How structural inequalities are impeding Americans’ aspirations for cross-racial cooperation

Earlier this year, Brookings published the results of a Gallup survey and an accompanying analysis that revealed surprising trends regarding the state of interracial relations in the United States. Even amid a media and political narrative of deteriorating race relations—from the murder of George Floyd and ensuing Black Lives Matter protests to the anti-diversity backlash of the current administration—the survey found Americans overwhelmingly resist any tendency toward racial bias in their personal and professional relationships.

Rather than the conventional account of a country hopelessly marred by racial antagonism, the Gallup survey told a more hopeful story: Not only do the majority of Americans socialize comfortably across racial lines, but they also display an even greater willingness to work and do business with others regardless of race.

These results are encouraging. Yet the report also acknowledges some sobering facts. Despite the high rates of self-reported cross-racial tolerance, racial inequality remains a stubborn feature of American life. This inequality continues to exist even in business and employment, where survey respondents displayed the most willingness to engage across race.

How can these two opposing realities coexist? Why does the survey reveal attitudes reflecting high levels of racial harmony and cohesion, while the empirical data suggest a country still defined by widespread racial inequality? In trying to reconcile the idealized picture of racial cooperation as self-reported among survey respondents with the reality of persistent racial inequality across society, the Brookings analysis identifies an important phenomenon that is unaccounted for in the survey, but that may help us better understand this gap: structural inequalities.

Structural inequalities are systemic; they determine social outcomes irrespective of individual factors and operate separate and apart from the self-reported racial attitudes that are the subject of the Gallup survey. These structural inequalities may explain the divergence between the positive self-reported racial attitudes in the survey and the real-world racial inequalities that continue to plague society. This report takes up the Brookings analysis’s implied invitation to explore the explanatory power of structural inequality for helping us reconcile our racially cooperative attitudes with the realities of ongoing racial inequality. Developing this fuller picture of race relations can aid us in bridging the gap between the growing tolerance in our racial attitudes and our still uneven racial interactions.

Although the survey explores racial interactions across a range of different domains, the focus here is on the domains of business (defined as those with whom we choose to contract for services) and employment (defined as those with whom we work). There are many reasons for focusing on these two domains in particular, including: 1) the survey results demonstrate the employment domain already has the highest rates of cross-racial interaction; 2) these rates will only increase with growing demographic diversity; 3) given the survey’s high rates of self-reported attitudes favoring racial cooperation in business and employment and the empirical evidence of ongoing racial inequality in business and employment, the gap between values and practice is greatest in these domains; and 4) the costs of this gap are exceedingly high for individuals, institutions, and society as a whole.

By identifying and then mitigating the structural inequalities that prevent us from realizing our aspirations for greater cross-racial cohesion, we can more fully realize the hopeful potential for racial harmony reflected in the survey. As the Brookings analysis notes, fully realizing this potential is critical to our “social and economic health [in] a multiracial and multicultural society.” Moreover, redressing the persistent racial inequality that runs contrary to our country’s founding ethos brings us ever closer to our avowed social and political commitment to the guarantee of equal opportunity for all.

As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of what is called the world’s greatest experiment in pluralist democracy, it is a fitting occasion to consider how we might recommit ourselves to the promise of building a nation where we are all truly equal—not just as an aspiration, but in the lived reality of everyday Americans.

Recapping the survey results on racial cooperation

The Gallup survey queried respondents about their cross-racial attitudes across a number of relevant domains, including business, work, personal friendships, romantic partnerships, and family, using the four dominant racial groups in the U.S.—white, Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Asian American—as the basis of analysis. (As is often the case with large survey data, Native Americans were excluded due to the small number of these respondents, making rigorous statistical analysis difficult.)

In each domain, respondents were asked to rate the importance of race in determining how they select or maintain these relationships and/or the impact of race in assessing the quality of these relationships. Overall, the survey reveals significant rates of cross-racial interactions across all domains, as well as relatively high levels of positive cross-racial sentiment, with race rarely influencing respondents’ conscious choices about, interactions with, or attitudes toward friends, business associates, coworkers, romantic partners, and family. In other words, the survey results suggest there are relatively high levels of cross-racial tolerance and relatively low levels of cross-racial antagonism among individuals in the U.S. generally.

