How Racial Matching Reduces the Effects of Bias in Behavioral Evaluations and Sanctioning

• In Event: 40217 - Education and Inequality

Abstract

Bias perpetuates racial inequality in the assignment of formal organizational sanctions, like school or workplace disciplinary actions and criminal arrests. To reduce the effects of bias, many organizations pair Black evaluatees with same-race evaluators, assuming that homophily and in-group preference will lead to improved outcomes for Black evaluatees. However, some studies find that matching does not benefit Black evaluatees. These mixed findings might arise if prior research confounds two potential mechanisms of matching: lesser evaluator bias and better behavior by Black evaluatees. Disentangling these mechanisms is crucial for helping reconcile prior mixed findings and because each mechanism carries distinct policy implications. This study leverages a video vignette experiment in schools that holds constant evaluatee behavior to examine evaluator-side processes. 2,176 Black and White teacher-evaluators across 1,203 U.S. schools are randomly-assigned to view identical routine misbehavior by either a racially-matched or mis-matched student-evaluatee. When it comes to perceptions of guilt and decisions to refer identical routine misbehavior for formal sanctioning, I find no bias against Black students uniquely among Black teachers within the pooled sample. But Black teachers also show no in-group preference—except within minoritized schools with punitive sanctioning norms, where suspensions carry high stakes for later school dropout and interaction with the criminal justice system. Findings suggest that when it comes to perceptions of guilt and decisions to refer for formal sanctioning, the benefits of racial matching for Black evaluatees largely accrue through improved evaluatee behavior: Black evaluators are not unfairly lenient towards in-group evaluatees—a claim often levied to discredit Black evaluators and racial matching as a DEI effort.

Author

• Jayanti Johanna Owens, Yale University