack of treatment uptake [ 19 ]. As these factors are social determinants of health in of themselves [ 13 , 14 , 15 ], they may act as a pathway through which perceptions of racial discrimination can act to negatively influence health.

The results of the current study need to be assessed in terms of strengths and limitations. There is a dearth of prospective evidence on the link between racial discrimination and health in UK samples, particularly in relation to physical health. Our large sample of ethnic minority participants allowed us to examine changes in mental and physical health over 2 years, and demonstrated both cross-sectional and prospective associations. We also adjusted statistically for factors that potentially confound associations, including age, sex, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Although controlling for covariates does not tease out the complexity of the relationships between perceived racial discrimination and these sociodemographic characteristics [ 43 ]. For example, socioeconomic status contributes to racial inequalities in health [ 43 ], while racial discrimination can compound these disparities and can be conceptualised as an indicator of structural racism [ 13 ]; statistical adjusting for socioeconomic status does not capture these relationships.

The study of racism is a complex and contested area of research [ 67 , 68 ] and our study was not without limitations. Our measure of perceived discrimination was not specifically tailored for racial discrimination, as participants in the could attribute their experience to other forms of discrimination as well (e.g. sexism, ageism). There is evidence that the exposure instrument can influence associations between racism and physical and mental health outcomes [ 16 ] . Participants were able to attribute multiple reasons for their report of discrimination, which could have helped to avoid priming and this measure has been used to assess racial discrimination in previous work [ 28 ]. However, it is possible that measures such as the Schedule of Racist Events scale [ 69 ] and the Perceived Racism Scale [ 70 ] with more specific items on racist degradation and experiences of racism in personal and professional contexts could have garnered different results. Further, the self-report individual measure of racial discrimination employed in our study does not capture the structural conditions that shape the varied ways in which racial discrimination operates [ 14 ]. We only assessed perceived racial discrimination at baseline in this study and did not investigate whether racial discrimination experiences were persistent or changed over time.

Racial discrimination was assessed by self-reports of experiences in the past year and was therefore subject to recall bias. Our findings reflect the perception of racial discrimination rather than objective encounters with racial discrimination. It is possible that objective encounters with racism and perceiving one’s self as the target of racial discrimination might have different consequences for health. Experimental studies involving exposure to discriminatory scenarios have been used to investigate the health impact of objective exposures to racial discrimination. However, these studies may not represent a gold standard for the study of the relationship between discrimination and health, as meta-analytic evidence indicates that exposure to a single negative event in a laboratory setting does not negatively influence health [ 12 ].

In conclusion, this study adds to the field by demonstrating cross-sectional and prospective relationships between racial discrimination and both mental and physical health outcomes. With the rise in racial discrimination in the UK [ 6 ] in the aftermath of the Brexit vote [ 9 ] our findings highlight the need to reduce racial discrimination, not only to promote equity, but also to potentially benefit mental and physical health and reduce health inequalities.

Racial discrimination is a complex system that involves assigning ethnic groups differential value, which drives disparities in access to power, resources and opportunities [ 14 , 15 ]. Due to its multi-faceted nature, occurring at both the structural and individual level multiple interventions will be required to tackle this pervasive determinant of health. Historically, raising awareness of racial discrimination has been necessary to promote activism to bring about legislative and social change to improve the position of ethnic minority groups. In terms of public health, there are calls to integrate research about racial discrimination and health into medical teaching in an attempt to tackle structural racism and to highlight the impact racial discrimination has on health [ 71 , 72 ]. As well as strategies to reduce the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in institutional contexts, action through social media may have benefits for individual health too. The Black Lives Matter campaign is an example of a recent social media movement which has drawn attention to the issue of racial discrimination. There is some evidence that campaigns may provide a source of empowerment, particularly in a time where ethnic minority youth participation in traditional civic engagement activities are in decline [ 73 ]. Evidence suggests the Twitter conversation remained Black-led [ 73 ] and that the majority of the 40 million plus tweets were supportive of the movement [ 73 , 74 ]. However, whether social media campaigns positively [ 73 ] or negatively impact minority health [ 75 ] remains the subject of debate. Further, it should be acknowledged that interventions to educate and raise awareness do not tackle the structural macro-level forces that shape the position of ethnic minorities in society. Although, more challenging to address, work is required to identify socio-political processes that generate racial discrimination so attempts can be made to mitigate its effects. Research into the pathways underlying the link between racial discrimination and health are required to develop policy and to target interventions in this field.

