Answer:
Many racial and ethnic groups intheUnited States, including blacks, Hispanics, Asians, American Indians, and others, have historically faced severe discrimination—pervasive and open denial of civil, social, political, educational, and economic opportunities. Today, large differences in outcomes among racial and ethnic groups continue to exist in employment, income and wealth, housing, education, criminal justice, health, and other areas. Although many factors may contribute to such differences, their size and extent suggest that various forms of discriminatory treatment persist in U.S. society and serve to undercut the achievement of equal opportunity.
In these circumstances, it is critically important to identify where racial discrimination occurs and to measure the extent to which discrimination may contribute to racial and ethnic disparities. The Committee on National Statistics convened a panel of scholars to consider the definition of racial discrimination, assess current methodologies for measuring it, identify new approaches, and make recommendations about the best broad methodological approaches. Specifically, this panel was asked to carry out the following tasks:
Give the policy and scholarly communities new tools for assessing the extent to which discrimination continues to undermine the achievement of equal opportunity by suggesting additional means for measuring discrimination that can be applied not only to the racial question but in other important social arenas as well.
Explanation:
