Introduction

Anna Otto

In what some have called the new post-racial era, what constitutes discrimination is shifting. The landmark Supreme Court case, Ricci v. DeStefano, for example, ruled that white firefighters suffered discrimination when their employer threw out a promotional exam because none of the African-American firefighters who took the test qualified for promotion.

A new study by Michael Norton and Samuel Sommers has found that Americans think significant progress has been made in the fight against anti-black bias. But white Americans perceived that progress as coming at their expense and that anti-white bias has become a bigger societal problem than anti-black bias.

Is this finding surprising? Do we see this view reflected in government policies or court decisions? If so, how?