Racial Bias & Discrimination

The public sees a number of contributing factors for the outbreak of violence and unrest in Baltimore last week, and most say it was the right decision to charge some Baltimore police officers in the death of Freddie Gray.

Nearly 47 years after Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, blacks and whites in the United States in many ways continue to live starkly different lives.

While the degree of racial segregation within religious congregations remains high, some houses of worship in the U.S. have become more diverse in recent years, according to a National Congregations study.

Just 7% of the nation's 18-to-24 year olds had dropped out of high school in 2013, continuing a steady decline in the nation's dropout rate since 2000, when 12% of youth were dropouts.

Recent survey data from the Pew Research Center suggest that there are sharp divides between younger and older blacks on the issues of police searches and discrimination more broadly.

Blacks and whites have sharply different reactions to the police shooting of an unarmed teen in Ferguson, Mo., and the protests and violence that followed. Blacks are about twice as likely as whites to say that the shooting of Michael Brown “raises important issues about race that need to be discussed.” Wide racial differences also […]

Seven-in-ten blacks said that blacks in their community were treated less fairly than whites in dealings with the police, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey.

Black men in their prime working years, especially those without a high school education, are much more likely to be in jail than white men are.

Hate-speech laws exist in 89 countries around the world (45%). In some countries, the laws protect only certain religious or social groups, while others have broader laws, covering words or actions that insult, denigrate or intimidate a person or group based on race, gender, religion, ethnicity or other traits.