voted off, some sort of discriminatory favoritism would seem to be at play. Again, keep in mind that all of this is happening on camera. A con- testant knows that his friends, family, and co-workers are watching. So who, if anyone, is discriminated against on The Weakest Link? Not, as it turns out, blacks. An analysis of more than 160 episodes reveals that black contestants, in both the early and late rounds of the game, are eliminated at a rate commensurate with their trivia- answering abilities. The same is true for female contestants. In a way, neither of these findings is so surprising. Two of the most potent so- cial campaigns of the past half-century were the civil rights movement and the feminist movement, which demonized discrimination against blacks and women, respectively. So perhaps, you say hopefully, discrimination was practically erad- icated during the twentieth century, like polio. Or more likely, it has become so unfashionable to discriminate against certain groups that all but the most insensitive people take pains to at least appear fair-minded, at least in public. This hardly means that discrimination itself has ended-only that people are em- barrassed to show it. How might you determine whether the lack of     discrimination against blacks and women represents a true absence or just a charade? The answer can be found by looking at other groups that society doesnt protect as well. Indeed, the Weakest Link voting data do indicate two kinds of contestants who are consistently dis- criminated against: the elderly and Hispanics. Among economists, there are two leading theories of discrimina- tion. Interestingly, elderly Weakest Link contestants seem to suffer from one type, while Hispanics suffer the other. The first type is called taste-based discrimination, which means that one person discrimi- nates simply because he prefers to not interact with a particular type of other person. In the second type, known as information-based dis-