Are Suburban Firms More Likely to Discriminate against African-Americans?

This paper assesses whether African-Americans are more likely to experience employment discrimination in the suburbs relative to the central city. We compare central city–suburban differences in racial hiring outcomes for firms where whites are in charge of hiring to the comparable difference for firms where blacks are in charge of hiring. Both suburban black and white employers hire fewer blacks than their central-city counterparts. This geographic gap among black employers is at least as large as that of white employers. Assuming no discrimination by black employers in any location, this implies that the probability of experiencing discrimination does not vary over space. Black firms, however, are substantially more likely to hire black workers regardless of location.