Availability of data and materials

The UKHLS datasets analysed during the current study are freely available in the UK Data Service repository https://ukdataservice.ac.uk/

Abbreviations

Confidence Interval

General Health Questionnaire-12

Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

Short-form Health Survey-12

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom Household Longitudinal Study

United States

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Supplementary Table 1. Racial discrimination types and settings by ethnic group. Supplementary Table 2. Associations between racial discrimination and health outcomes (complete cases at wave 3). Supplementary Table 3. Cross-sectional and prospective associations between racial discrimination and health outcomes stratified by ethnic group

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Elections Today

Recent projections, delegate tracker, latest election news, starbucks discrimination lawsuit awarded white employee $25 million: legal experts weigh in.

Shannon Phillips received $25.6 million in damages after a six-day trial.

A federal jury this week found that Starbucks discriminated against a white manager who was fired amid an uproar over the company's treatment of Black customers at a store in Philadelphia five years ago.

The ex-manager, Shannon Phillips, received $25.6 million in damages after a six-day trial, Phillips' attorneys previously told ABC News.

The resolution of a lawsuit against one of the nation's largest employers drew attention to the standard for proving discrimination as well as the federal protection against bias afforded to all racial groups, regardless of whether they've faced historical marginalization, experts told ABC News.

The jury appears to have been persuaded in part by the argument that Phillips was fired as part of a public relations effort undertaken by Starbucks in response to racial justice backlash, which may carry implications for how corporations act in such circumstances, experts added.

Starbucks did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment. In court documents , the company rejected allegations of discrimination, saying that it disciplined Phillips for "legitimate, nondiscriminatory, non-retaliatory reasons."

MORE: Starbucks ordered to pay over $25 million to white former manager who claimed racial discrimination

Here's what to know about the Starbucks discrimination case and its implications, according to legal experts:

Why did the jury find that race played a role in the firing of the Starbucks employee?

In 2018, two Black men -- Donte Robinson and Rashon Nelson -- were arrested at a Philadelphia-area Starbucks store after an employee called 911 and accused them of trespassing because they had not made a purchase.

The two men later reached a private settlement with Starbucks and the City of Philadelphia, which agreed to pay each of the men $1 and establish a $200,000 fund for young entrepreneurs.

Phillips, a then-regional director who had worked at the company for nearly 13 years, was terminated less than a month after the incident.

In an initial lawsuit filed by Phillips in 2019, she said she was not at the store that day nor involved in the lead-up to the arrests, alleging instead that her race played a "determinative role" in her termination.

A key piece of evidence in the case centered on testimony from a Black district manager who said he thought race had played a role in Starbucks' decision to fire Phillips and allow him to remain with the company, Phillips' attorney previously told ABC News.

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Legal experts concurred with that assessment, saying that the plaintiff's ability to point to disparate treatment of a relevant employee was critical to the jury's finding of discrimination.

"My understanding is that in these cases what you have to have is a comparative," Rick Rossein, a professor of employee discrimination law at the City University of New York Law School, told ABC News. "Here you have a Starbucks manager giving that type of testimony."

In court documents, Starbucks contested this account of its actions, saying instead that it disciplined Phillips based on poor performance. Phillips "appeared overwhelmed, frozen and lacked awareness of how critical the situation was for Starbucks and its partners," the company claimed .

Phillips appeared to further persuade the jury with her explanation for the alleged mistreatment, describing her firing as part of the company's effort to minimize the public relations fallout from the arrests, the experts added.

