Race Discrimination

In this cultural moment, the conversation surrounding reparations for American’s cardinal sin of slavery, segregation, and racial oppression will likely gain momentum. It is about time for this issue to become of part of mainstream social and political discourse and for significant progress to be made. The case for reparations has been laid out here, among many other places. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/06/the-case-for-reparations/361631/ [1] These sources are well worth delving into for a more in-depth view. The argument for reparations is grounded in history and is compelling. Slavery is not a dead relic of the ancient past. Its legacy continues. The current status of black people in America can be traced through 400 years of history: from slavery, to Jim Crow, to redlining, to layers of discrimination that persist in large part to this day. Lives stolen and disrupted; dreams deferred. [2] George Floyd is only one of countless victims. The result has been a compounding wealth and opportunity gap, and engrained structural inequity that often holds back black Americans from realizing their fullest potential. As expressed by Rev. Al Sharpton, racism has been a collective knee on the neck of African-Americans; the many who have succeeded have done so in spite of it and, all too frequently, […]

Asian Americans are facing a surge of discrimination and harassment, and in some cases, violence, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. The STOP AAPI HATE reporting center has documented over 1,100 reports of coronavirus-related discrimination since March 19, 2020. While many of these incidents occur in the few places still available to the public, there are valid concerns that incidents of anti-Asian harassment and discrimination have also increased in the workplace. The STOP AAPI HATE reporting center estimates that at least 4.6% of reported incidents of discrimination against people of Asian descent occurred on the job. Asian employees have complained of being the subject of derogatory comments, baseless accusations that they have COVID-19,  workplace bullying, and even termination because of their race or national origin. Concerns about anti-Asian discrimination in the workplace are so great that Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Chair Janet Dhillon recently issued a statement noting the uptick in incidents of discrimination against Asian Americans and other people of Asian descent and urging employers to “to be mindful of instances of harassment, intimidation, or discrimination in the workplace and to take action to prevent or correct this behavior.” Dhillon’s statement emphasized that these actions could violate Title VII’s prohibition of discrimination […]

A few months ago, I blogged about the considerable evidence of gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the medical profession. Here, I turn to the persistent racial and ethnic disparities among physicians. Like gender disparities, racial and ethnic disparities in medicine manifest in multiple forms—in pay, promotions, and harassment from colleagues and patients. A growing body of evidence suggests that black, Latino, and Asian physicians make considerably less than their white counterparts. A 2016 study published in the BMJ found in the 2010-13 period, “white male physicians had an adjusted median annual income of $253 042 . . . compared with $188 230 . . . for black male physicians.” Similarly, according to Medscape’s 2018 Physician Compensation Survey, black, Latino, and Asian physicians earn $50,000, $30,000, and $15,000 less than their white counterparts, respectively. Studies have found similar disparities in promotions. A 2010 literature review describes a number of studies from the late 1990s and early 2000s, which show that black, Latino, and Native American physicians in academic medicine are less likely to receive promotions than their white counterparts. More recent articles in the American Journal of Public Health (2012) and in Academic Medicine (2018) report similar results, as does a recent survey of Emergency Medicine doctors. Unsurprisingly, minority medical students and faculty […]

“We need not leave our common sense at the doorstep when we interpret a statute,” wrote a four-Justice plurality of the Supreme Court in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228, 241 (1989), the seminal ruling that gender stereotyping by an employer is actionable as sex discrimination under Title VII. And yet, nearly three decades later, courts often do leave common sense at the doorstep in turning a blind eye to race and gender discrimination. Such is the case with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Catastrophe Management Solutions, 852 F.3d 1018 (11th Cir. 2016), in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit held that Title VII does not prohibit discriminatory bias against dreadlocks. After all, asked the cloistered judges, what have dreadlocks to do with the race? The victim of this glaring ignorance is Chastity Jones, the African-American plaintiff in Catastrophe Management Solutions who chose to forfeit a job offer rather than cut her dreadlocks. In 2010, Ms. Jones applied for a position as a Customer Services Representative for Catastrophe Management Solutions (CMS), an Alabama-based claims processing company. CMS’s human resources manager, Jeannie Wilson, who is white, offered the job to Ms. Jones—subject to one condition. “Ms. Wilson asked [Ms. Jones] whether she had […]

Congress initially enacted the protections of 42 U.S.C. § 1981 as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. The act was passed between the ratification of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In the relevant part, the current act provides: (a) Statement of equal rights All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other. 42 U.S.C. § 1981(a) (emphasis added). On its face, § 1981 protects racial minorities from discrimination, including employment discrimination and discrimination in the workplace, by providing that they will have the same rights as “white citizens.” So does the act protect Caucasians of Russian, Jewish, Italian, or Greek descent – among others – even against discrimination by other Caucasians? The answer is Yes. The Supreme Court addressed this issue […]

Ever feel like you’ve received extra scrutiny because of your race?  Research suggests that these fears may be well-founded.  A recent study indicates that supervisors are far more likely to overlook or forgive the mistakes of white employees – while African-American employees are far more likely to have their mistakes caught, criticized, and used to question their overall competence. The study called Written in Black and White: Exploring Confirmation Bias in Racialized Perceptions of Writing Skills, asked law partners to rate the quality of a legal memo that – unbeknownst to them – contained nearly two dozen errors that the researchers had deliberately inserted.  Half of the partners reviewing the memo were told that it had been written by an African-American associate, while the other half were told the same document had been written by a white associate. The results were striking.  The law partners who thought the memo had been written by a white lawyer rated the memo 28% better than the law partners who thought it had been written by an African-American attorney.  The law partners also found 43% more errors – of facts, spelling, grammar, and technical writing – when they thought the memo was written by an […]