The Consequences of Workplace Racial Discrimination: A Scoping Review

Racial discrimination has been consistently associated with negative mental health outcomes among marginalized communities. Racial discrimination within the workplace has shown to be detrimental to mental well-being and behavioral outcomes, however, there is much less work investigating these links. Therefore, this scoping review aimed to understand the association between workplace racial discrimination and mental and behavioral health outcomes. Empirical articles were identified using Google Scholar and PsycINFO. The extracted data included, design of the study, the number of participants, ethnicity or race, type of discrimination, mental or behavioral outcome, and the results produced by the data. For the final review, articles (n = 23) were identified. Many studies explored the role of racial workplace discrimination and mental health (n = 20), with few articles examining the link between racial workplace discrimination and behavioral health (n = 3). Articles included Latine samples (n = 6), with most including Black, Afro-Caribbean, and African American communities (n = 17). Additionally, few articles focused on youth (n = 2) or women of color (n = 2). In conclusion, the Latine community remains underrepresented in this body of research, even though there is evidence connecting workplace racial discrimination to certain outcomes, according to preliminary results. This work emphasizes the importance of identifying gaps in the current research surrounding racial discrimination. The findings may help inform future research on workplace racial discrimination, particularly among the Latine community, which is an underrepresented group in this work, and ultimately support the development of more inclusive workplace policies.