Individuals in management positions demonstrate explicit and implicit bias toward others from marginalized groups

BY SIMONE J. SMITH

Whether it is being perceived as being less intelligent, or it is unfair treatment by an employer when it comes to hiring, pay or promotions⁠, many people of colour have experienced racism in the workplace.

According to a study conducted by the Environics Institute for Survey Research in 2019, a third to half of Canadians of colour reported being discriminated against.

About 40% of those who said they experienced racism told surveyors that it happened at work, making it one of the most common places to face discrimination. Another study conducted by the Gallup Center on Black Voices (2020) found that about one in four Black (24%) and Hispanic employees (24%) in the U.S. reported having been discriminated against at work in the past year.

The study revealed that workplace discrimination reported by Black and Hispanic workers exceeded reports of such experiences among White employees (15%) by a substantial margin. More than 8,000 respondents were surveyed, including more than 3,500 White workers, more than 2,000 Black workers and more than 2,000 Hispanic workers.

Experiences of workplace discrimination are similar between Black men (27%) and Black women (23%), as well as between Black employees in households earning less than $90,000 annually (24%) and those in households earning $90,000 or more (25%).

Most recently the BCAS and Amnesty joined forces to shed light on the historic and on-going human rights violations faced by Black employees in Canada’s federal public service. These workers have endured anti-Black hate and anti-Black racism, both covertly and overtly, over the course of decades in the service of their country. This is contrary to the right to non-discrimination found within several international conventions ratified by the Government of Canada.

It appears that this topic continues to permeate, and most recently another study that examined bias in the workplace was conducted at the University of Florida. A researcher found that those in management positions demonstrate explicit and implicit bias toward others from marginalized groups and often express more implicit bias than people who are not in management.

The study, published this month in Frontiers in Psychology, drew from 10 years of data publicly available from Harvard University’s Project Implicit, a repository of information from more than five million people.

George Cunningham, Professor and Chair of the UF Department of Sport Management, and his co-author analysed responses from people who identified themselves as managers and compared their assessments of: racial, gender, disability and sexual orientation biases to those from people in 22 other occupational designations.

“Stereotypes and prejudices harm workplace experiences and advancement opportunities for people from minoritized and subjugated backgrounds. While people undoubtedly experience mistreatment from co-workers and customers, our work shows that managers are also likely to express bias, particularly in implicit forms.”

He noted that implicit bias occurs automatically and unintentionally, but it affects judgements, decision-making and behaviours. Research has shown that this unintentional discrimination has implications for many aspects of society, including in: health care, policing, education and organizational practices.

It is different with explicit bias where individuals are aware of their prejudices and attitudes toward certain groups.

“With respect to explicit biases, the scores as we calculated them indicated that people working in management occupations had an explicit bias in favour of people without disabilities, men relative to women working outside the home, White people and heterosexual people,” Cunningham said.

So, now what; what do we do now? It is clear that this is a major issue across North America, but what is being done to deal with this issue.

According to the Ontario Human Rights Commission there are ways that organizations can prevent and eliminate discrimination against people of colour in their organizations. Organizations should develop strategies to prevent discrimination. A complete strategy to prevent and address human rights issues should include:

• A barrier prevention, review and removal plan
• Anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies
• An education and training program
• An internal complaints procedure
• An accommodation policy and procedure

It is great that these suggestions are in place, but it is time for them to start being reinforced at the managerial level.