Posted by:
anybody
(
)
Date: January 17, 2022 07:33PM
Fixed it for ya.
Discrimination has existed in some form or another in just about all human societies throughout history.
In the ancient world, class was the barrier in society, not "race." The Romans didn't care about what you looked like, where you came from, or your ethnic background — if you became "Roman." What mattered was your social class. There's a famous story about two Roman military commanders in Gaul who were defeated during a war with the Germans because one of them refused to take orders from the other because he was a "novus homo" — the first of his family to be elected to the consulship — and thus regarded as socially inferior even though he was the senior commander.
In America, class discrimination was replaced with a racial caste system. It persists because there are people who psychologically need it to exist, and political and religious leaders who want power allow it to continue to exist.
https://www.nprillinois.org/2021-08-18/name-discrimination-study-finds-lakisha-and-jamal-still-less-likely-to-get-hired-than-emily-and-gregTwo decades ago, a Black woman named Kalisha White applied for a team leader position at Target and worried that her application had been ignored because of her race.
So she sent it back in with a different name and slightly fewer qualifications. That application got her an interview. Eventually, she won a class-action lawsuit against the massive retailer.
Two decades later, a new study shows that not much has changed.
Economists from the University of California Berkeley and the University of Chicago sent 83,000 job applications to 108 Fortune 500 employers with job openings — half with traditionally white-sounding names, the other half with distinctively Black-sounding names.
Applicants with Black names were called back 10% fewer times across the board — and even less when it came to specific companies — despite having comparable applications to their white counterparts.
Berkeley economist Patrick Kline, one of the study’s authors, says the applications looked realistic. Researchers crafted resumes and automated the process of filling out employment history and personality tests.
“To our knowledge, we actually have the highest response rate that’s ever been garnered from one of these studies,” he says.
Some of the common white names used were Emily or Greg, he says, and distinctively Black names used include Jamal or Lakisha. The study’s authors used these names as a way of trying to understand discrimination in the employment application process.
The study’s authors have not yet followed up with the companies. Kline says he assumes these companies would have a difficult time answering why they favored one applicant over another.
The companies were chosen based on their national employment footprint, Kline says.
Ultimately, some human somewhere makes the final call on hiring, he explains, but many major companies’ hiring decisions are spread across the U.S. and utilize screening algorithms and third party technology.
Discrimination was more prevalent at decentralized companies where the hiring process is spread out, he says, as opposed to a company in one location with specialized human resource employees.
“What we think is going on here is that some places have different hiring practices than others. In some places, it’s not very internally regulated by HR practices,” he explains. “So whoever’s maybe working a shift at that restaurant that day can sift through the applications and just decide who they want to call in for an interview next week. At other places, there’s more hoops that you have to jump through before you can decide to call someone back.”