‘I am fine, but my group is not': exploring the meanings of the personal/group discrimination discrepancy among minority and majority populations

Abstract

ABSTRACT Prior literature has highlighted that individuals are more likely to report discrimination against their group rather than towards themselves, a phenomenon known as the personal-group discrimination discrepancy (PGD). Drawing on a recent, large-sample representative survey from France, Trajectories and Origins 2 (TeO2), we offer a novel empirical approach for measuring the discrepancy and investigate three channels through which it operates: identity affirmation, awareness of discrimination, and spatial proximity to discrimination. We show that the discrepancy – reporting group discrimination but no personal experience of discrimination – and its determinants vary substantially across minority and majority populations. Among ethnoracial minorities, awareness of discrimination through higher education, as well as spatial proximity to racially-motivated crimes, increases the likelihood of exclusively reporting group discrimination. Among the majority, the discrepancy is more prominent among those with a salient ethnoracial identity and far-right political orientation, but less so among the higher educated, pointing to politics of racial grievance among disadvantaged majority members. The conclusion highlights the theoretical and methodological implications of different discrimination measurements as well as their potential consequences for individual outcomes.