Casting a Wider Net: Recommendations for the Study of Broad Discrimination Experiences

Abstract

In the end, antiblack, antifemale, and all forms of discrimination are equivalent to the same thing—antihumanism.–Shirley Chisholm (The first African American woman elected to Congress)Ruggs et al. (2013) have provided an indispensable wake-up call to the organizational sciences as they argue that the field's previous research on employee discrimination experiences has failed to capture the full spectrum of discriminatory behaviors in the workplace. They posit that industrial and organizational psychologists have “gone fishing” in the field of discrimination research, a reference to our scholarly ignorance of the discrimination experienced by seven groups of marginalized employees (i.e., non-Black racial minorities, LGBT individuals, older workers, disabled individuals, overweight employees, religious minorities, and workers at risk of marital status discrimination). In doing so, Ruggs et al. have taken what we believe is a critical first step in advancing the field by assembling a discussion of (arguably) all discrimination experiences into a consolidated treatise on discrimination research.