Bias and prejudice are attitudes.
The practical question is how and to what extent such attitudes are translated into
acts of discrimination.
But before addressing that question, we must first be clear as to what we mean by the word
“discrimination.”
Policies of treating members of particular groups less favorably than similar members
of other groups are usually called “discrimination” when practiced by the group with dominant
political power and “reverse discrimination” or “affirmative action” when practiced
against members of the group with dominant political power.
Discrimination may also be practiced by private employers, landlords, or institutions.
However, if words are to have any fixed meanings—without which discussions are fruitless—the term
cannot be extended to all situations in which some groups turn out to have less favorable
outcomes than others.
While biases and prejudices are conditions in people’s minds, discrimination is an
overt act taking place outside their minds in the real world.
Nor is there necessarily a one-to-one correlation between the two, as so often assumed by those
who make the fight against “racism” or “sexism” their number one priority or
by those who claim that opponents of affirmative action must be assuming that prejudice and
bias have been eradicated.
It is not only theoretically possible to have more discrimination where there is less bias
or prejudice, and less discrimination where there is more bias and prejudice, this has
in fact happened in more than one country.
The degree to which subjective attitudes are translated into overt acts of discrimination
depends crucially on the costs of doing so.
Where those costs are very high, even very prejudiced or biased people may engage in
little or no discrimination.
The first black football player signed by the Washington Redskins in the 1960s was hired
by a man reputed, among sports writers who knew him, to be deeply racist.
Yet he broke a long tradition of all-white football teams in Washington by hiring a star
wide receiver who was black—at a time when the Redskins’ offensive game was very ineffective.
There is no inherent contradiction in a racist breaking the color line to hire blacks.
Nor is there any inherent contradiction when someone who is not a racist supports racial
discrimination.
In each case, the respective costs they face when making their decisions must be taken
into account, along with their predispositions, in any causal analysis.
During the last years of the Jim Crow era in the South, there were stories of Southerners
like Arkansas’ Senator J. William Fulbright who voted against their consciences to continue
racial segregation, because to do otherwise would be to jeopardize their political careers.
Costs can matter more than personal predispositions to either racists or non-racists.
In other words, the costs to decision-makers can lead to actions either more adverse or
less adverse than the individual’s own beliefs and feelings.
In short, the costs of translating subjective attitudes, such as bias or prejudice, into
overt acts of discrimination cannot be overlooked when seeking to explain why discrimination
is often so much greater in some situations than in others.
Different situations have different costs.
Where the costs of discrimination are low or non-existent for those making hiring and
promotions decisions, then discrimination can become extensive, not only in terms of
decisions not to hire or promote members of particular groups, but also in terms of extending
such discrimination to a wider range of groups by a wider range of employers.
At one time, there were said to be American railroads in which Catholics could rise only
so high and others in which this was true of Protestants.
In the early twentieth century, there was a time when not a single Ivy League college
or university had a single Jew among its tenured faculty, despite a large number of Jewish
intellectuals and scholars available.
This was common in both American and European universities before World War II.
Nor was a black allowed in the Marine Corps, at even the lowliest rank, when World War
II began.
In other parts of the world as well, there has been similarly severe discrimination,
sometimes even broader in its scope.
While many discussions of discrimination ignore the cost of discrimination to those doing
the discriminating, on the most elementary economic principle that more is demanded at
a lower price than at a higher price, we should expect to see the severity of discrimination
vary with the cost to the discriminator.
That is in fact what we find in country after country and in era after era—but only if
we look at evidence.