"Evidence points to Starbucks taking action against an employee in order to address public opinion as opposed to really addressing the question of who was involved in making that decision," Risa Lieberwitz, a professor of labor and employment law at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, told ABC News.

Is it unusual for workplace discrimination cases to be brought on behalf of white people?

Phillips’ case is unusual because the majority of cases alleging a violation of federal discrimination law on the basis of race involve non-white people, legal experts told ABC News.

Legal precedent that reaches as high as the Supreme Court affirms that the measure at issue, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, protects white workers who experience discrimination, they added.

"Anti-discrimination law that deals with race discrimination applies to any allegation of race discrimination whether it would be against a white employee, a Black employee or another racial group," Lieberwitz said.

While discrimination lawsuits on behalf of white individuals are uncommon, white plaintiffs have proven more likely to succeed than non-white ones when federal judges adjudicate their racial discrimination claims, said Wendy Greene, a professor of anti-discrimination law at Drexel University Law School and the director of the Center for Law, Policy and Social Action.

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"The surprise for many people, however, is that federal civil rights laws initially designed to address the longstanding, systemic racial segregation, exclusion and discrimination endured by individuals identifying as non-white are seemingly more effective at redressing racial discrimination against individuals who identify as white," Greene told ABC News.

What are the implications of the finding that Starbucks discriminated in this case?

The decision in this case could heighten scrutiny of large companies in their treatment of workers who belong to groups protected against discrimination as well as complicate efforts to discipline workers charged with improving a company's performance on racial justice issues, experts said.

"We're in the era where people are looking very carefully at decision-making by major corporations," Rosstein said.

Greene, meanwhile, said that the decision could make it more difficult for companies to supervise workers involved in the implementation of racial justice initiatives, since companies could be accused of racial discrimination if they discipline such employees.

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Management must balance the need to create a work environment free of racial discrimination with a simultaneous commitment to "ensure workplaces are free of racial exclusion and subordination, which are often couched as acts of racial discrimination against white employees in favor of non-white people," Greene said.

The large award for damages in the Starbucks case could "discourage employers from disciplining or terminating employees they believe are not effectively handling complaints of discrimination," she added.

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Policy approaches to addressing a history of racial discrimination

Key takeaways.

• Race-blind policies can inadvertently exacerbate racial inequalities by failing to address the lingering effects of past discrimination. To reduce anti-Black discrimination, policymakers must explicitly consider how these policies interact with historical injustices created by past legislation.
• Recent research has shown that historical injustices, such as slavery and Jim Crow laws, continue to impact racial inequality today due to systemic discrimination that perpetuates the effects of past discrimination.
• Comprehensive strategies that effectively address the consequences of historical injustices are essential to ensure equal opportunities for all members of society. This principle applies not only to racial inequality but to all forms of inequality and discrimination.

M ay 17 marked the 70th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools. And it’s been 60 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin.

Despite major court rulings and landmark legislation meant to right the wrongs of racist laws, inequality persists – partly because the impacts of slavery and segregation were never fully considered in the formulation of the policies meant to address racial disparities.

My research traces the history of legislated discrimination and shows how those now-illegal policies continue to significantly impact Black Americans. Without a thorough understanding of that history, policymakers run the risk of inadvertently perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating existing inequalities.

This policy brief lays out my work and suggests steps that government officials can take toward ensuring more racially equitable economic opportunities for Americans.

The long-term impact of slavery and Jim Crow laws

My research with Hugo Reichardt (Althoff and Reichardt 2024) examines the economic progress of individual Black families from their enslavement to the present day. Our work reveals that Black families have faced repeated obstacles to realizing their full economic potential, and those hurdles often emerged because of past hurdles they faced – the very definition of systemic discrimination (Bohren, Hull, Imas 2023).

Specifically, we show that the timing and location of a family's emancipation from slavery continue to influence their economic status today. Black families whose ancestors were enslaved until the Civil War have considerably lower education, income, and wealth than Black families whose ancestors were free before the four-year war began in 1861.

