Invisible privileges
1.
Let's review the evidence.
African-Americans are twice as likely to be stopped by the police. Police officers speak less respectfully to them. They are more likely to use violence against them. Overall, African-American men get killed by the police 2.5 times as often as White men. Then, African-Americans face discrimination at every stage of the justice system. For an identical case and history, African-American defendants have 10% higher odds of being incarcerated. When they are, they receive 10% longer sentences for the same crime.
African-Americans also face discrimination when they are the victims. Criminals receive lighter sentences when their victim is black However, it is not clear whether this is really due to discrimination or to other factors. In fatal traffic accidents, drivers receive a 53% shorter sentence if the person they killed happens to be black. When a black person goes missing, there is 3.1 times less media coverage than if the victim is whiteThis is called the Missing White Woman Syndrome. This study was conducted in 2016, before the Black Lives Matter movement gained popularity. It would be interesting to see how things have changed as a result..
Institutional discrimination also appears in the education system. Teachers systematically give better grades to students from the white majority than to ethnic minorities, for identical worksThere are two kinds of methodologies to address this question. The most common is to compare the grades obtained by a student when the teacher knows her identity, with grades obtained by the same student on blind examinations. The second one is to fabricate a fake essay and ask teachers to grade it, while changing only the name of the student, and see if they are graded differently.. At school, African-American children receive harsher punishments for the same behavior as well as closer surveillance from teachers. And overall, in the US, African-Americans are 12% less likely to access higher education than white people.
Then, there is housing discrimination. When ethnic minorities apply to rent an apartment, their odds of receiving a positive response are 47% lower, everything else equal. With no surprise, African-Americans are 4.5 times as likely to be homeless, and then 45% less likely to be sheltered.
In addition, ethnic minorities generally have poorer health than white people. Black people work more dangerous jobs, making them 33% more likely than white people to be injured at work. They are 16 % more likely to die on their workplace. On average, the life of black people is 4.3 years shorter than white people's.
Most of those results are from large studies, they are solid and have been replicated many times. Yet some people decide to completely ignore all the evidence, and still deny the existence of racist discrimination. How is it even possible? What is going on in the head of racism-deniers?
2.
Men are 2.5 times more likely than women to be stopped by the police. Police officers are more likely to arrest men and more lenient toward women. Overall, men get killed by the police 20 times more often than women. Then, men face discrimination at every stage of the justice system. Men are more likely to be considered guilty and receive harsher sentences than women for an identical case and historyThese studies are called "mock juror trials". They use a panel of jurors who are presented with a fictional case, where only the gender or ethnicity of the defendant is changed, and asked what the sentence should be. This way, everything is exactly identical except the gender of the defendant, so any difference can be attributed to discrimination. Some studies even staged fake audiences with comedians for extra realism.. Men have 1.64 to 2.15 times higher odds of being incarcerated, depending on the study. When they are, men also receive 30% to 63% longer sentences for the same crime compared to womenThese are observational studies, meaning they look at the outcomes of a large number of real-life cases, taking into account offense severity, previous offenses, whether the defendant has to take care of children, and other confounders.. The sexist bias favoring women is much larger than the racial bias – that is, black women are treated better than white men. As you might expect, justice's double-standard against men is especially marked for sexual offenses.
Men also face discrimination when they are the victims. Criminals receive lighter sentences when their victim is a manWith the same caveat as for racial discrimination.. In fatal traffic accidents, drivers receive a 36% shorter sentence if the person they killed happens to be a man. When a man goes missing, there is 2.9 times less media coverage than if the victim is a woman.
Institutional discrimination also appears in the education system. Teachers systematically give better grades to girls than to boys, for identical works. This happens already in elementary school, continues in middle school, and again in high school, and again in collegeInterestingly, these studies found that female teachers were on average more biased in favor of girls than male teachers.. This favoritism for girls has measurable effects on boys' progress and future career orientation. Parents also invest more time teaching girls than boys and spend 25% more money on girls' education. At school, boys receive harsher punishments for the same behavior as well as closer surveillance from teachers. And overall, in the US, men are 16% less likely to access higher education than women. Here again, the gender gap is larger than the racial gapMoreover, unlike for ethnic minorities, there is no affirmative action attempting to correct this disparity – even when women are more likely to access higher education, affirmative action is still in favor of women..
Then, there is housing discrimination. When women apply to rent an apartment, their odds of receiving a positive response are 28% higher than men, everything else equal. With no surprise, men are 1.5 times as likely to be homeless, and then 40% less likely to be sheltered. A study in France found that 90% of the people who die in the streets are menIt should be noted that the gender gap in homelessness is more marked in France than in the USA..
