Even though i know racism and discrimination are still alive and kicking. I've gotta say this surprised me. Record leaves bigger scar for blacks When I heard about the study showing white guys with criminal records get called back for jobs in Milwaukee more than black guys with no record at all, the first person I thought about was Dominique. His name popped up in my mind after reading about a study called "The Mark of a Criminal Record," which sent some troubling messages about Milwaukee. A Northwestern University researcher sent matched pairs of black and white testers to apply for entry-level jobs - such as dishwasher, factory worker, driver, etc. - at 350 places of employment in the Milwaukee area. Whites with criminal records were called back 17% of the time, compared with 14% for blacks with no record. For black men with criminal records, it was 5%. Those results were probably very surprising to some people in town. But not too many black men. One of the reasons for picking Milwaukee for the study was our fair city's reputation for hypersegregation. The decision may also have been influenced by the staggering black unemployment rate in some areas of Milwaukee, evidenced most days by all the unemployed black men you can find hanging out on street corners. Earlier this year, Dominique called to interest me in writing a column about his difficulties getting a job with a felony drug conviction. He had just been laid off from a part-time position and was anxious to find another job. "Mr. Kane, you don't know how tough it is out here," he told me. "Just about every time I think I have a job lined up, they bring up my record." At the time, I wasn't interested; the problem that black men with criminal records have finding work wasn't exactly a new story. Frankly, I've written it before, lots of times. But Dominique kept calling; he wanted me to use him as an example of a young man who had made mistakes but was now willing to stick to the straight and narrow. He was persistent, which I took for a positive character trait. What the heck, I figured, maybe it was worth a column. I told him to come to the Journal Sentinel building downtown at the ungodly hour of 8 o'clock in the morning. My thought was to test him to see whether he was the kind of employee who would show up on time; if he was even five minutes late, I planned to include that in any story I wrote about his job search. The prearranged meeting time came and went; Dominique never showed. Later that morning, however, his mother called me. She told me that Dominique wouldn't be able to make his "appointment"; he regretted the cancellation, but there was no way around it. I asked her what the problem was; Dominique had been arrested the night before. He was hanging with some friends, something happened, police were called, and Dominique was found to be in violation of his probation. Dominique's mother assured me her son was planning to come and meet me; it was all he had talked about for days. But, one night out on the streets, and he ran into the kind of trouble that some young black men "on paper" can't seem to avoid. About a month later, Dominique wrote me a letter from prison, promising to keep his appointment as soon as his legal problems were cleared up. To be totally honest, until reading "The Mark of a Criminal Record," I had forgotten all about him. It was like he dropped off the face of the earth. For a lot of black men seeking work in Milwaukee, with criminal records or not, that pretty much sums up their situation, too http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/oct03/179259.asp
