I worked for a company once where the boss trashed pretty much any resume with a name like Tamika or Jamaal. He never seemed to have a problem with Hispanic names, but African-American names never made it. We did have one black woman work there whose name was something like Jeanette or Angela or something like that. As a side note, can we please staff off of TJ's post? This is an interesting study with some pretty fascinating implications.
You are right. I am black and even when I hear a name like LaQuisha, I don't just think the person is black, but I admitt so I can't blame people of other races of doing the same, I think what kind of background does this person come from. What kind of parents does this person have to give them such a name.
The study is enlightening in the same way the list where black coaches were rated lower than white coaches was. (this was a ranking discussed here several months ago). One doesn't have much to go on with resumes and you're often trying to select from dozens or hundreds of potentially qualified candidates. This is even more so when hiring just out of school as I suspect was the case with this study. We sometimes consciously or subconsciously try to project what a person's background, ambitions, family, contacts etc might be like from what little information is available. Once you've eliminated the applicants that are not qualified, you tend to let 'intuition' guide you to some degree. I suspect this is where the name thing comes into play. Studies like this are important because it shines the spotlight on our potential internal biases. I doubt there was overt racism or a conscious elimination of the "black-named" applicants in all but a few cases, however, the result seems to be significantly telling.
Did anyone see the actual results? I saw it somwhere. It actually showed that some black names were picked over some white names. How do you explain that???
But, that implies the assumption that blacks are poor and poverty implies a lack of good parenting and education none of which is necessarily true. Like you said, it isn't a legitimate way of employee selection. Not only is it biased and potentially racist, it also doesn't bring in the widest array of potential employees meaning your candidate pool is watered down. I wonder what effect, if any, this has on things like affirmative action. If it can be shown that employers really do reject potential candidates based on their race, in this case black, it would prove that the playing field is indeed not level and some are not given equal opportunity in a society that supposedly guarantees it. If nothing else, this is worthy of a further look.
What race were the people who were looking at the resumes? What if a black person were more likely to respond to a 'black' name on a resume? Would this also be bad?
Point well taken JV. However in our society there is a good correspondence between ethnicity and social class--so what does it really matter if discrimination is based on one or the other. It is discrimination based on things that had nothing to do with qualifications. Similarly, if you are hiring someone to be in a national corportions PR department, all qualifications being equal, who would you call first to set up interviews from: Billy-Jed Hatfield Johnna Lou Swanson Emenem Foxworthy or Micheal J. Carter, III Daniel Drothers Jr Kathryn Stanford-Cornell Gosh, this whole thread makes me think not just actors are going to start changing their names for professional reasons (this probably already is the case I am just not aware of it).
I wonder why TJ has yet to explain his thought-provoking, thread-promoting test yet? Perhaps we just aren't ready yet...
TJ does not exist. He is the satirical alter ego of one of the regular posters a la Lhutz. Perhaps he’s Jeff’s wife-beating dark side. The admins and (alleged) clique members ROFLOL (how’s my spelling?), when someone takes the bait and tries to debate the Trader. I’m sorry to have to be the one to break this news. It was fun while it lasted.
I wonder what the results would be if you had a similar study, sending out resumes to all Fortune 500 companies for an accounting position for: Candidate #1: An African-American named "Robert." Candidate #2: A white man named "Jethro." The bottom line here is that a name can conjure up stereotypes regardless of the race of the name bearer. It's why nearly nobody in Hollywood is known by the name that graced their birth certificate.
whoohoo, the scalia's activist court is about to undercut affirmative action again tomorrow, ignore this thread! white people rule! there's nothing to see here!! being in the position of power is a-o-k!! I'd like to tune my previous post, there may be elements of cultural conservatism (or just tastes... I'd like to hang around people w/ names eg 'sudhir, nainish' if only to meet different people) in the hiring practices, but the pragmatic effects of empowered people hiring people whom they would feel comfortable among is pretty friggin' scary.
Especially in the old days of Hollywood, white actors took white-bread, American-sounding names to hide their Jewish or Eastern European origins. I always wondered how it felt to have to deny your heritage like that.
Exactly the point I was trying to make earlier.... but a little more obvious in a "Beverly Hillbillies" sort of way. I think the discrimination is based on a socio-economic basis rather than a race basis. Although any type of discrimination is wrong, I think the implications aren't nearly as serious as racism. If I were looking through the phone book and found two attorneys: one named Tamika, and one named Lawrence, I can tell you who I would call first, and it has nothing at all to do with race.
