Diverse According to Whom? Racial Group Membership and Concerns about Discrimination Shape Diversity Judgments

Abstract:

People often treat diversity as an objective feature of situations that everyone perceives similarly. The current research shows, however, that disagreement often exists over whether a group is diverse. We argue that diversity judgments diverge because they are social perceptions that reflect, in part, individuals’ motivations and experiences, including concerns about how a group would treat them. Therefore, whether a group includes in-group members should affect how diverse a group appears because the inclusion or apparent exclusion of in-group members signals whether perceivers can expect to be accepted and treated fairly. Supporting our claims, three experiments demonstrate that racial minority group members perceive more diversity when groups included racial in-group members rather than members of other racial minority groups. Moreover, important differences exist between Asian Americans and African Americans, which underscore the need for more research to explore uniqueness rather than commonalities across racial minority groups.

Source: Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin October 2014 

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Preserving Access to the Legal System: Common Errors by Federal Agencies in Dismissing Complaints of Discrimination on Procedural Grounds

From the Introduction:

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) developed an agency-wide Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP) for Fiscal Years 2012-2016 designed to maximize its ability, within the constraints of its resources, to have a sustainable impact in reducing and deterring discriminatory practices in the workplace.  Pursuant to this effort, EEOC has adopted a series of coordinated national priorities.  Among these priorities is the goal of preserving access to the legal system.  Under this priority, EEOC committed to targeting policies and practices that discourage or prohibit individuals from exercising their rights under the employment discrimination statutes, or that impede the EEOC's enforcement efforts.  The Commission approved the Federal Sector Complement Plan (FCP) to implement the SEP in the federal sector.  One of the strategies the FCP details for preserving access to the legal system in the federal sector is to prevent improper agency procedural dismissals of Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints.

Source: U.S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission

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Voting Rights Discrimination—African American, Latino, Asian American and Native American Voters More Vulnerable Than Ever

From the Summary:

On the anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act and a year after the Supreme Court’s Shelby County v Holder decision gutted a vital protection of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), the National Commission on Voting Rights has released a new report showing where and how minority voters continue to be harmed by racial discrimination in voting. The report, Protecting Minority Voters: Our Work is Not Done, challenges the Court’s rationale that improvements in minority citizens’ rates of voting and voter registration and the success of minority candidates indicated that the coverage formula protecting minority voters was unconstitutionally outdated.

Source: National Commission on Voting Rights

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What Happens Before? A Field Experiment Exploring How Pay and Representation Differentially Shape Bias on the Pathway into Organizations

Abstract:

Little is known about how discrimination against women and minorities manifests before individuals formally apply to organizations or how it varies within and between organizations. We address this knowledge gap through an audit study in academia of over 6,500 professors at top U.S. universities drawn from 89 disciplines and 259 institutions. We hypothesized that discrimination would appear at the informal “pathway” preceding entry to academia and would vary by discipline and university as a function of faculty representation and pay. In our experiment, professors were contacted by fictional prospective students seeking to discuss research opportunities before applying to a doctoral program. Students’ names were randomly assigned to signal gender and race, but messages were otherwise identical. Faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from Caucasian males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions. Counterintuitively, the representation of women and minorities and discrimination were uncorrelated.

Authors: Milkman, Katherine L. and Akinola, Modupe and Chugh, Dolly,
Source: Social Science Research Network (SSRN)

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What Happens Before? A Field Experiment Exploring How Pay and Representation Differentially Shape Bias on the Pathway into Organizations

Abstract:

Little is known about how discrimination against women and minorities manifests before individuals formally apply to organizations or how it varies within and between organizations. We address this knowledge gap through an audit study in academia of over 6,500 professors at top U.S. universities drawn from 89 disciplines and 259 institutions. We hypothesized that discrimination would appear at the informal “pathway” preceding entry to academia and would vary by discipline and university as a function of faculty representation and pay. In our experiment, professors were contacted by fictional prospective students seeking to discuss research opportunities prior to applying to a doctoral program. Names of students were randomly assigned to signal gender and race (Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, Indian, Chinese), but messages were otherwise identical. We found that faculty ignored requests from women and minorities at a higher rate than requests from Caucasian males, particularly in higher-paying disciplines and private institutions. Counterintuitively, the representation of women and minorities and discrimination were uncorrelated, suggesting that greater representation cannot be assumed to reduce discrimination. This research highlights the importance of studying what happens before formal entry points into organizations and reveals that discrimination is not evenly distributed within and between organizations.

 Source: Social Science Resource Network

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Equality and Human Rights Report: How fair is Britain?

From the Executive Summary:

The Equality and Human Rights Commission is a public body set up to challenge discrimination, to protect and promote equality and respect for human rights, and to encourage good relations between people of different backgrounds. Our vision is of a society at ease with its diversity, where every individual has the opportunity to achieve their potential, and where people treat each other with dignity and respect.

Source: Equality and Human Rights Commission (UK)

Download full report: "How Fair is Britain?"