For example, we find that a Black man with enslaved ancestry had $12,500 less in predicted annual income in 2023 than a Black man with free Black ancestry – a Free-Enslaved gap that is around one-quarter of the corresponding Black-white income gap today. Gaps of similar magnitude have persisted throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in other outcomes including education and wealth.

The Free-Enslaved gap persists largely because systemic forces drastically disadvantaged families enslaved until the Civil War and then under the subsequent Jim Crow laws that disenfranchised Black voters, limited Black geographic and economic mobility, and mandated racial segregation throughout the South. Longer enslavement increased the likelihood of a family being concentrated in the Deep South (Figure 1), where the strictest Jim Crow regimes emerged after 1877 and limited Black economic progress.

Figure 1: Number of enslaved people (left) and free Black Americans (right) in 1860

The state and local Jim Crow laws enacted in Southern states affected all Black Americans living in those jurisdictions.

For example, free Black families in Louisiana — who had attained relatively high economic position — lost their protected legal status once Jim Crow began. By the mid-20th century, their economic position had converged with formerly enslaved families due to the severe limits imposed by Louisiana's oppressive policies. In contrast, white Americans’ economic trajectories, such as their educational attainment, were entirely uncorrelated with those of Black Americans across different states or counties, highlighting the race-specific nature of Jim Crow’s impact.

On the flip side, families who had been enslaved in regions that ended up adopting less severe Jim Crow laws made substantial economic strides in the decades after slavery (see Figure 2). For example, the regression discontinuity design in our study reveals that Black families freed in Louisiana attained 1.2 fewer years of education by 1940 compared to families freed just a few miles away in Texas. But even in Texas and other states with less severe Jim Crow laws, Black families were still disadvantaged relative to white families by being excluded from specific occupations, industries, and firms; and facing other forms of racial discrimination, particularly in the housing and consumer markets. The impact of systemic racism was pervasive and continued to hinder Black economic progress even in areas with less oppressive Jim Crow policies.

Figure 2: Jim Crow’s impact on the education of Black families

While it was difficult to advance economically in areas with restrictive Jim Crow laws, a natural experiment in the construction of schools shows that Black Americans effectively seized opportunities when they were accessible.

Specifically, the Rosenwald school program – a philanthropic effort to build schools for Black children – provided access to education for almost a third of all Black children in the South between 1913 and 1932 (Aaronson and Mazumder 2011). We show that gaining access to a school translated into large gains in education among Black children and improved their long-run economic outcomes.

Black men today whose fathers had access to a Rosenwald school (for plausibly exogenous reasons) today are 40 percent more likely to hold a college degree than those whose fathers did not have access.

These results highlight that when and where their environment allowed, Black Americans made substantial progress over generations. The fact that the vast majority of formerly enslaved Americans made far less progress than they could have is because they were concentrated in soon-to-be Jim Crow states.

Systemic discrimination – higher exposure to discrimination due to past discrimination – is at the core of why Black Americans' socioeconomic status throughout recent decades has continued to depend on their ancestors' enslavement status. Even today, the income and wealth gap between Black Americans whose ancestors were either free or enslaved is 20 to 70 percent of the gap between Black and white Americans.

How policies interact with the effects of past discrimination

Having established the impact that legalized discrimination continues to have on the socioeconomic status of Black Americans, the next question is how these persistent effects interact with race-blind policies to exacerbate systemic discrimination.

The World War II G.I. Bill is a case in point. The G.I. Bill provided virtually all World War II veterans with generous subsidies to gain additional education, finance their first home, and purchase businesses and farms. The policy has been celebrated as a huge success and credited with creating America’s middle class.

But it also has become increasingly clear that Black veterans benefited from the policy substantially less than white Americans despite the race-blind statutory terms of the policy.

First, fewer Black men had the opportunity to serve due to racial discrimination in the military. They also had lower levels of education resulting from slavery and Jim Crow (Althoff and Reichardt 2024).

