The labor and employment law firm Duddy, Goodwin & Pollard studied workplace racism over fourteen years. The results ranked Alabama worst in the U.S., while New Hampshire, Idaho and Maine have the lowest rates of race discrimination charges. When it comes to discrimination cases, 45% of those filed in Louisiana and Mississippi were race related. Authors of the study contend that fewer race-related charges doesn’t necessarily mean less racism, but a result of tougher legislation.
The study focused on data on the number of employment discrimination charges filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission across all of the 50 states from 2009 to 2023. The data was examined to determine the percentage of those charges related to race discrimination.
Highest rates of race discrimination charges
Alabama stood out with 50% of all employment discrimination charges being race-related. That’s based on over 18,000 race discrimination charges out of a total of nearly 40,000 over the 14 year period that was measured. That is the highest rate in the nation and considerably above the national average of 34%. Louisiana is in second place with 45% of all charges. Similarly, Mississippi reports a race discrimination rate of 45%. Arkansas and Georgia are ranked fourth and fifth in the national with 42% and 41%, respectively.
South Carolina (39%,) North Carolina (39%) in seventh, and Tennessee (39%,) Maryland (38%,) and Missouri (37%) round out the top ten.
In a release, the authors work to explain their results this way…
“There are two measurable factors we could consider when analyzing why racial charges are more predominant in some US states more than others: the racial make-up of that state and how litigious they tend to be with respect to actually filing discrimination charges. The states with the highest rates of race discrimination charges have a more racially diverse demographic make-up. For example, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, South Carolina and Maryland all have the highest rates of black or African American populations ranging between 26% and 38%. These states, along with Tennessee and North Carolina, also tend to be more litigious, claiming their rights to having been unfairly discriminated against based on race. Mississippi and Alabama, for example, register 776 and 732 race discrimination charges per 100,000 residents.”
On the other end of the ranking, New Hampshire reports the lowest rate of race discrimination charges at 13%. Idaho has a slightly higher rate of 14%, Maine had 14%. Utah (16%,) and Wyoming (16%) were the five lowest rates in the study.
