In our spotlight on business report.

Workplace discrimination has been illegal for decades.

Yet reports and data show it remains a disturbing reality for thousands of private and government employees.

A new national survey conducted by Rutgers University explored workers perceptions of and experiences with racial and ethnic discrimination.

It finds Black workers are twice as likely to say workplace discrimination is a major problem in the U.S. today compared to white workers and significant percentages of Asian American, Black and Latino workers say they've been treated poorly or discriminated against in their current job because of their race or ethnicity.

For more on the findings, I'm joined by one of the lead researchers, Rutgers Professor Ronald Quincy.

He's a visiting senior fellow for diversity studies at the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development.

Professor Quincy, first of all, thanks for giving us some of your time to walk through the findings.

It's interesting because this is all despite the fact that inclusion, diversity, equity have become very common phrases thrown about the workplace.

And yet your findings show that workers aren't necessarily experiencing that Well, exactly.

What our findings clearly show is that diversity, inclusion, belonging in the National workforce is lagging the ambition and the vision of an equity place in which to engage in our work.

What stood out to you the most?

And I'm thinking about some of the groups, the demographics of groups that you surveyed who reported much higher instances of having this discrimination happen.

Yeah, a great question.

So what surprised us most The environment in which Asian workers find themselves in.

They report it levels of workplace discrimination higher than we had anticipated, higher than some other studies have identified.

So it's an area of the workplace that really needs to be focused on the.

Secondly, I would say with respect to Hispanic, African-American workers, we knew that there was widespread discrimination from other studies, from government reports But we were surprised at the extent of that discrimination.

The forms varied, the feeling of being disrespected and slighted not feeling as a part of the main core of the workplace, not being supported by supervisors, being ignored by fellow workers.

Even the reporting of fear for when safety in the workforce were very very troubling.

Our results of the study.

What do we know, Professor, about the relationship between having these instances occur and the impact on a worker, especially being able to advance?

Well, it has a direct impact, whether you are African-American or Hispanic or Asian.

They felt that their opportunity to advance was far too often associated with their their race to national origin, their ethnicity activity.

And and that's got to stop.

We have to have a fair and equal access to promotional opportunities within the workplace.

And one's gender, religion, national origin or any aspect of their backgrounds should not play a role in that.

Rutgers University professor Ronald Quincy on a new national study looking at workplace discrimination.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for having me here.