Yet the report also acknowledges that these broadly positive cross-racial sentiments do not translate into predictably high levels of cross-racial interaction, particularly in the employment and contracting domains. Instead, respondents reported having significantly fewer cross-racial interactions in both domains than would be expected based on their favorable racial attitudes and existing population demographics. All racial groups analyzed had less cross-racial exposure to coworkers, bosses/managers/supervisors, and clients than would be expected based on the relative population shares for each racial group.

These patterns confirm what the broader research data otherwise show: Notwithstanding low resistance to racial integration at work and in business (as reflected in the self-reported racial attitudes of survey respondents), racial inequality and occupational segregation remain stubborn features of employment and contracting in the U.S. If these racial inequalities are not the result of intentional selection biases (i.e., they are not born of racial intolerance, which the survey suggests they are not), then what explains them? Structural inequality seems to offer some explanatory value that the survey results on racial attitudes and other theories on racial bias cannot.

The empirical research and data on racial inequality in business and employment

Popular economic theories about the irrationality of racial bias in business and employment posit that natural market forces will inevitably purge discrimination from those domains. Put simply, if discrimination is bad for business, businesses will stop discriminating.

Yet, if these theories were true, Congress would not have had to enact the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1964 outlawing racial discrimination in contracting and employment, respectively—both of which remain in force today. If the irrationality of racial discrimination was simply an unstoppable market force driving us inevitably toward the elimination of racial inequality, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency charged with enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, would not have reported an increase in the number of workplace discrimination charges filed between 2020 and 2024 (from 67,448 to 88,531), with those alleging discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin comprising the largest share of charges filed in each year.

Data show that notwithstanding legal prohibitions on and social disapproval of racial discrimination, racial inequalities remain pervasive in both employment and contracting. There is ongoing underrepresentation of racial minorities in various professions, from medicine and STEM fields to law. This underrepresentation tends to grow as one moves up the professional ladder, suggesting that racial inequality affects promotions as well as hiring decisions. These disparities are evident in tester studies that reveal the racialized patterns impacting employment, and there are similar racial inequities in awarding contracts and capital funding in business.

The data show that we are not moving inevitably toward a society free from racial inequality when it comes to who gets awarded employment or contracting opportunities. The Gallup survey attests to the fact that our cross-racial attitudes are in fact improving; still, we remain plagued by ongoing racial inequality. Our attitudes about race are no longer the biggest obstacle we face to achieving racial equality. The problem instead seems to lie somewhere in the structural inequalities that lay hidden beneath the veneer of racial harmony reflected in the survey.

It might be that we need not worry about our progress toward racial equality if we thought it was in fact inevitable, or if there were little to no social and economic costs associated with our glacial pace. But neither is true. Decades of civil rights enforcement have proven the economic theory of the rational market actor false and the current tools inadequate for realizing the goals of equal opportunity.

The costs of this failure are enormous. First, there are the social costs. We profess a moral and legal commitment to equality, and the survey demonstrates that our cross-racial attitudes largely match this commitment. But the data also show we continue to experience widespread racial inequality. This is not just a betrayal of our fundamental ideals as a nation, but also a betrayal of the individual aspirations of millions of Americans who the survey reveals deeply believe in racial equality.

Second, there are significant economic costs to racial inequality. These costs have been quantified in various ways, including lost wages (calculated at $1 trillion to $2 trillion lost each year), reduced wealth, and lower overall gross domestic product—not to mention the higher health care costs associated with increased disease (both physical and mental) due to racial discrimination.

In spite of decades (if not centuries) of dedicated efforts to create a harmonious multiracial society, the evidence suggests that racial inequality has stubbornly persisted. This gap between our espoused ideals and our current reality has dire social and economic consequences. The survey suggests that closing this gap is no longer about changing individual attitudes toward race, which—despite widespread media reporting to the contrary—is overwhelmingly positive. It is about something deeper, but not outside of our control.

