For decades I tracked and filed information from many different sources on corporate wrongdoing, both the unethical but legal kind (all wrongdoing is unethical and some of the worst of it is made legal by a subservient government) and the illegal kind. After I retired as an industrial–organizational (I–O) psychologist I expanded substantially my archival research and eventually wrote two books that are very pertinent here.

In the focal article, Ruggs et al. (2013) observed that there is a dearth of racial discrimination research beyond the traditional White–Black or White–nonWhite comparisons in the industrial–organizational (I–O) literature and urged researchers to treat each minority race separately because individuals may have unique experiences with discrimination based on different racial stereotypes associated with their race/ethnicity. I agree with the above assessments. Moreover, I argue that the overlook of negative consequences of positive stereotypes of some marginalized groups, such as Asian Americans, is another “missed opportunity” that has not been addressed in the focal article. Specifically, the traditional paradigm, which tends to exclusively focus on how negative stereotypes of a marginalized group (e.g., Blacks, individuals with disabilities) lead to workplace discriminations against them, may be too narrowly focused. In this commentary, I use Asian Americans as an example to illustrate how seemingly positive stereotypes, the model minority thesis, may also lead to workplace discrimination of Asian Americans, an often overlooked minority group in the discrimination literature.

Although nearly 50 years have passed since the Civil Rights Act, employment discrimination persists. Thus, this focal article raises and addresses critical issues regarding a yet unanswered question: how can organizational researchers and practitioners contribute to the ultimate goal of eradicating employment discrimination? This article will push previous work a step forward by considering discrimination reduction tactics spanning the attraction, selection, inclusion, and retention phases of the employment cycle. Additionally, we expand our discussion of strategies to reduce discrimination beyond classically studied racial, ethnic, and gender differences. Our synthesis of this literature will inform organizational psychologists on how to address discrimination, but will also highlight the lack of evidence regarding important aspects of these strategies.

In their article, Ruggs, Law, Cox, Roehling, Wiener, Hebl, and Barron (2013) address a number of underresearched groups that are subject to discrimination. We applaud the authors for calling attention to the neglected groups in the study of discrimination. However, it is likely that researchers have neglected some of these groups for practical reasons as the discrimination against these groups is either less intense or less widespread. For example, religious discrimination has accounted for between 2% and 4% of Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charges, whereas race and sex discrimination together have accounted for approximately 65% of discrimination charges (EEOC, 2012a).

We agree with Ruggs and colleagues (2013) that age discrimination has been studied less in industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology in comparison to gender and race. We can, in fact, recall a number of articles on either age discrimination or age diversity that state that very fact in their introductory paragraphs. Age was for many years relegated to demographic control variable status. However, there has been an increase in research attention in I–O to age discrimination and diversity issues in the last couple of decades, even if it doesn't happen to appear with much regularity in the specific selection of reputable journals highlighted in this focal piece.

We agree whole-heartedly with Ruggs et al. (2013) call to focus more research attention on the workplace experiences of marginalized employees. Indeed, the authors raised many valid points concerning the needed contributions of industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology to both research and public policy as it relates to marginalized groups. However, we believe that the authors also missed an opportunity to highlight the workplace discrimination experienced by those individuals who are marginalized by their darker skin tones. This form of discrimination is more commonly known as colorism. Subsequently, our commentary focuses on defining this form of discrimination that is not well known among I–O psychologists, explaining why our field should be concerned with studying colorism, and making recommendations regarding how our field can better study colorism, affect jurisprudence on the issue, and ameliorate colorism's effects in workplace settings.

Employment discrimination against immigrants—the unfair behavioral biases against residents of a country who were born abroad, do not possess the local citizenship, and yet live there permanently—remains a vastly understudied topic in industrial and organizational (I–O) psychology, despite several calls over the past 30 years for such research (Bell, Kwesiga, & Berry, 2010; Dietz, 2010; Hirschman, 1982; Pettigrew, 1998). A search for articles published in the same seven top journals selected by Ruggs et al. (2013) in their timely article did not yield a single article that focused on discrimination against immigrants. Recent reviews of employment discrimination (Dipboye & Colella, 2005; Goldman, Gutek, Stein, & Lewis, 2006) also did not mention immigrants and neither did Ruggs et al.