Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorties-Housing

Housing Discrimination and Segregation (Mooney, Linda, Knox, David, and Schacht)

Before the 1968 Fair Housing Act and the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act, discrimination against minorities in housing and mortgage lending was common. Banks and mortgage companies commonly engaged in "redlining"---the practice of denying mortgage loans in minority neighborhoods on the premise that the financial risk was too great, and the ethical standards of the National Association of Real Estate Boards prohibited its members from introducing minorities into white neighborhoods.

Although housing discrimination is illegal today, it is not uncommon. To assess discrimination in housing, researchers use a method called "paired testing." In a paired test, two individuals---one minority and the other nonminority---are trained to pose as home seekers, and they interact with real estate agents, landlords, rental agents, and mortgage seekers to see how they are treated. The testers are assigned comparable or identical income, assets, and debt as well as comparable or identical housing preferences, family circumstances, education, and job characteristics. A paired testing study of housing discrimination in 23 metropolitan areas found that whites in the rental market were more likely to receive information about available housing units and had more opportunities to inspect available units that did blacks and Hispanics (Turner et al. 2002). The incidence of discrimination was greater for Hispanic renters than for black renters. The same study found that, in the home sales market, white home buyers were more likely to be able to inspect available homes and to be shown homes in more predominately non-Hispanic white neighborhoods than were comparable black and Hispanic buyers. Whites were also more likely to receive information and assistance with financing.

In a study of housing discrimination in the Philadelphia area, Massey and Lundy (2001) found that, compared with whites, African Americans were less likely to have a rental agent return their calls, less likely to be told that a unit was available, more likely to pay application fees, and more likely to have credit mentioned as a potential problem in qualifying for a lease. Sex and class exacerbated these racial effects. Lower-class blacks experienced less across to rental housing than middle-class blacks, and black females experienced less access than black males. Lower-class black females were the most disadvantaged group. The experienced the lowest probability of contacting and speaking to a rental agent and, even if they did make contact, they faced the lowest probability of being told of a housing unit's availability. Lower-class black females also faced the highest chance of paying an application fee. On average, lower-class black females were assessed $32 more per application than white middle-class males.

Residential segregation of racial and ethnic groups also persists. Almost a quarter of all census tracts within the largest U.S. metropolitan areas are more than 90 percent white and 12 percent are more than 90 percent minority (Turner & Fortuny 2009).

Sources

Turner, Margery Austin, Stephen L., Ross, George Galster, and John Yinger. 2002. Discrimination in Metropolitan Housing Markets. Washington, DC: Urban Institute.

Massey, Douglas S., and Garvey Lundy. 2001. “Use of Black English and Racial Discrimination in Urban Housing Markets: New Methods and Findings.” Urban Affairs Review 36(4): 452-469.

Turner, Margery Austin, and Karina Fortuny. 2009 Residential Segregation and Low-Income Working Families. Washington DC: Urban Institute.

Discrimination Against Racial and Ethnic Minorities-Employment

In 2016, while many us do not feel personally racist, prejudiced or bigoted we are still encountering a great amount of discrimination in our nation. Whereas prejudice refers to attitudes, discrimination refers to actions or practices that result in differential treatment of categories of individuals.

Individual versus Institutional Discrimination (Mooney, Linda, Knox, David, and Schacht)

Individual discrimination occurs when individuals treat other individuals unfairly or unequally because of their group membership. Individual discrimination can be overt or adaptive. In overt discrimination, individuals discriminate because of their own prejudicial attitudes. For example, a white landlord may refuse to rent to a Mexican American family because of prejudice against Mexican Americans.

In adaptive discrimination, the injustice occurs due to the discrimination of others. The landlord may refuse the Mexican American family due to the discrimination of other tenants and for fear that they would move.

Institutional discrimination refers to institutional policies and procedures that result in unequal treatment of and opportunities for minorities. Institution discrimination is covert and insidious and maintains the subordinate position of minorities in society. For example, when schools use standard intelligence tests to decide which children will be placed in college preparatory tracks, they are limiting the educational advancement of minorities whose intelligence is not fairly measured by culturally biased tests developed from white middle-class experiences. And the funding of public schools through local tax dollars results in less funding for schools in poor and largely minority school districts.

Employment Discrimination

Despite laws against it, discrimination against minorities occurs today in all phases of the employment process, from recruitment to interview, job offer, salary, promotion, and firing decisions. A sociologist at Northwestern University studied employers' treatment of job applicants in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by dividing up job applicant "testers" into four groups: blacks with a criminal record, blacks without a criminal record, whites with a criminal record, and whites without a criminal record (Pager 2003). Applicant testers, none of whom actually had a criminal record, were trained to behave similarly in the application process and were sent with comparable resumes to the same set of employers. The study found that white applicants with no criminal record were the most likely to be called back for an interview (34 percent) and that black applicants with a criminal record were the least likely to be called back (5 percent). But surprisingly, white applicants with a criminal record (17 percent) were more likely to be called back for a job interview than were black applicants without a criminal record (14 percent). The researcher concluded that "the powerful effects of race thus continue to direct employment decisions in ways that contribute to persisting racial inequality" (Pager 2003, p. 960).

Workplace discrimination also includes unfair treatment and harassment. African American employees working for A.C. Widenhouse---a North Carolina---based freight trucking company---were repeatedly subjected to derogatory racial comments and slurs by employees and managers. These insulting comments and slurs included "n----r," "monkey," and "boy" (EEOC 2011). One employee was approached by a coworker with a noose who said, "This is for you. Do you want to hang from the family tree?" A company manager allegedly told an employee, "We are going coon hunting, are you going to be the coon?"

Sources

EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission). 2011 (June 22). “A.C. Widenhouse Sued by EEOC for Racial Harassment.” Press Release. Available at www.eeoc.gov

Mooney, Linda, Knox, David, and Schacht, Caroline 2015. Understanding Social Problems. Cengage Learning: Boston, MA.

Pager, Devah. 2003. “The Mark of a Criminal Record.” American Journal of Sociology 108(5):937-975