The impact of structural inequality on racial cooperation

One phenomenon that might help explain this continuing gap between our positive aspirations for and attitudes toward racial equality and the reality of persistent racial inequality is structural inequality. Structural inequalities are the systems that determine social outcomes irrespective of factors operating at the individual level. They are systemic and exist wholly apart from the self-reported racial attitudes documented in the survey. This is the reason why it is possible for the survey to identify very high rates of cross-racial tolerance among respondents and low rates of racial salience in their employment and contracting decisions, while at the same time acknowledging broad patterns of ongoing racial inequality in society generally, as well as lower-than-expected rates of cross-racial interaction even among survey respondents.

Structural inequality includes the residential segregation that hinders cross-racial interactions regardless of individual attitudes valuing cross-racial cooperation. For instance, funding formulas and attendance zones that track district lines keep minority students trapped in racially isolated, low performing K-12 schools regardless of our long-standing commitment to school integration or individual student ability. Similarly, admissions and/or hiring requirements (e.g., standardized tests or degree requirements) often over-exclude minority applicants from educational and employment opportunities regardless of individual potential and in spite of professed commitments to diversity.

These barriers do not require racial animus by individual decisionmakers, nor do they necessarily reflect individual deficiencies on the part of the those excluded. They may be quite unintentional, but they are nonetheless pervasive in determining how opportunity gets distributed across society. Combating these structural inequalities is not a function of shifting ideologies about race or altering individual behaviors—it is about restructuring systems of opportunity.

Research has shown that these structural inequalities mean minority families are less likely than white families to live in predominantly white (and correspondingly, economically affluent) neighborhoods. These are spaces where the socialization necessary for the cross-racial friendships, intimate partner relationships, and business contacts that the survey studied often occur. It is no wonder then that in spite of the survey findings showing that respondents generally did not consciously take race into account when making decisions about whom to befriend, date, or hire, the empirical data show actual rates of cross-racial friendships, relationships, and employment/contracting are lower than otherwise expected based on racial attitudes and local population demographics. In other words, respondents said they did not care about the race of their friends, coworkers, or business associates—but in reality, these relationships tend to reflect residential segregation as much as racial attitudes.

For example, 83% of survey respondents said that race was not important in deciding whom to befriend. Yet the survey found that white respondents were the only group likely to have more cross-racial friendships than local population demographics would predict (by only 6%), while also being the group with the lowest overall rate of cross-racial friendships. Only 69% of white respondents reported having any cross-racial friendships, compared to 70% of Black respondents, 76% of Latino or Hispanic respondents, and 80% of Asian American respondents. This is because white Americans are still likely to live in mostly white neighborhoods.

In addition, the survey found that Black, Latino or Hispanic, and Asian Americans had rates of cross-racial friendships that were 42%, 21%, and 38% lower, respectively, than expected based on local population demographics. These lower-than-expected rates among minority respondents are more consistent with entrenched residential segregation—where each of these groups is likely to live in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of their own racial group, and lower concentrations of other racial groups, than in the local population—than they are with the respondents’ own cross-racial attitudes.

Similarly, the survey found that while 87% of respondents said race was not important to their business selection decisions, all groups were less likely to have cross-racial coworkers than local population demographics would predict. This time, the gaps ranged from only 1% for white Americans to 20% for Asian, 35% for Black, and 38% for Latino or Hispanic Americans. While coworkers are not a perfect proxy for business contractors, there is some overlap between the employment and contracting domains insofar as both reflect professional (versus personal) relationships.

Client relationships are a better proxy for business contracting. Here too, the survey data show that cross-racial client relationships were generally lower than would be expected based on reported racial attitudes and population demographics, especially for Black respondents, whose rate was 27% lower than expected. Once again, lack of proximity as a consequence of racial segregation in neighborhoods—and correspondingly, in schools—likely contributes to this discrepancy between our aspirations for cross-racial cooperation reflected in the survey data and the lower actual rates of cross-racial interaction identified.

Moreover, some of the criteria that respondents identified as salient to their business selection decisions, while ostensibly race-neutral, are nevertheless marked by significant racial disparities. Across the two business selection scenarios presented in the survey, 84% to 85% of respondents cited nonracial selection criteria—such as degree attainment and other job-related certifications, years of experience, and recommendations—to explain their selection decisions. Each of these, however, are associated with known structural inequalities. Degree attainment, particularly in the STEM disciplines associated with the survey’s computer programming scenario, is a domain of society where unequal access to education has resulted in significant racial disparities. Similarly, recommendations are likely to reflect existing racial disparities in employment. These criteria, therefore, pose a structural barrier to greater cross-racial interaction in business contracting, notwithstanding the high levels of cross-racial tolerance measured in the survey.

