Testing the Tests for Racism

Against the claim of decreased American racism over the past twenty years have come the audit studies. Throughout much of the modern era, a large number of empirically-minded social scientists have pointed out that racism seems by any objective standard to be declining. However, other scholars argue that anonymous tests show considerable modern-era bias against blacks and other racial minorities. How can both of these results co-exist, across dozens of well-designed studies? To answer this question, Wilfred Reilly reviews the audit studies and finds some of their results obviously do indicate that bias remains a reality within significant sectors of the U.S. employment and housing markets. However, these studies rarely if ever examine rates of prowhite (or pro-POC) bias in higher education, the public sector, and the minority business community; very frequently do not include adjustments for social class or perceived competence; and have not extensively compared the bias faced by members of other potentially disadvantaged groups with that faced by blacks. Given this, audit data does not seem to counter the basic observation that citizens of different races with the same background characteristics often perform similarly in life.