Affirmative action

When slave owners looked in their fields and failed to see human suffering there, it was because they saw skin color first, and everything they saw after that was colored by their internal biases as to what that skin color meant.

trespassers--
A very good point.

0 Replies

click here - i'm too worn down by this thread to say anything

Sad

0 Replies

ehBeth's article ended with this comment:

Equal opportunity starts at the resume. Focus on the qualifications, not the names.

No mention was made of the qualifications of the applicants. Who's to say that the applicants weren't chosen because of their qualifications?

To take a sampling of applications and divide it by 'ethnic' and 'regular' sounding names, and then make assumptions as to why a certain group had more call-backs or hires is baseless. IMO.

0 Replies

The basic question posed by this thread was not whether AA was good, bad or justified but was the criteria used justified. Anyone have any comments in that regard?

0 Replies

Lash Goth - they took the same resumes and sent them out under different names.

Sorry, I guess i thought everyone would have been familiar with the study - it got a lot of coverage here. Maybe my particular interest in employment biased the degree of interest i thought everyone would have in the study.

A very similar study was done here with young women sent to retail establishments, with and without burkas. Matching resumes, etc.

0 Replies

ehBeth--

Yipes, if what you say is true. That does uncover a serious problem. Who did this study? I'll go back to your link to see if we can access the statistics and particulars.
-----edited after re-reading-----
I think the profs should provide copies of what they sent to whom. Were they identical in education? Did the 'black' candidates go to the same schools? Way too much room for fudging and alteration exists in this study.

I would be very interested to see the facts, which were not available. Only an overview of the 'study' and an opinion.

But, it is something to think about. I wonder how many qualified blacks may not get the nod, due to fear of racial suits.

My organization was sued by a black woman when she was discharged for laziness and multiple absences. Employers know that being a black employee has it's distinct priviledges.

If I feel discriminated against, I have no leg to stand on, unless the one discriminating is a man, and it is sexual in nature. A black person has a built-in 'reason' for any and all complaints against their employer.

Many employers have honorable motives in fairness, but are apprehensive about hiring a loaded gun that may end up pointing at them unfairly, or on the whim of a bad employee.

0 Replies

FastTrack >> Human Resources >> News
What's in a name? Job discrimination

Associated Press
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
Printer Friendly version

CHICAGO -- It helps to have a white-sounding first name when looking for work, a new study has found.

Résumés with white-sounding first names elicited 50 per cent more responses than ones with black-sounding names in a study by professors at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

this is a bit from Workopolis on the same study - there may be more through a direct AP link.

0 Replies

ehBeth - Your citation tells us nothing unless we know that the applicants were in all other ways similarly qualified for the position. A study might find that people with freckles were more likely to be chosen for interviews, but that would neither suggest nor prove that their being freckled was the reason for the statistical correlation.

Showing correlation does not prove causation.

0 Replies

A fellow ... I believe he may have been an attorney, not a reporter or academic, but I'm not sure, recently conducted an impromptu study of his own involving apartments for rent in Manhattan. I saw him interviewed on some TV news show. The fellow was "of color", and had a knack for dialect. His unscientific sample consisted of calling prospective landlords from the "For Rent" classifieds to arrange an appointment to view and consider the offered rentals. He found his Ivy League WASP impression garnered far more appointments than did his Puerto Rican, Home Boy, or Eastern European mimicries, most of which were told "Sorry, the property has been rented". He noted that in each series of calls to each landlord, the Wasp Voice was invariably the one used for the last phone call.

timber

0 Replies

Okay, I found a link.

AP Article on Boston Globe Web Site

The article does state that the applicants had "with equal credentials" which does lend itself to the possibility that bias--whether intended or not--could be involved.

Of course, I would be interested in reading the study itself to see what they considered "equal credentials". A degree from Harvard or MIT might hold more weight with an HR person than one from a local community college, but the study might have treated them as "equal credentials".

Still, not knowing how they categorized such things leaves the question open. I have no doubt that there are some people out there who would wrongly make such biased decisions, I just hate to believe that there are enough to show a statistical trend. Maybe I'm too quick to assume that most of our society see people as I do; as individuals, each judged on his or her merits alone.

Thanks for bringing this up, ehBeth. Good food for thought.

0 Replies

There were no real candidates - these were resumes created solely to determine the effect of the name. They created a small pool of resumes to work with. They used the same resumes, with the same qualifications - just switched the names around. So, sometimes the resume went out with Khadisha's name, sometimes with Kristen's (neither Khadisha nor Kristen really exist). <<< this is my summary of the radio program.

here's another article on it - as i said you'd need the original AP link (or the study itself) for more information

http://www.suntimes.com/output/careers/cst-nws-job14.html

Quote:

When sending out resumes, it helps if your name is Kristen or Brad.