Structural inequalities keep many social domains—including our neighborhoods, schools, and workplaces—more racially segregated than we would like or expect, impeding both individuals and society from fully realizing the shared desire for greater cross-racial cohesion. This helps to explain, at least in part, why despite high rates of cross-racial tolerance reflected in the survey, Americans nevertheless continue to socialize and date intra-racially, and also tend to have much more racially segregated workplaces and business contacts than predicted based on population demographics.

Reducing racial inequality in the business domain

According to the Gallup survey, those who said race was “not important at all” in selecting a business contractor ranged from 72% for Black respondents to 91% for white respondents. Indeed, the vast majority of respondents expressed race-neutral (84% to 85%) and job-related (66% to 78%) reasons for their selection decisions. Yet we know these hypothetical self-reported preferences do not correspond to real-world data. Even the survey data show that Black respondents are much less likely to have cross-racial client relationships than population demographics would suggest: Only 60% of Black respondents had non-Black clients, despite the fact that 88% of the U.S. adult population is non-Black and 87% of respondents said race was unimportant to their business contractor selections.

Where the survey fails to explain the discrepancy between positive cross-racial attitudes and lower-than-expected cross-racial interactions, structural inequality offers strong explanatory power. For instance, Black Americans are more likely to live in racially isolated communities and attend under-resourced schools that do not adequately prepare them to earn STEM degrees, and are less likely to obtain employment in professional occupations (including STEM fields). This means that when someone relies on education, experience, and recommendations to award business contracts, they are implicitly relying on race. Understanding how to mitigate the dampening effects of these structural inequalities on our positive cross-racial attitudes could prove significant in bridging the gap between our aspirations for cross-racial cooperation and the seemingly intractable reality of racial inequality.

Ongoing patterns of residential and educational segregation—both of which trace in large part to structural factors such as housing and educational policy—play a key part in thwarting our racial equality goals. These structural inequalities then get replicated in business, influencing who we hire and with whom we contract. Disrupting these patterns requires that we identify effective mitigation strategies. Both K-12 and higher education remain racially stratified in the U.S. despite decades of civil rights enforcement through desegregation and affirmative action policies. Consequently, workplaces and business relationships also reflect these same patterns of segregation and stratification. Today, these inequities are more a function of embedded systems of inequality than intolerant racial attitudes.

Historically, our approach to anti-discrimination enforcement has focused on intentional discrimination by what we presumed to be racially intolerant individuals. But as racial attitudes have shifted, this paradigm has become less effective for achieving our racial equality goals. Ridding ourselves of the racial inequities that have persisted in spite of these efforts requires new strategies designed to target the known structural barriers to racial equality. However, these interventions raise important normative questions as well as legal compliance concerns. Namely, how do we realize our aims for a more racially integrated society without violating our commitments to individual liberty and nondiscrimination? In other words, if we cannot dictate where people work or go to school, nor can we make racialized admissions or hiring decisions, how can we effectively mitigate these known structural inequalities? 

First, while we cannot pursue these racial equality goals by employing unlawful racial preferences, we can do so in permissible, race-neutral ways. Second, reducing artificial barriers to entry is one of the most effective race-neutral means of combating these structural inequalities. In fact, there are already effective—and legally permissible—models for responding to each of these structural barriers.

Although the Supreme Court has prohibited the use of race in college admission decisions, there is no prohibition on the continued pursuit of student body diversity in higher education by race-neutral means. In fact, the Supreme Court has continued to describe the pursuit of student body diversity (including racial diversity) in higher education as both a “worthy” and “commendable” goal. Moreover, much like the high rates of cross-racial tolerance in the business and employment domains expressed in the survey, students similarly value racial diversity in higher education. Most Americans expressed support for the Supreme Court’s decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions, but overwhelming majorities also express support for diversity. The question, therefore, is not whether we can (or ought to) pursue diversity in higher education; the question is how best to do so without running afoul of the law.

