How does discrimination start

At other times, outgroups may be respected but disliked. White reactions to black professionals can exemplify this behavior. Some racial outgroups elicit both disrespect and dislike. Poor people, welfare recipients, and homeless people all erroneously perceived to be black more often than white frequently elicit an unambivalent and hostile response. The important point is that reactions need not be entirely negative to foster discrimination. One might, for example, fail to promote someone on the basis of race, perceiving the person to be deferential, cooperative, and nice but essentially incompetent, whereas a comparable ingroup member might receive additional training or support to develop greater competence.

All manifestations of subtle prejudice—indirect, automatic, ambiguous, and ambivalent—constitute barriers to full equality of treatment. Subtle prejudice is much more difficult to document than more overt forms, and its effects on discriminatory behavior are more difficult to capture. In their study, the experimenter first showed white participants either black or white young male faces, presented at a subliminal level. The experimenter then either did or did not provoke the participant by requiring that the experiment be started over because of an apparent computer error.

Compared with other participants, those who saw the black faces and were also provoked by the experimenter behaved with more hostility as revealed in a videotape of their immediate facial expressions and in their subsequent behavior, as rated by the experimenter. Generally, an emerging pattern of results from laboratory research see, e.

In any event, the implicit measures have been shown to be statistically reliable Cunningham et al. Some of these laboratory findings have been generalized to the real world—for example, in contrasting subtle and explicit forms of prejudice Pettigrew, b and in research on specific phenomena, such as ingroup favoritism Brewer and Brown, The discussion of experimental methods in Chapter 6 elaborates on this point.

Another process that may result in adverse discriminatory consequences for members of a disadvantaged racial group is known as statistical discrimination or profiling.

In this situation, an individual or firm uses overall beliefs about a group to make decisions about an individual from that group Arrow, ; Coate and Loury, ; Lundberg and Startz, ; Phelps, The perceived group characteristics are assumed to apply to the individual. When beliefs about a group are based on racial stereotypes resulting from explicit prejudice or on some of the more subtle forms of ingroupversus-outgroup perceptual biases, then discrimination on the basis of such beliefs is indistinguishable from the explicit prejudice discussed above.

Statistical discrimination or profiling, properly defined, refers to situations of discrimination on the basis of beliefs that reflect the actual distributions of. Even though such discrimination could be viewed as economically rational, it is illegal in such situations as hiring because it uses group characteristics to make decisions about individuals. Why might employers or other decision makers employ statistical discrimination?

There are incentives to statistically discriminate in situations in which information is limited, which is often the case. For example, graduate school applicants provide only a few pages of written information about themselves, job applicants are judged on the basis of a one-page resume or a brief interview, and airport security officers see only external appearance.

In such situations, the decision maker must make assessments about a host of unknown factors, such as effort, intelligence, or intentions, based on highly limited observation. Why is information limited in such cases? Instead, decision makers look for signals that cannot easily be faked and are correlated with the attributes a decision maker is seeking.

Education is a prime example. Hence, decision makers must regularly make judgments about people based on the things they do know and decide whether to invest in acquiring further information Lundberg, In the face of incomplete information, they may factor in knowledge about differences in average group characteristics that relate to the individual characteristics being sought. The result is statistical discrimination: An individual is treated differently because of information associated with his or her racial group membership.

Faced with the possibility of statistical discrimination, members of disadvantaged racial groups may adopt behaviors to signal their differences from group averages. For example, nonwhite business people who want to signal their trustworthiness and belonging to the world of business may dress impeccably in expensive business suits. Nonwhite parents who want their children to get into a first-rate college may signal their middle-class background by sending their children to an expensive private school.

An implication of statistical discrimination is that members of a disadvantaged racial group for whom group averages regarding qualifications are lower. Thus, the practice of statistical discrimination can impose costs on members of the targeted group even when those individuals are not themselves the victims of explicitly discriminatory treatment.

If admissions officers at top-ranked colleges believe, on the basis of group averages to date, that certain groups are less likely to succeed and admit few members of those groups as a result, incentives for the next generation to work hard and acquire the skills necessary to gain admittance may be lessened see Loury, —33, for a more extensive discussion of this example. Similarly, if black Americans are barred from top corporate jobs, the incentives for younger black men and women to pursue the educational credentials and career experience that lead to top corporate jobs may be reduced.

Thus, statistical discrimination may result in an individual member of the disadvantaged group being treated in a way that does not focus on his or her own capabilities. It can affect both short-term outcomes and long-term behavior if individuals in the disadvantaged group expect such discrimination will occur. The above three types of racial discrimination focus on individual behaviors that lead to adverse outcomes and perpetuate differences in outcomes for members of disadvantaged racial groups.

These behaviors are also the focus of much of the current discrimination law. However, they do not constitute a fully adequate description of all forms of racial discrimination. As discussed in Chapter 2 , the United States has a long history as a racially biased society.

This history has done more than change individual cognitive responses; it has also deeply affected institutional processes. Organizations tend to reflect many of the same biases as the people who operate within them. Organizational rules sometime evolve out of past histories including past histories of racism that are not easily reconstructed, and such rules may appear quite neutral on the surface.

But if these processes function in a way that leads to differential racial treatment or produces differential racial outcomes, the results can be discriminatory. Such an embedded institutional process—which can occur formally and informally within society—is sometimes referred to as structural discrimination e.