Second, even among the Black Americans who served, many faced severe obstacles in using their benefits (Katznelson 2005). Many colleges did not accept Black Americans at the time, limiting their ability to use the G.I. Bill's educational benefits, especially in the segregated South (Turner and Bound 2003).

In the housing market, severe discrimination among sellers and financial lending institutions made it hard to use the G.I. Bill's homeowner benefits (Cohen 2003). Redlining, anti-Black covenants, and other government-condoned discriminatory practices limited the areas in which Black veterans were able to buy property, impacting the returns they could achieve from homeownership (Fishback et al. 2021, Ali 2023, Hynsjö and Perdoni 2024). A survey at the time concluded that in 13 cities in Mississippi, only two of over 3,000 loans guaranteed through the G.I. Bill had been granted to Black veterans (Cohen 2003, p. 171).

The G.I. Bill’s failure to Black veterans lies in ignoring race. This failure manifested in at least three key ways.

First, the bill's benefits were designed primarily with white veterans in mind, reflecting the broader trend of policies at the time that Katznelson (2005) termed "affirmative action for white people."

Second, the decision to allow local offices to administer benefits, a provision heavily advocated for by Southern states, enabled rampant racial discrimination, particularly in the South, where nearly all administrators were white.

Third, the federal government failed to seize the opportunity to combat discrimination by tying G.I. Bill funds to anti-discrimination efforts. For instance, it could have mandated that any institution receiving G.I. Bill funds – such as colleges, mortgage providers, or employers – must commit to providing equal access to veterans regardless of race. Alternatively, the bill could have included specific provisions designed to support Black veterans, acknowledging and addressing the unique challenges they faced due to systemic racism. By failing to confront racial inequality head-on, the G.I. Bill perpetuated and even exacerbated the disparities between white and Black families.

The policy forcefully highlights the problem of ignoring race in policy design. If the goal of policymakers is to design equitable policies, they must consider the lingering impact of past discrimination.

There are many lessons policymakers can learn from the unintended consequences of the G.I. Bill. Considering and understanding government policies that led to discrepancies in formal education and other opportunities is crucial to ending systemic discrimination. Policies that encourage job training, educational opportunities and increased oversight to mitigate discrimination in benefit usage, have been implemented and reflect important progress. What the G.I. Bill highlights, however, remains timely and pressing: ignoring race is not a solution to fighting discrimination – it can exacerbate racial inequality through systemic discrimination.

The Biden administration's Child Tax Credit reform illustrates how race-blind policies, calibrated to the needs of disadvantaged groups, can enhance racial equity. By increasing benefits for low-income families (disproportionately Black) and eliminating work requirements that hindered single mothers (more prevalent among Black families), the reform significantly reduced racial disparities (Parolin et al. 2022). The reform's positive effect on racial equity was likely the result of careful consideration of the needs of Americans close to the poverty line, but Congress failed to make those reforms permanent, jeopardizing the longevity of the policy’s impact.

Policy implications

There are several policy proposals being considered to combat the legacy of past discrimination. These policies must be carefully designed and targeted.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) has recently reintroduced the G.I. Bill Restoration Act, aimed at addressing the racial inequities perpetuated by the original G.I. Bill. The legislation seeks to provide the families of Black World War II veterans who were denied full access to G.I. Bill benefits due to racial discrimination with the opportunity to receive those benefits today.

The approach of carefully identifying and addressing specific disparities created by past governments has precedent in the U.S. After a class action lawsuit accused the Department of Agriculture of anti-Black discrimination, an extensive investigation confirmed that disaster relief aid was systematically withheld from Black farmers but not white farmers during the 1980s and 1990s (Woods 2013). In 2010, President Barack Obama finalized legislation that entitles Black farmers or their descendants to up to $250,000 if they were denied relevant aid in the past.

Affirmative action, while less targeted, seeks to increase diversity and expand opportunities for underrepresented groups. However, its effectiveness in addressing past harm may be limited if the primary beneficiaries are less directly impacted by historical discrimination. Sociologists have shown that the more selective a college is, the less likely its Black students are to be descendants of the enslaved (Massey et al. 2007). Often, selective colleges choose to admit Black students from abroad, not Black American students.

