A team of researchers at UC Berkeley and the University of Chicago has performed yet another version of a familiar experiment where they send identical resumes to different companies with only one difference: some resumes have distinctively white names (Misty, Brandon) and some have distinctively Black names (Latisha, Tyrone). Then they tally up the number of each type of resume that got a response.
Their test was massive, comprising 84,000 resumes for 11,000 jobs at 108 firms. This provided them with enough data to rank individual companies, and today, for the first time, they're naming names. Here's the report card:
The worst companies on this list contacted white applicants 23% more often than Black applicants. Six of the top ten were auto parts and related companies. Retailers also did poorly in general. On the brighter side, Charter Communications did very well, as did Kroger and Dr. Pepper.
NOTE: The companies listed in black are federal contractors. The companies in gray aren't.
Looks like the further things go, the larger the error (?) bars get.
"Looks like the further things go, the larger the error (?) bars get."
This can happen when you are looking for extreme values. As extreme values are more likely with smaller sample sizes which will have larger error bars.
Someone should ask Andrew Gelman what he thinks of this study. Odds are he will think it is garbage like most social science studies.
If you are going to use argumentum ad verecundiam, you should at least appeal to an authority that exists outside of your own head.
Disney is a Federal contractor?
You mean you don’t recognize the micky mouse in government?-)
Well, aside from the animatronic Mitt Romney and a few others.
Why are some company names in bold, and others in faint font?
Black = federal contractors
Grey = not federal contractors
Tack. (I was wondering where cld’s question came from)
Several things about this (it's a method for "noisy" data) suggest that the racism is based on a relatively small number of incidents. If so, it may be a matter of a randomly distributed racists - there are likely to be some of these everywhere. That is it may not be proof that the racism is a matter of company policy.
No company has a written racist policy. It's a truism that people tend to hire others more like themselves. If the people at the top have racist tendencies, this is going to trickle down throughout the organization and affect hiring decisions all down the line.
N.B. It's plain that the companies that are not federal contractors are more common at the top of the chart than at the bottom.
You're probably right that no company has a WRITTEN racist policy. That would be incredibly foolish. However, that doesn't mean that no company has a racist policy, just that it's not written down.
When I click the little magnifying glass with a + in it the image gets smaller. It does have enough resolution for expanding the usual way (in this case, touchscreen).
There are some really big error bars on some of these.
TBH, I expected some more obvious and outright racism in the results.
I'll also say that their assumptions of white-seeming names and black-seeming names may have been off so I'd want to see their methodology for choosing names. One of the four examples to me seems pretty race-neutral (Misty). I clicked through but didn't see an obvious and easy way to see more about which names they chose.
Clicking on the one link in the post goes to an academic paper paywalled other than a short summary. What were you reading?
If I follow the link to the NBER I see a link at the bottom "Download a PDF" and can download the full paper.
contradicting right-wing beliefs that whites are the *real victims of race discrimination, none of these companies preferred blacks over whites
I bet the geographic correlation is pretty strong. Charter is based in Connecticut and Autonation is based in Florida.
Critics of DEI often overlook the reason why DEI was implemented. DEI is a solution to the prejudice of passing over meritorious or better qualified people who are not European America for those who are. A historical problem in the US. Critics of DEI claim DEI awards people for not being European American rather than for their merit, ignoring discrimination against better qualified candidates because they were not European American was one of the main reasons why DEI was implemented.
@Goosedat:
Sorry, but no:
"DEI is a solution to the prejudice of passing over meritorious or better qualified people who are not European America for those who are."
Just about the most generous thing I can say is that DEI was an ATTEMPTED solution; but,
continuing to assert, at this point in time, that it's an actual solution is an increasingly unrealistic stance.
I will let John McWhorter reply since he does it better than me:
"To put it succinctly: Opposing D.E.I., in part or in whole, does not make one racist. We can agree that the legacy of racism requires addressing and yet disagree about how best to do it. Of course, in the pure sense, to be opposed to diversity, opposed to equity and opposed to inclusion would fairly be called racism. But it is coy to pretend these dictionary meanings are what D.E.I. refers to in modern practice, which is a more specific philosophy.
"D.E.I. programs today often insist that we alter traditional conceptions of merit, decenter whiteness to the point of elevating nonwhiteness as a qualification in itself, conceive of people as groups in balkanized opposition, demand that all faculty members declare fealty to this modus operandi regardless of their field or personal opinions and harbor a rigidly intolerant attitude toward dissent. The experience last year of Tabia Lee, a Black woman who was fired from supervising the D.E.I. program at De Anza College in California for refusing to adhere to such tenets, is sadly illustrative of the new climate.