In Chapter 11 , we discuss the interactions among these processes that occur within and across domains. In the past, overt racism and explicit exclusionary laws promoted residential segregation. Even though these laws have been struck down, the process by which housing is advertised and housing choices are made may continue to perpetuate racial segregation in some instances.

Thus, real estate agents may engage in subtle forms of racial steering i. Likewise, banks and other lending institutions have a variety of apparently neutral rules regarding mortgage approvals that too often result in a higher level of loan refusals for persons in lower-income black neighborhoods than for equivalent white applicants.

Research also suggests that ostensibly neutral criteria are often applied selectively. Another example of this sort of biased institutional process that has been debated in the courts is the operation of hiring and promotion networks within firms.

Many firms hire more through word-of-mouth recommendations from their existing employees than through external advertising Waldinger and Lichter, By itself such a practice is racially neutral, but if existing white employees recommend their friends and neighbors, new hires will replicate the racial patterns in the firm, systematically excluding nonwhites.

Such practices do not necessarily entail intentional discrimination, but they provide a basis for legal action when the outcome is the exclusion of certain groups. Seniority systems that give preference to a long-established group of employees can produce similar racially biased effects through promotion or layoff decisions, even though the Supreme Court has ruled that seniority systems are generally not subject to challenge under Title VII on this basis. Institutional processes that result in consistent racial biases in terms of who is included or excluded can be difficult to disentangle.

In many cases, the individuals involved in making decisions within these institutions will honestly deny any intent to discriminate. In dealing with such cases in the courts disparate impact cases; see Chapter 3 , weighing the benefits to an organization of a long-established set of procedures against the harm such procedures might induce through their differential racial outcomes is a complex and difficult process.

Thus the panel does not wish to condemn any specific organizational process. In most cases, each situation needs to be. International Brotherhood of Teamsters v. United States, U. But we do want to emphasize that facially neutral organizational processes may function in ways that can be viewed as discriminatory, particularly if differential racial outcomes are insufficiently justified by the benefits to the organization. If you wish to check on a problem or fault you have already reported, contact DfI Roads.

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What to do next For queries or advice about careers, contact the Careers Service. What to do next For queries or advice about claiming compensation due to a road problem, contact DFI Roads claim unit. What to do next For queries about your identity check, email nida nidirect. Virtually no white adults say whites are treated less fairly than blacks in each of these realms.

By large margins, white Democrats are more likely than white Republicans and independents to say blacks are treated less fairly than whites in the U. And while at least half across partisan groups say blacks and whites in the U.

Blacks and whites also offer widely different views when asked to assess the way each group is treated in their own communities.

However, across many measures, blacks and whites are more likely to say blacks are treated less fairly than whites in the country than they are to say this is the case in their own community. Fresh data delivered Saturday mornings. It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics.

Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why. Affirmative Action as Restitution. An example of restitution. Y is competing with Z for a job. Y was as or more qualified than Z, but Z gets the job because Y is black and Z is white. Justice requires that the employer give restitution to Y by giving Y a job.

But suppose:. Restitution requires that it be given to Y. The new job is not one that the employer is free to offer to the public. Note: So far, this is compatible with Weak Affirmative Action. However, Mosley believes that the same principle should be applied to groups as well as individuals. If an employer has discriminated against blacks in the past, then they have an obligation to remedy this by making more positions open to blacks in the future using Strong AA , though the beneficiaries will not be the same blacks as were discriminated against in the past.

Of course, as a general supporter of Strong AA, Mosley would have to go further. He would also hold that a new employer, who does not have a history of discrimination, is obligated to implement Strong AA. How would he justify this? He would argue that the beneficiaries of Strong AA, while perhaps not victims of the original discrimination, still suffer from the effects of it. Thus, they indirect victims of past discrimination. As for those who would bear the cost of Strong AA:.

But as it stands, it is hard to evaluate. Are all whites males recipients of unjust enrichment? What about poor whites, or whites with drug-addicted parents, etc.? Given this limitation…the burden of social restitution may, in many cases, be borne by those who were not directly involved in past discriminatory practices.

Justice requires that new positions cannot be legitimately offered to the general public unless restitution takes place. Therefore, many of the new positions are not open to competition at all, and whites have no claim on them. Mosley also argues that Strong AA is a way of correcting the dispositional effect of discrimination. If an employer is known to have discriminated against blacks, then many blacks will simply not apply at all, adding considerably to the discriminatory effect.

Using Strong AA sends a clear message that the positions are now open to blacks. In general, we do not assume that an action is justified merely because it has one positive consequence. This is not to argue that blacks should be maintained in such positions, but their contrived exclusion merits an equally contrived rectification. Of course, it would be question begging to simply assert that Strong AA is wrong. Some thoughts on undeserved advantages. If Mosley is right, then whites have undeserved advantage over blacks in society due to past discrimination.

Strong AA is justified, in part, because the advantage is undeserved. In other words, if someone has an undeserved advantage, then it is legitimate to try to correct it by denying them some benefits that would otherwise come from the undeserved advantage. But note that there are many undeserved advantages one can have that have nothing to do with race.

Being born wealthy certainly helps, as does being born to parents with a high level of education. Are these factors that should be considered in public policy as well?