It is hardly a revelation to Black people by any stretch, but two Australian economists released the findings of a study that indicated that white people are treated more favorably than African-Americans — even Down Under.
Economists Redzo Mujcic and Paul Frijters at the University of Queensland went through the trouble of studying how authorities treat whites and Blacks by how bus drivers reacted to passengers without fares.
They trained and assigned 29 young adult testers from both genders and races to board public buses in Brisbane and insert an empty fare card into the bus scanner.
The scanner would inform the driver via an alarm that the card did not have enough value. The testers were instructed to tell the driver, “I do not have any money, but I need to get to” a station about 1.2 miles away. The station varied according to where the testers boarded.
They did this more than 1,500 times, and the study uncovered substantial, statistically significant racial discrimination—discrimination that would surprise few Black people.
The data indicated:
- Bus drivers were twice as willing to let white testers ride free as Black testers — 72 percent to 36 percent of the time.
- Bus drivers showed some relative favoritism toward testers who shared their race.
- Even Black drivers favored white testers over Black testers, allowing free rides 83 percent vs. 68 percent of the time.
Additionally, the study found that racial disparities were evident based on appearances. When testers wore business attire or dressed in army uniforms, the treatment varied. For example, testers wearing army uniforms were allowed to ride free 97 percent of the time if they were white, but only 77 percent of the time if they were Black.
A New York Times reporter noted that a British friend traveling on Amtrak said the conductor would not seek tickets from white passengers, but did from African-American or Hispanic travelers.
When the person told the conductor that he noticed his partial treatment, he was told to “mind his business,” according to the Times.
This kind of racial bias is prevalent all day, every day for Blacks, making the study interesting but not revealing.
“Discriminatory gifts are more likely than discriminatory denials,” Yale Law professor Ian Ayers said to the newspaper.
“My kids, who are white, have never been turned down when I asked if they could use a bathroom designated for ‘employees only,’” Ayers admitted. “After reading the Australian bus study, I wonder whether the same is true for minority families.”
Ayers also noted that white privilege exists in everything from car buying, speeding tickets, etc., facts that offer no consolation to the Black people who are on the wrong side of the mistreatment.