Many colleges and universities have successfully responded to the prohibition on using race in admission decisions by modifying their admissions processes in lawful, race-neutral ways. One of the key strategies has been to eliminate artificial barriers to entry, such as overreliance on standardized test scores. Structural inequalities in K-12 education, which remains highly racially segregated, cause standardized tests to replicate these inequalities in higher education. In light of the difficulties of directly addressing the more intractable structural inequalities in K-12 schools (which requires changes to local zoning laws and restructuring school funding formulas), efforts by colleges and universities remain critical for combating existing structural inequalities in education. In spite of Trump administration efforts to target colleges and universities for their ongoing pursuit of student body diversity, these practices were endorsed by the Supreme Court, and no court has yet found any college or university liable under civil rights laws for utilizing race-neutral means to achieve diversity.

Just as the effects of structural inequality in education get replicated in the workplace, higher education institutions’ efforts to mitigate these inequalities can also be replicated in the workplace. Work is the natural extension of the educational experience: Students become workers, and workplaces supplant schools as the primary domain of cross-racial contact for most Americans, who continue to largely live and socialize in racially segregated neighborhoods. In fact, for the vast majority of Americans who do not earn a college degree, the workplace is their first and primary domain of cross-racial interaction. The survey confirms that while the vast majority of respondents had cross-racial interactions at work (81%), the rates of cross-racial friendships (54%) and romantic relationships (25%) were far lower.

This makes the workplace a central engine driving our aspirations for cross-racial harmony and cooperation. To avoid running afoul of civil rights laws, employers should also identify race-neutral efforts to ensure that workplaces are as racially diverse as possible given local demographics. This might entail eliminating closed network hiring (since such referral hiring tends to replicate the existing demographics of the workplace), and instead ensuring that open positions are advertised as widely as possible. Also, similar to colleges and universities, these efforts should entail reducing artificial barriers to entry that disproportionately exclude racial minorities, such as degree requirements and unvalidated job testing. Data show that eliminating these types of artificial barriers to entry can help expand opportunity and reduce racial inequality in the workplace without violating the law or compromising an employer’s legitimate hiring needs. Indeed, during his first term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order focusing on skills-based hiring in lieu of degree requirements for a host of federal jobs, and this requirement was recently put into effect by the Office of Personnel Management.

In both higher education and business/employment, the goal should be to cast as wide a net as possible for talented individuals and to ensure that selection mechanisms do not needlessly screen out any qualified applicants. This expands the racial diversity of the applicant pool, making it more likely that diverse applicants can be selected (whether for admission or hire) without relying on the legally impermissible consideration of race in selection decisions.

While the law proscribes taking race into account when making selection decisions in admissions and employment, it does not prohibit race-neutral efforts designed to eliminate racial inequality and improve racial diversity. Quite the contrary: The law has long encouraged both schools and employers to adopt such race-neutral efforts as part of their ongoing commitment to ensuring equal opportunity. These race-neutral efforts must become a key strategy for mitigating the known structural inequalities that continue to prevent us from realizing our collective and individual aspirations for greater racial cohesion (defined as increased cross-racial interactions that are marked by harmony rather than antagonism) across society.

Conclusion

Notwithstanding media reports of a society riven by racial strife, the Gallup survey reveals that Americans’ tolerance (even desire) for cross-racial cooperation is much higher than expected. It is heartening to know that we do not lack the will to achieve racial equality in our society. What we face are significant, but not insurmountable, headwinds to accomplishing that goal.

The survey also reveals that our underrealized aspirations for cross-racial harmony—i.e., the gap between our cross-racial aspirations and our cross-racial interactions—can likely be explained, at least in part, by structural inequality. What we need then are effective interventions to help offset the drag of structural inequality on our aspirations for greater cross-racial cooperation. These mitigating efforts must involve fostering greater racial diversity in colleges and workplaces, where most Americans experience their first and most meaningful cross-racial interactions. These institutions—which are already our most diverse spaces, and the places where people express the highest interest in cross-racial cooperation—are best suited to help realize our individual and societal aspirations for greater racial equality.

On the nation’s 250th anniversary, there is no better time for us to commit anew to our collective aspirations for racial harmony and finally make the guarantee of equal opportunity for all a meaningful reality rather than just a lofty ideal.