"D.E.I. advocates may see their worldview and modus operandi as so wise and just that opposition can only come from racists and the otherwise morally compromised. But this is shortsighted. "
What DEI altered was reflexive discrimination against candidates with better qualifications because they were not European Americans.
@GooseDat:
I get it: you're a fan of DEI.
So let's go ahead, for the sake of argument, and say that your assertion is correct: DEI alters a reflexive form of discrimination.
But what else does it do? That's where DEI critics like me come in. Well, for one thing, DEI adopts a reductive perspective. Whereas the Civil Rights movement sought to promote a broad view of humanity, DEI (like Right Wing extremists of the past) instead wants to emphasize our immutable traits. In short, DEI promotes the kind of racial essentialism that Liberals have spent decades (if not longer) trying to transcend.
DEI also explicitly attacks concepts like hard work, merit, and individuality. Here is an excerpt from the California Community College (CCC) online glossary of DEI terms:
"Merit: A concept that at face value appears to be a neutral measure of academic achievement and qualifications; however, merit is embedded in the ideology of Whiteness and upholds race-based structural inequality. Merit protects White privilege under the guise of standards"
DEI has also adopted a policy of censorship. DEI programs could not care less about argument or persuasion; their goal, rather, is to impose. If you disagree with their ideology, you're evil and you're fired.
I cannot stress highly enough that I am not exaggerating. If anything, I'm really far too restrained. The Atlantic Magazine accurately describes the DEI policy in California's Community Colleges as a threat to the "First Amendment rights and academic freedom of 61,000 professors who teach 1.9 million students"
So I ask you: is it worth it? Even if we just go ahead and accept your assertion that DEI programs have somehow helped alter a reflexive form of discrimination, is that accomplishment worth the attendant extremism, narrow-mindedness, and censorship that DEI policies (without any exception that I am aware of) promote?
I would say the answer is an emphatic NO. In order to achieve its ostensibly just ends, DEI has adopted indisputably illiberal means. The ends, in my opinion, do not justify those means.
DEI has been used to promote the kind of racial essentialism that has always been used by bigots and misogynists to discriminate against non European Americans and women. This kind of racial essentialism is the root of their complaint.
I would suggest that there are some people who will take DEI to absurd extremes, just as there are people who will take anything to absurd extremes, and you are attempting to portray those absurd extremes as representative.
@lawnorder:
I would more or less invert your entire statement.
As I have endeavored to express above, it is the DEI ideology that is inherently absurd and extreme. And that is exactly why so many of its manifestations turn out to be, in practice, absurd and extreme.
The few people who might figure out a way to put a form of extremism into practice in a sane manner (and no examples come readily to mind) are the real exceptions.
The madness and extremism of DEI are the rule; any sign of sanity in that movement is the exception. Not the other way around.
So this is McWhorter's straw man argument, not yours, right? And what has McWhorter proposed as an effective solution to structural racism? Oh, he doesn't admit that it exists!
"systems, structures and institutions cannot be racist any more than they can be h...appy or sad. " -- John "Oreo" McWhorter
This is one of those annoying "in a narrow technical sense true, but substantively bullshit" arguments disingenous pundits employ so well.
"racist" is commonly meant as a psychological characterization, so sure, systems, structures and institutions do not have a psyche (again in a narrow technical sense). However, systems, structures and institutions can and obviously do produce outcomes that are consistently advantageous or disadvantageous to particular racial groups.
I can't tell from the chart what a "23% more" means as the study is behind a paywall, as someone said.
If it means, in the lowest scoring companies, that out of 100 identical resumes, 50 of which have black names and 50 of which have white names, that, say 50 out of 50 of the white names get a call, and only 41 of the 50 black names, that's astonishingly bad when you let it sink in.
I mean, its not 50 to zero like in the segregated south, but 23% is a large difference
What I don't get is how they send in a bunch of identical resumes with only the names changed and no one at the company notices that.
Might biased screening software be involved ?
Appreciate this, KD.
It's worthwhile to note though that it's perfectly rational and 'non-racist' to discriminate against black applicants. Statistically, black applicants are not always a good fit for your company in spite of similar credentials. The reason for this? Credentials are not alll there is to selecting an employee.
If credentials and your grades are alll that matters.. to be continued.
Statistically, not all white applicants are a good fit either.
I'd be interested to see aggregations on the basis of industry or firm type rather than by individual firm. There seem to be some clear trends, and that might reduce the sizes of the error bars.
Interesting there aren't any obvious IT related companies listed. They will always be perceived on the positive side, as their ranks are loaded with labor from India and thus heavily hire "minorities". Of course their hiring of other minorities is probably not so great.
typically, out sourced coders, phone support and such at large firms are engaged via contractors who are the actual employers. so those individuals might not qualify as part of the ranks.
Disney is (relatively) racist ???