If your name is Rasheed or Aisha, don't expect too many callbacks for interviews.

In fact, white-sounding names routinely elicit 50 percent more callbacks than black-sounding names, a new study done by a professor at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business found.

While resumes with better credentials resulted in 30 percent more callbacks for whites, they did not significantly help blacks, the study found.

"If you have an African-American name, it's a lot harder,'' said Marianne Bertrand, an associate professor of economics at U. of C.

Bertrand, along with a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor, sent about 5,000 resumes in response to 1,300 want ads in the Boston Globe and Chicago Tribune between July 2001 and last May. The jobs were in sales, administrative support, clerical and customer service at various companies.

To determine which names to use, the professors analyzed birth certificates for names distinctively used by African Americans and ones used by whites.

They sent four resumes for each posting, two high-caliber applicants and two low-caliber applicants. One high-caliber applicant and one low-caliber applicant had a black sounding name, while one high-caliber applicant and one low-caliber applicant had a white sounding name. The professors compared the callback rate for each applicant. Callbacks, for the purposes of the study, included responses by telephone, letter or e-mail.

Resumes with "white'' names had a 10.1 percent chance of getting a callback, while "black'' names had a 6.7 percent chance. In other words, whites received a callback for every 10 resumes mailed, but blacks had to send 15 to spark interest.

"This represents a difference ... that solely can be attributed to name manipulation,'' the authors wrote. "Our results so far suggest that there is a substantial amount of discrimination in the job recruiting process.''

0 Replies

Quote:

Résumés with white-sounding first names elicited 50 per cent more responses than ones with black-sounding names

The article I read stated that resumes with black sounding names were answered 10% of the time and white sounding one answered 15% of the time. Presenting it as 50% difference which of course is true distorts the picture. Statistics are always presented with the bias of the presenter.

0 Replies

I think the only thing the study really shows is that discrimination continues at many levels. I'm not really worried about 6% or 10% or 50%. None of it is good.

I have seen instances where people were discriminated against simply because of skin colour (or perceived skin colour, due to name or accent), and also seen cases where people took advantage of the possibility that they might be discriminated against, again because of skin colour. The opportunities for both need to end. True equality of opportunity, I think, is the only option. Can it happen?

0 Replies

Wrote 'black applicant' as shorthand for 'pretend black applicant'.

trespassers wrote:
Of course, I would be interested in reading the study itself to see what they considered "equal credentials". A degree from Harvard or MIT might hold more weight with an HR person than one from a local community college, but the study might have treated them as "equal credentials".

This is what I'm talking about. If the profs want to prove an undeniable point, they should share the exact materials used in the study. Too much room for wiggling in education qualifications, schools... Didn't the ones recieving these applications find it odd that these people had perfectly identical resumes? HHhmmm.

The 5% points difference in blacks' and whites' call-backs doesn't seem bad at all. Seems the more impressive sounding percentage (50%), though mathematically accurate, was used to pump up the opinion of the gap.

0 Replies

ehBeth said:

True equality of opportunity, I think, is the only option. Can it happen?

I believe it is so close.

0 Replies

Are we so naive to believe that discrimination and prejudice can ever truly disappear? Let me remind you of an old truism. "Birds of a feather stick together" Go into any manufacturing facilities lunch room and no matter how diverse the population is you will find in general whites sit with white, Hispanics with Hispanics and Blacks with blacks. People tend to stay in their own comfort zone.

0 Replies

ehBeth wrote:

I think the only thing the study really shows is that discrimination continues at many levels. I'm not really worried about 6% or 10% or 50%. None of it is good.

What if an identical study performed 10 years ago had shown a not a 5% difference (10% to 15%) but a 10% difference (5% to 15%)? Would you still consider the level of discrimination indicated to be a non-issue?

0 Replies

[quote="trespassers willWhat if an identical study performed 10 years ago had shown a not a 5% difference (10% to 15%) but a 10% difference (5% to 15%)? Would you still consider the level of discrimination indicated to be a non-issue?[/quote]

Absolutely. IMO, 1% is as wrong as any other percentage. 1% evil is still evil.

But if we're going to play with numbers, let's be clear - the difference between 10 and 15% IS 50%, not 5%.

0 Replies

ehbeth: thanks, i thought perhaps we were using a new math that i was not familiar with.

0 Replies

Affirmative action

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know