Racial Discrimination Against Blacks in the United States
In this article, we present the results from a novel large-scale field experimental technique designed to measure racial bias among the American public and their elected officials. We conducted the first audit study on the public—sending correspondence to 250,000 randomly- drawn citizens—and also paired that with the largest audit study of public officials to date. Our within-subjects experimental design tested the public’s and their elected officials’ responsiveness to simple requests for help from either an ostensibly Black or an ostensibly White sender.