New study finds labor market discrimination against blacks still exists

[thebac]

This article is for the people who I hear/read moaning about "reverse" discrimination. Well, apparently, the other kind of discrimination, the one against blacks, has anything but vanished. I haven't gotten around to reading the actual study yet, but here's the summary from yesterday's Washington Post. The researchers' findings are pretty astonishing and quite outrageous. I didn't think that discrimination had disappeared, but to see that it was still that bad and that blatant? Wow!

washingtonpost.com
Hire That Name


By Richard Morin

Sunday, August 3, 2003; Page B05


Two Chicago women respond by letter to the same newspaper ad for a job as a sales clerk. They have exactly the same qualifications and write similar letters. One is named Emily. The other is named Lakisa.

Two Boston men see an ad in the local paper for a sales manager's job. They have identical qualifications and send similar application letters. One is named Brad. The other is named Leroy.

Guess who was more likely to get a favorable reply from a potential employer? Sadly, you probably guessed it: Emily and Brad were 50 percent more likely to get a callback than Lakisa and Leroy -- a huge disparity that surprised even the two economists who conducted this test of labor market discrimination.

Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago School of Business and Sendhil Mullainathan of MIT sent 5,000 fake résumés in response to 1,300 help-wanted ads that ran in newspapers in Boston and Chicago.

They varied the faux applicants' names, randomly alternating between 20 stereotypically black names such as "Tanisha," "Jamal" and "Kenya" and 20 stereotypically white names such as "Greg," "Kristen" and "Todd." (The names weren't selected on a whim -- Bertrand and Mullainathan analyzed birth records in Massachusetts to find names favored by blacks but largely ignored by whites, and vice versa.)

The letters these phony job seekers sent to prospective employers listed their qualifications and contained no mention of their race. But apparently the first name was enough to tip the scales of bigotry. "Applicants with white names need to send about 10 résumés to get one callback whereas applicants with African American names need to send around 15 résumés to get one callback," the researchers reported in a working paper published last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. "This 50 percent gap in callback rates is statistically very significant. Based on our estimates, a white names yields as many more callbacks as an additional eight years of experience."

They also found that employers whose help-wanted ads explicitly stated that they were an "Equal Opportunity Employer" were as likely to favor Todd over Tyronne as companies that didn't make this claim. Moreover, "federal contractors, who are thought to be more severely constrained by affirmative action laws, do not discriminate less," they discovered.

Mullainathan and Bertrand also found that race skewed the apparent value of a glittering résumé. Among the apparently white applicants, people with more experience and better qualifications got lots more calls.

That wasn't a surprise, but this was: Better credentials had "a much smaller effect for African Americans," barely improving the odds that they would get a callback.

"Discrimination therefore appears to bite twice, making it harder not only for African Americans to find a job but also to improve their employability" by acquiring more work experience or desirable skills, they concluded.

Hire That Name

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

If it's in a article it must be true.

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

Also, im sure most of the people reading the resume were white. Now I wonder if the percentage might change if these resumes were read by black men in charge of hiring......

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

And doing some phony name thing is bs. Who's to say if these resumes weren't frikin ficticous, that after meeting the ACTUAL BRAD AND ACTUAL MARIO, AND SEEING THEIR ACTUAL CREDENTIALS, then a fair decision might be made. Sending made up names, and not involving whatever background info was given on the resumes is quite, quite spurious as an actual study.

[Drbio]

Without actually reading the study and seeing what their materials and methods involved.....be careful of "studies" like this. They often involve the selective process (i.e. picking a couple of supporting affirmatives out of a tremendous number of negatives). The Wshington Post is hardly a peer reviewed journal. It is gray literature at best. The only true factually accepted studies come from peer reviewed journals....not newspapaers looking to sell copy.

[Fah Q]

If they wanted any credibility they should've had more than just a short article about this. They should've shown a little more of the study. And I also hate people using the quote " Based on our estimates". When someone uses that whatever they say really pulls no weight with me.

[sturm und drang]

Racism still exists in the workforce-- can anyone honestly deny it? No study will ever be perfect for any number of reasons-- nor am I saying this one is-- but I think its underlying premise is valid.

The tougher question, of course, is how to fix it. Once you've given African-Americans the full protection of employment law (as we did in the all-encompassing Civil Rights Act of 1964), it's near impossible to legislate behavior. Attempts at doing so are often impotent and assinine-- or worse. The new NFL head coaching minority policy, for example, is an insult to qualified African-American coaching candidates.

[Drbio]

First off strum....noone ever said racism was not still present in todays society.


But, I can drum up numerous studies which claim to show what the author wanted it to show even though an overwhelming abundance of evidence exists to the contrary. It was a comment on the publication process...not the topic.

[sturm und drang]

Sorry, Doc. I wasn't saying y'all were saying racism doesn't exist. I had just read about the NFL fining the Lions for not interviewing a minority candidate, and kind of fused the two topics into one nebulous post.

I still do wonder how we can fix it. I don't think affirmative action is the answer educationally, and I don't know how in the world you can fix what is undeniably a problem in the workplace.

[Fah Q]

Unfortunately its nothing you can fix with any sort of legislation. Maybe eventually it could be fixed with education. What I mean by that is some people are racist, plain and simple. But the reason some people are racist is because they are ignorant of what a different race can bring to the table

I honestly did not try to rhyme that.

[Dirk41= konsesjonen]

Originally posted by: sturm und drang
Racism still exists in the workforce-- can anyone honestly deny it? No study will ever be perfect for any number of reasons-- nor am I saying this one is-- but I think its underlying premise is valid.

The tougher question, of course, is how to fix it. Once you've given African-Americans the full protection of employment law (as we did in the all-encompassing Civil Rights Act of 1964), it's near impossible to legislate behavior. Attempts at doing so are often impotent and assinine-- or worse. The new NFL head coaching minority policy, for example, is an insult to qualified African-American coaching candidates.

Yes, racism does still exist in the workforce, and unfortunately it works BOTH way's.

[MFFL]

All kinds of "isms" exist in EVERY country. Some people don't like others because of race, religion, sexual orientation, etc and it's going to show up in their hiring habits. It will exist as long as humanity exists. I will say that the more blatant forms need to be stamped out immediately.

[Drbio]

Originally posted by: sturm und drang
Sorry, Doc. I wasn't saying y'all were saying racism doesn't exist. I had just read about the NFL fining the Lions for not interviewing a minority candidate, and kind of fused the two topics into one nebulous post.

oops. I misread your intended post.

I still do wonder how we can fix it. I don't think affirmative action is the answer educationally, and I don't know how in the world you can fix what is undeniably a problem in the workplace.

Hopefully time will get us there. Consider how far we have come to date and hope that time, patience and understanding will carry us the rest of the way.