Thirty-seven percent of white Americans believe that the police treat black people less fairly; 70 percent of black Americans feel the same way. Similar chasms exist when it comes to perceived discrimination in stores, the courts, and schools, which means that much of the nation's dialogue about racial inequality is defined by the clashing of intractable subjectivities.
Data alone can’t solve deep-seated social ills or mediate heated arguments, but it does have a habit of pulling conversations away from foggy abstraction and ad hominem accusations. That’s why studies showing that employers prefer to hire candidates with caucasian-sounding names over those with black-sounding ones and that the racial composition of juries affects trial outcomes are so powerful. And it’s why “Still Not Allowed on the Bus,” a working paper published late last year by two researchers based in Australia, is a meaningful contribution to a body of evidence indicating that racial discrimination is real, concrete, and pervasive.
[For more of this story, written by Joe Pinsker, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...e-quantified/386102/]
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