White people in America now believe they suffer more racism than blacks, a groundbreaking study has found.
After decades of multiculturalism, they feel that improvements in equality for ethnic minorities has come at their own expense.
Whites now think they face more discrimination than black people throughout their lives. The US study is one of the first to show the effect of “reverse racism” towards white people which has sprung out of fear of offending non-whites.
Its authors say it could have “clear implications” for future research - but also for politicians responsible for allowing the problem to develop.
The research found that both whites and blacks agree anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years.
However, whites are convinced anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.
The team from Harvard Business School and Tufts University in Massachusetts came to their conclusion after contacting a random sample of 208 black people and 209 whites. They asked them to rate on a scale of one to 10 how much discrimination each group had faced since the 1950s.
Blacks saw bias against them decline steadily, from an average rating of 9.7 in the 1950s to 6.1 in the 2000s. Over the same period, there was a small increase in anti-white bias, from 1.4 to 1.8. Whites saw an even steeper decline in anti-black bias: from 9.1, in the 1950s, to 3.6, in the 2000s.
But in a striking twist, among whites there was a dramatic increase in perceived anti-white bias over the same period, which went up from 1.8 to 4.7. The researchers concluded that whites thought that anti-white discrimination was a greater social problem than bias against blacks.
“The data is the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality - at their expense,” the authors wrote. They added that whites see racial equality as a zero-sum game, in which gains for one group mean losses for the other.
In some jobs white candidates are at a disadvantage as employers are keen to fulfill their “quotas” for ethnic minorities.
Despite the findings, however, equality campaigners argued the reality is the majority of black people face far more of a struggle throughout their lives. Recent research showed almost half of young black people are unemployed, more than twice the rate for young white people.
Some studies have shown that in the workplace, discrimination is still prevalent with blacks vastly under-represented in boardrooms.
Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, a co-author of the study, said the findings were “pretty surprising when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show blacks with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment”.
Michael Norton, an associate professor with the Harvard Business School said whites held this perception because they did not look at the bigger picture.
“If you are a middle class white person who does not have much day-to-day interaction with black people then your views are going to be informed by what you hear,” he said.
“In America there have been a number of high profile cases of ‘reverse racism’ where black job candidates were given preference over white candidates, and they were widely reported on.
“People tend to see these and not the overall trends which show that black people are far more likely to experience discrimination.” - Daily Mail
After decades of multiculturalism, they feel that improvements in equality for ethnic minorities has come at their own expense.
Whites now think they face more discrimination than black people throughout their lives. The US study is one of the first to show the effect of “reverse racism” towards white people which has sprung out of fear of offending non-whites.
Its authors say it could have “clear implications” for future research - but also for politicians responsible for allowing the problem to develop.
The research found that both whites and blacks agree anti-black racism has decreased over the last 60 years.
However, whites are convinced anti-white racism has increased and is now a bigger problem than anti-black racism.
The team from Harvard Business School and Tufts University in Massachusetts came to their conclusion after contacting a random sample of 208 black people and 209 whites. They asked them to rate on a scale of one to 10 how much discrimination each group had faced since the 1950s.
Blacks saw bias against them decline steadily, from an average rating of 9.7 in the 1950s to 6.1 in the 2000s. Over the same period, there was a small increase in anti-white bias, from 1.4 to 1.8. Whites saw an even steeper decline in anti-black bias: from 9.1, in the 1950s, to 3.6, in the 2000s.
But in a striking twist, among whites there was a dramatic increase in perceived anti-white bias over the same period, which went up from 1.8 to 4.7. The researchers concluded that whites thought that anti-white discrimination was a greater social problem than bias against blacks.
“The data is the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality - at their expense,” the authors wrote. They added that whites see racial equality as a zero-sum game, in which gains for one group mean losses for the other.
In some jobs white candidates are at a disadvantage as employers are keen to fulfill their “quotas” for ethnic minorities.
Despite the findings, however, equality campaigners argued the reality is the majority of black people face far more of a struggle throughout their lives. Recent research showed almost half of young black people are unemployed, more than twice the rate for young white people.
Some studies have shown that in the workplace, discrimination is still prevalent with blacks vastly under-represented in boardrooms.
Tufts Associate Professor of Psychology Samuel Sommers, a co-author of the study, said the findings were “pretty surprising when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show blacks with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health and employment”.
Michael Norton, an associate professor with the Harvard Business School said whites held this perception because they did not look at the bigger picture.
“If you are a middle class white person who does not have much day-to-day interaction with black people then your views are going to be informed by what you hear,” he said.
“In America there have been a number of high profile cases of ‘reverse racism’ where black job candidates were given preference over white candidates, and they were widely reported on.
“People tend to see these and not the overall trends which show that black people are far more likely to experience discrimination.” - Daily Mail
