Identifying and Addressing Structural Racism

Nearly a half century after the civil rights movement, racial inequity remains a defining feature of U.S. society. We formalize a model of structural racism and empirically test a central implication – that beliefs regarding racial discrimination in one system will tend to be correlated with discrimination in other systems – through two complementary RCTs. We focus on the consequences of discrimination in criminal justice, one of the key institutions generating inequality and an issue of pressing public policy, and on healthcare because the medical system plays an important role in combating the severe consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic and mitigating its disparate impact on marginalized groups.