Research & Studies

In 1940, 2.8 percent of physicians in the United States were Black. Almost all were men. By 2018, 5.4 percent of U.S. physicians were Black — 2.6 percent were Black men. Thus, the percentage of all physicians who were Black men made no progress in nearly 80 years.

Many studies have shown that Black students are far less likely than their White peers to be selected for gifted education programs. But a new study shows that even when Black students are admitted into these programs they are less likely to benefit from gifted education than White students.

The Southern Regional Education Board has released new data that shows only 9.2 percent of full- and part-time faculty members are Black at public four-year institutions in the 16-state region. Nearly 18 percent of all undergraduate students at these educational institutions are African Americans.

The study found that women of color are more likely to be asked to do service, especially around diversity issues. And they perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental rewards systems than White men.

Dice, the leading database for technology professionals, managing over 9 million profiles in the United States, recently released a new survey that examines perceptions of racism and discrimination in the high-tech industry by employees who work in the field.

A new study by scholars in the department of psychology at Princeton University in New Jersey finds that the rationale for greater diversity in higher education often reflects the views of Whites but not necessarily those of Blacks.

Black students earned 7 percent of STEM bachelor’s degrees as of 2018, the most recent year data is available. This is below their share of all bachelor’s degrees (10 percent) or their share of the adult population (12 percent). Black adults are also underrepresented among those earning advanced degrees in STEM.

At the University of Virginia, just 13 percent of undergraduates identified as Black or Hispanic; that share is 60 percent lower than the state’s population ages 18 to 24. The College of William & Mary and Christopher Newport University are near large Black population centers but each of their student bodies is just 7 percent Black.

A new study by economists at Washington and Lee University, the New School, and Duke University finds that Black adults who attended racially balanced high schools in the mid-20th century completed significantly less schooling than those who attended either predominantly Black or predominantly White schools.

A new study from the Center for American Progress finds that for the first time in American history, half of the young adults in the United States have earned a college degree. However, there hasn’t been a great deal of progress in closing the large and persistent racial equity gap.

More than a quarter of the excess deaths during the pandemic were not from the virus itself but the result of not seeking or finding adequate care in an emergency such as a heart attack, experiencing fatal complications from a chronic disease such as diabetes, or facing a behavioral health crisis that led to suicide or drug overdose.

New data from the National Science Foundation show that in pre-pandemic America enrollments in graduate programs in science, engineering, and health fields at U.S. academic institutions were increasing. The increase in Black enrollments in these disciplines increased faster than the rate for enrollments as a whole.

The new report presents the results of a survey of Black professors at the main and satellite campuses of Penn State regarding their experiences with racism, on the institutional and interpersonal levels, perpetrated by students, colleagues, administrators as well as the academic culture in which they work.

The study found that during the pandemic, African Americans may have had worse access than Whites to outpatient care and thus were less likely to avoid hospitalizations for non-COVID-19–related conditions. This increased African Americans' risk of hospital-acquired infections, the researchers say.

The chronic stress of living in neighborhoods with high rates of violence and poverty alters gene activity in immune cells, according to a new study of low-income single Black mothers on the South Side of Chicago conducted by researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, the University of Kentucky and the University of California, Los Angeles.

Scholars affiliated with the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University, the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, the MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences at Michigan State University, and other institutions have established a new open-source database called Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade.

The study, from the nonprofit newsroom The Markup, found that more than 500 universities across the country use risk algorithms to evaluate their students. The analysis found "large disparities in how the software treats students of different races, and the disparity is particularly stark for Black students, who were deemed high risk at as much as quadruple the rate of their White peers."

The Center for Economic and Social Research at the University of Southern California has released a new report on how Americans are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. The report breaks down several survey responses by racial and ethnic group. Results show that Black Americans take social distancing far more seriously than White Americans.

A new study led by Isaac Agboola, a third-year emergency room resident at Yale New Haven Medical Center, examines how bias influences emergency department treatment, particularly decisions over which patients must be restrained and/or sedated.

After interviewing campus housing administrators, staff, and students at three major universities, Zak Foste of the University of Kansas found that students of color who lived in predominantly White facilities commonly reported not feeling welcome, being uncomfortable with roommates, and avoiding spending time in their residence.