Another promising approach includes policies that provide broad-based support to disadvantaged communities, like the Child Tax Credit reform that removed working requirements. By providing support regardless of employment status, this policy helps mitigate the compounding effects of historical injustices on economically disadvantaged groups.

Any policymaker interested in creating a more equitable society must acknowledge and address the impact of past discrimination. Failing to do so risks perpetuating systemic discrimination and exacerbating inequalities, harming marginalized communities, and undermining the overall social and economic well-being of the nation.

Targeted policies that directly address the specific harms of historical injustices are essential for greater equity. However, broad policies that support disadvantaged communities also play a crucial role in combating the lingering effects of past discrimination. Going forward, policymakers must prioritize comprehensive strategies that effectively address the complex and far-reaching consequences of historical injustices, ensuring all members of society have an equal opportunity to thrive.

About the Authors

Lukas Althoff is a Postdoctoral Fellow at SIEPR. He joins Stanford’s Department of Economics as an Assistant Professor in 2025. His work focuses on the causes and consequences of inequality using tools from applied microeconomics and economic history.

Aaronson, D., & Mazumder, B. (2011). The Impact of Rosenwald Schools on Black Achievement. Journal of Political Economy, 119(5), 821-888.

Ali, O. (2023). The Impact of Federal Housing Policies on Racial Inequality: The Case of the Federal Housing Administration. Working Paper.

Althoff, L., & Reichardt, H. (2024). Jim Crow and Black Economic Progress after Slavery. Working Paper.

Baker, R. S. (2022). The Historical Racial Regime and Racial Inequality in Poverty in the American South. American Journal of Sociology, 127.

Bohren, J. A., Hull, P., & Imas, A. (2023). Systemic Discrimination: Theory and Measurement. Working Paper.

Cohen, L. (2004). A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America. Vintage Books.

Fishback, P. V., Rose, J., Snowden, K. A., & Storrs, T. (2021). New Evidence on Redlining by Federal Housing Programs in the 1930s (NBER Working Paper No. 29244).

Hynsjö, D. M., & Perdoni, L. (2024). Mapping Out Institutional Discrimination: The Economic Effects of Federal "Redlining". Working Paper.

Katznelson, I. (2006). When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Massey, D. S., Mooney, M., Torres, K. C., & Charles, C. Z. (2007). Black Immigrants and Black Natives Attending Selective Colleges and Universities in the United States. American Journal of Education, 113(2), 243-271.

Parolin, Z., Collyer, S., & Curran, M. A. (2022). Absence of Monthly Child Tax Credit Leads to 3.7 Million More Children in Poverty in January 2022. Poverty and Social Policy Brief, 6(2). Columbia University Center on Poverty and Social Policy.

Turner, S., & Bound, J. (2003). Closing the Gap or Widening the Divide: The Effects of the G.I. Bill and World War II on the Educational Outcomes of Black Americans. The Journal of Economic History, 63(1), 145-177.

Woods, L. L., II. (2013). Almost "No Negro Veteran … Could Get a Loan": African Americans, the GI Bill, and the NAACP Campaign Against Residential Segregation, 1917–1960. The Journal of African American History, 98(3), 392-417.

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The Long History of Discrimination in Job Hiring Assessments

Applying for jobs can be a difficult and frustrating experience: you’re putting forward your qualifications to be judged by a prospective employer. We all want to be treated fairly. We want our qualifications to speak for themselves. But for job seekers who have been historically excluded or discriminated against because of their race, gender identity, or disability, there can be another question lurking in the background: Am I being judged, not for my ability to do the job, but for my identity?

Automated decision-making tools, including those using artificial intelligence, or AI, and algorithms, have been widely adopted in hiring. Today seven out of 10 employers use them. We have previously written about AI and some of the newer ways that it’s impacting hiring, including how it lacks transparency and can harbor serious flaws that lead to bias and discrimination. But these tools are just the latest frontier in a long history of employment tests that can discriminate and harm job seekers. For example, one of the landmark civil rights cases, Griggs v. Duke Power Co (1971) , was about a company’s use of bogus tests to block the promotion of Black workers .

