The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations

Abstract

There is substantial evidence showing racial bias in firms' hiring decisions, but less is known about bias in career recognition or promotion, which may arguably be more important for the lack of diversity in upper-management positions and, ultimately, the racial wage gap. We construct a novel dataset of police nominations for awards to measure bias against minority employees in career recognition. Exploiting quasirandom variation in supervisor assignment, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate black officers for awards than white or Hispanic officers. Increased supervisor-officer interaction reduces, but does not eliminate, the black-white recognition gap. Furthermore, there are persistent benefits for white officers but not for black officers. We also conduct an online experiment and find respondents are less likely to acquire information about black officers relative to non-black officers. Our findings suggest bias in career recognition may be important for the black-white earnings gap and should be examined in further research. In regards to policing, our findings suggest that racial issues in policing are not just at issue between police and the public, but also within departments, and thus that simply hiring minority officers may be limited in its efficacy.

Private security and public police

“…The same problem may plague policing, and perhaps more so than in private security where there is a perception that many firms are simply looking for “warm bodies.” Moreover, after the hiring process, discrimination on the job may hasten exits from the field. One recent study, for example, found that white police supervisors are less likely to nominate Black officers for departmental awards conditional on their work performance, which the authors trace to supervisor bias in advocacy decisions (Rim et al, 2023).…”