Is Discrimination Widespread or Concentrated? Evaluating the Distribution of Hiring and Housing Discrimination Against Black Americans

Is anti-Black racial discrimination due to “a few bad apples”? Or, is there a larger pattern of widespread discrimination? This question about the distribution of discrimination is fundamental for understanding the causes of discrimination and for choosing effective solutions; yet we know surprisingly little about how discrimination is distributed. The current paper explores the distribution of discrimination using meta-analytic data and simulations from experimental studies in two critical contexts: hiring and housing. The meta-analysis revealed that anti-Black discrimination is found in more than 80% of studies. Simulations of widespread anti-Black discrimination using a normal distribution were more consistent with the experimental data on racial discrimination than were simulations of concentrated anti-Black discrimination using a Pareto distribution. These findings help address the perennial question about the distribution of discrimination and offer a rigorous quantitative method to refine the debate between concentrated and widespread accounts going forward.