How Artificial Intelligence Might Prevent You From Getting Hired

AI-based tools are used throughout hiring processes, increasing the odds of discrimination in the workplace.

Source: American Civil Liberties Union

When tests and tools that have a long history of problems are combined with new technologies like AI, risks of harm only increase, exacerbating harmful barriers to employment based on race, gender, disability, and other protected characteristics. While the harm of racial discrimination in employment tests has long been recognized and challenged, there has been less awareness about how these tests impact applicants who, in addition to facing racial discrimination, face discrimination based on their disabilities.

The use of personality assessments in hiring processes has become increasingly common. Yet these tests often ask general questions that may have little to do with the ability to do the job and capture traits that are directly linked with characteristics commonly associated with autism and mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. This creates a high risk that qualified workers with these disabilities will be disadvantaged compared to other workers and may be unfairly and illegally screened out.

Know Your Rights | Know Your Digital Rights: Digital Discrimination in Hiring

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To push back, we filed a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Aon, a major hiring technology vendor, alleging that Aon is deceptively marketing widely used online hiring tests as “bias-free” even though the tests discriminate against job seekers based on traits like their race or disability. The ACLU and co-counsel have also filed charges with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against both Aon and an employer that uses Aon’s assessments on behalf of a biracial (Black/white) autistic job applicant who was required to take Aon assessments as part of the employer’s hiring process.

Two Aon products, a “personality” assessment test and its automated video interviewing tool, which integrate algorithmic or AI-related features, are marketed to employers across industries as cost-effective, efficient, and less discriminatory than traditional methods of assessing workers and applicants. However, these products assess very general personality traits such as positivity, emotional awareness, liveliness, ambition, and drive that are not clearly job related or necessary for a specific job and can unfairly screen out people based on disabilities. The automated features of these tools exacerbate these fundamental problems, particularly as Aon incorporated artificial intelligence elements in its video interviewing tool that are also likely to discriminate based on disability, race, and other protected characteristics.

Cognitive ability assessments, another staple in hiring, must also be subject to scrutiny, as they have long been shown to disadvantage Black job candidates and other candidates of color and may also unfairly exclude individuals based on disability. These tests, touted to measure aspects of memory, as well as several others it markets, have racial disparities in performance.

For autistic and other neurodivergent job applicants and applicants of color, cognitive ability assessments pose a significant barrier to employment. Not only do they fail to accommodate diverse needs, but they also perpetuate discrimination based on race, disability, and other traits. Employers should not use assessments that carry a high risk of discrimination. Employers risk screening out people who could be successful employees, impacting diversity in the workplace, and could face legal liability, even where the assessments are designed and administered by third-party vendors. Employers have a legal obligation to thoroughly vet any assessments they use for compliance with anti-discrimination laws, and if they decide to use an assessment, they must provide meaningful notice so that disabled workers can make an informed choice whether to seek accommodations or alternative processes.

But vendors must also be accountable for the tools they market. Employers can hold vendors accountable by demanding that vendors truly design their products to be inclusive – including by incorporating the perspectives and experiences of people with disabilities and other protected groups into their design process — and conduct thorough auditing for discrimination based on race, disability and other protected characteristics. They can also demand transparency and decline to purchase their products if they fail to do so. And vendors can and should also be held legally accountable for their discriminatory products and deceptively marketing them. As the EEOC recently argued in a federal case about discrimination in an online hiring product, vendors can be held accountable under employment discrimination laws, and our FTC complaint should serve as notice to vendors that we will seek to hold them accountable under consumer protection laws as well.

As the hiring landscape continues to change and job applicants face new hiring tools, we must strive for a future where skills and potential, not bias, determines our opportunities. The ACLU stands ready to defend the rights of individuals wronged by discriminatory practices. Together, we can dismantle discriminatory barriers and build a more inclusive workforce for all.

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