Cite as: 524 U. S. 775 (1998)
Opinion of the Court
just as we have also followed the lead of such cases in attempting to define the severity of the offensive conditions necessary to constitute actionable sex discrimination under the statute. See, e. g., Rogers, supra, at 238 ("[M]ere utterance of an ethnic or racial epithet which engenders offensive feelings in an employee" would not sufficiently alter terms and conditions of employment to violate Title VII).1 See also Daniels v. Essex Group, Inc., 937 F. 2d 1264, 1271-1272 (CA7 1991); Davis v. Monsanto Chemical Co., 858 F. 2d 345, 349 (CA6 1988), cert. denied, 490 U. S. 1110 (1989); Snell v. Suffolk County, 782 F. 2d 1094, 1103 (CA2 1986); 1 B. Linde-mann & P. Grossman, Employment Discrimination Law 349, and nn. 36-37 (3d ed. 1996) (hereinafter Lindemann & Grossman) (citing cases instructing that "[d]iscourtesy or rudeness should not be confused with racial harassment" and that "a lack of racial sensitivity does not, alone, amount to actionable harassment").
So, in Harris, we explained that in order to be actionable under the statute, a sexually objectionable environment must be both objectively and subjectively offensive, one that a reasonable person would find hostile or abusive, and one that the victim in fact did perceive to be so. 510 U. S., at 21-22. We directed courts to determine whether an environment is sufficiently hostile or abusive by "looking at all the circumstances," including the "frequency of the discriminatory conduct; its severity; whether it is physically threat-1 Similarly, Courts of Appeals in sexual harassment cases have properly drawn on standards developed in cases involving racial harassment. See, e. g., Carrero v. New York City Housing Auth., 890 F. 2d 569, 577 (CA2 1989) (citing Lopez v. S. B. Thomas, Inc., 831 F. 2d 1184, 1189 (CA2 1987), a case of racial harassment, for the proposition that incidents of environmental sexual harassment "must be more than episodic; they must be sufficiently continuous and concerted in order to be deemed pervasive"). Although racial and sexual harassment will often take different forms, and standards may not be entirely interchangeable, we think there is good sense in seeking generally to harmonize the standards of what amounts to actionable harassment.
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