Law Commons^™

Seeing Subtle Racism, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Traditional employment discrimination law does not offer remedies for subtle bias in the workplace. For instance, in empirical studies of racial harassment cases, plaintiffs are much more likely to be successful if they claim egregious and blatant racist incidents rather than more subtle examples of racial intimidation, humiliation, or exclusion. But some groundbreaking jurists are cognizant of the reality and harm of subtle bias - and are acknowledging them in their analysis in racial harassment cases. While not yet widely recognized, the jurists are nonetheless creating important precedents for a re-interpretation of racial harassment jurisprudence, and by extension, employment discrimination …

Myth Of The Color-Blind Judge: An Empirical Analysis Of Racial Harassment Cases, Pat K. Chew, Robert E. Kelley

Articles

This empirical study of over 400 federal cases, representing workplace racial harassment jurisprudence over a twenty-year period, found that judges' race significantly affects outcomes in these cases. African American judges rule differently than White judges, even when we take into account their political affiliation and case characteristics. At the same time, our findings indicate that judges of all races are attentive to relevant facts of the cases but interpret them differently. Thus, while we cannot predict how an individual judge might act, our study results strongly suggest that African American judges as a group and White judges as a group …

Freeing Racial Harassment From The Sexual Harassment Model, Pat K. Chew

Articles

Judges, academics, and lawyers alike base their legal analyses of workplace racial harassment on the sexual harassment model. Legal principles derived from sexual harassment jurisprudence are presumed to be equally appropriate for racial harassment cases. The implicit assumption is that the social harms and public policy goals of racial harassment and sexual harassment are sufficiently similar to justify analogous scrutiny and remedies. Parties to racial harassment cases cite the reasoning and elements of sexual harassment cases without hesitation, as if racial harassment and sexual harassment are behaviorally and legally indistinguishable.

This Article, however, questions the assumption that there should be …

Unwrapping Racial Harassment Law, Pat K. Chew

Articles

This article is based on a pioneering empirical study of racial harassment in the workplace in which we statistically analyze federal court opinions from 1976 to 2002. Part I offers an overview of racial harassment law and research, noting its common origin with and its close dependence upon sexual harassment legal jurisprudence. In order to put the study's analysis in context, Part I describes the dispute resolution process from which racial harassment cases arise.

Parts II and III present a clear picture of how racial harassment law has played out in the courts - who are the plaintiffs and defendants, …