In addition, men generally have poorer health than women. Men work more dangerous jobs, making them 40% more likely than women to be injured at work. They are 8 times more likely to die on their workplace. On average, the life of men is 5 years shorter than women'sThe gap in life expectancy is commonly attributed to biological factors, as a legitimizing myth. However, this study on monks and nuns (who do pretty much the exact same things throughout their lives) found that at most one year of the gap could be attributed to biological differences.. In spite of this, there is much more scientific research and US national offices dedicated to women's health. Medical research on women's health receives considerably more funding than men's health, even for conditions that affect men more oftenSee the tables from page 56. For lung cancer, in 2016 the NIH spent $180,000,000 for women-specific research, $318,000 (!) for men-specific research, and $136,000,000 for lung cancer in general. They also spent $1,916,000 for women's suicides, and only $156,000 for men's suicides, despite men dying from suicide about four times as often..
Like for racism, most of those results are from large studies, they are solid and have been replicated many times. Yet some people decide to completely ignore all the evidence, and still deny the existence of discrimination privileging women. Just like racism, discrimination against men has been systematically made invisible.
3.
I am aware that many readers will hear about discrimination against men for the first time. Perhaps you've heard about discrimination from the police beforehand, but did you know about the grading discrimination? Did you know about the housing discrimination? If not, why didn't anybody tell you about it?
One thing to consider is that people can't really tell how much discrimination they face based on their subjective experience. In their classic 1997 book Social Dominance, social psychologists Jim Sidanius and Felicia Pratto report that (in 1997) many African-Americans had no clue about how much racism they facedSee page 106 of the book.. In the 1990s, 58% of African-Americans believed they had the same housing opportunities as white people. 46% thought they had the same chances at employment, and 63% thought they had the same chances in education – despite clear evidence of the contrarySidanius and Pratto dedicate the third part of their book to evidence of discrimination against black people. However, they completely disregard discrimination against men – to be fair, most of the evidence that I discussed here was published after the book Social Dominance came out, so you can't blame the authors.. This is one of the universal patterns described in Social Dominance: unfair treatment against subordinate groups is overlooked, legitimized, and actively erased by the dominant status quo, until even the discriminated population believes it is not real. It is perfectly possible to face discrimination on a daily basis and be completely unaware of it.
In addition, there is growing evidence that people (academics, the media, people in general) care very little about the issues that affect men. Most people know about manspreading, but have never heard about the teacher grading gap. People think gender balance at work is important, but only in professions where women are underrepresented. Scientific studies that find a bias against women are cited far more often than studies that find a bias against men, even when the later use larger samples. Remember the kidnapping study I mentioned above, which found that there is less media coverage when a man goes missing? This is the same process. Presumably, this attention disparity is the result of traditional gender roles, which (among many other things) say that men are not expected to complain, and will be shamed if they do so – but this is a complicated topic that deserves a future blog post on its own.
As a takeaway, there is a striking similarity between discrimination against ethnic minorities and discrimination against men. My point is not to say that minorities or men “have it harder”, nor is it that racism is exactly identical to sexism – the historical and social mechanisms are obviously entirely different. My point is that, currently, men and ethnic minorities experience a similar pattern of stereotyping and discrimination in their daily life. The strange polarization of the culture wars makes it even harder to notice: the political tribes who care about racism are sharply separated from the tribes who care about men's issues. This is unfortunate, because both tribes share the common goal of eliminating discriminationOf course, there are also traditionalists who just use men's issues as an excuse to attack feminism, hoping to restore traditional gender roles. I personally believe, on the contrary, that traditional gender roles are the cause for discrimination, and that we need to step away from them. – maybe their filter bubbles only show them one side of the problem? It took decades for the majority of the population to realize that racist discrimination is real. For sexism against men, such a shift in collective consciousness has yet to happen.
If you spot any mistake or inaccuracy in this text or the supporting evidence, please let me know in the comments, so I can correct it.
Annex: what about hiring discrimination?
Hiring discrimination can be measured by sending fictional resumes to employers, only changing the ethnicity or gender of the applicant, and counting how many replies you get. As you expect, equally-qualified ethnic minorities are far less likely to be hired. Regarding gender discrimination, the evidence is much more mixed. This makes it very easy to cherry-pick studies that show discrimination against women (if you read feminist sources) or against men (if you read MRA sources). This meta-analysis found moderate discrimination against men, but only in female-dominated jobs. This systematic review lists 11 studies looking at pure gender discrimination (man vs woman). Two of them found discrimination against women, four of them found discrimination against men, and the rest found no discrimination. A recent study which tracked recruiters' behavior on online hiring markets found that women face a 6.7% penalty in men-dominated occupations, and that men face a 12.6% penalty in women-dominated occupations. Overall, gender discrimination in hiring is much less systematic than racial discrimination. This discrepancy is probably a remnant of the traditional gender division of labor, since men were traditionally assigned to salaried jobs. In any case, the common claim that it is harder for women to find employment appears to be wrong.
Changelog:
30-11-2020 - According Leeth et al., 2005, the racial gaps in fatal and non-fatal workplace injuries are respectively 16% and 33%, not 20% as previously reported.
01-02-2021 - A few studies on the effect of victim gender/origins on sentencing found no evidence for discrimination after controlling for case details. Thanks Greg for pointing that out. I also moved hiring discrimination to an annex, and added the recent study by Hangartner et al.