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> >
> >By David Wessel -- Wall Street Journal - Sept 4, 2003
> >http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106262466678910800,00.html
> >
> >Two young high-school graduates with similar job histories and
> >demeanors apply in person for jobs as waiters, warehousemen or other
> >low-skilled positions advertised in a Milwaukee newspaper. One man is
> >white and admits to having served 18 months in prison for possession
> >of cocaine with intent to sell. The other is black and hasn't any
> >criminal record.
> >Which man is more likely to get called back?
> >It is surprisingly close. In a carefully crafted experiment in which
> >college students posing as job applicants visited 350 employers, the
> >white ex-con was called back 17% of the time and the crime-free black
> >applicant 14%. The disadvantage carried by a young black man applying
> >for a job as a dishwasher or a driver is equivalent to forcing a white
> >man to carry an 18-month prison record on his back.
> >Many white Americans think racial discrimination is no longer much of
> >a problem. Many blacks think otherwise. In offices populated with
> >college graduates, white men quietly confide to other white men that
> >affirmative action makes it tough for a white guy to get ahead these
> >days. (If that's so, a black colleague once asked me, how come there
> >aren't more blacks in the corporate hierarchy?)
> >A recent Gallup poll asked: "Do you feel that racial minorities in
> >this country have equal job opportunities as whites, or not?" Among
> >whites, the answer was 55% yes and 43% no; the rest were undecided.
> >Among blacks, the answer was 17% yes and 81% no.
> >The Milwaukee and other experiments, though plagued by the
> >shortcomings of research that relies on pretense to explain how people
> >behave, offer evidence that discrimination remains a potent factor in
> >the economic lives of black Americans.
> >"In these low-wage, entry-level markets, race remains a huge barrier.
> >Affirmative-action pressures aren't operating here," says Devah Pager,
> >the sociologist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who
> >conducted the Milwaukee experiment and recently won the American
> >Sociological Association's prize for the year's best doctoral
> >dissertation. "Employers don't spend a lot of time screening
> >applicants. They want a quick signal whether the applicant seems
> >suitable. Stereotypes among young black men remain so prevalent and so
> >strong that race continues to serve as a major signal of
> >characteristics of which employers are wary."
> >In a similar experiment that got some attention last year, economists
> >Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and Sendhil
> >Mullainathan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology responded in
> >writing to help- wanted ads in Chicago and Boston, using names likely
> >to be identified by employers as white or African-American. Applicants
> >named Greg Kelly or Emily Walsh were 50% more likely to get called for
> >interviews than those named Jamal Jackson or Lakisha Washington, names
> >far more common among African-Americans. Putting a white-sounding name
> >on an application, they found, is worth as much as an extra eight
> >years of work experience.
> >These academic experiments gauge the degree of discrimination, not
> >just its existence. Both suggest that a blemish on a black person's
> >resume does far more harm than it does to a white job seeker and that
> >an embellishment does far less good.
> >In the Milwaukee experiment, Ms. Pager dispatched white and black men
> >with and without prison records to job interviews. Whites without drug
> >busts on their applications did best; blacks with drug busts did
> >worst. No surprise there. But this was a surprise: Acknowledging a
> >prison record cut a white man's chances of getting called back by
> >half, while cutting a black man's already-slimmer chances by a much
> >larger two- thirds.
> >"Employers, already reluctant to hire blacks, are even more wary of
> >blacks with proven criminal involvement," Ms. Pager says. "These
> >testers were bright, articulate college students with effective styles
> >of self- presentation. The cursory review of entry-level applicants,
> >however, leaves little room for these qualities to be noticed." This
> >is a big deal given that nearly 17% of all black American men have
> >served some time, and the government's Bureau of Justice Statistics
> >projects that, at current rates, 30% of black boys who turn 12 this
> >year will spend time in jail in their lifetimes.
> >In the Boston and Chicago experiment, researchers tweaked some resumes
> >to make them more appealing to employers. They added a year of work
> >experience, some military experience, fewer periods for which no job
> >was listed, computer skills and the like. This paid off for whites:
> >Those with better resumes were called back for interviews 30% more
> >than other whites. It didn't pay off for blacks: Precisely the same
> >changes yielded only a 9% increase in callbacks. Someday Americans
> >will be able to speak of racial discrimination in hiring in the past
> >tense. Not yet.
> >
> >ONLINE RESOURCES
> >*For Pager's paper, soon to be published in the Journal of Sociology,
> >see http://www.northwestern.edu
> >[http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2002/WP-02-37.pdf]
> >*For Bureau of Justice Statistics data, see http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov
> >[http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/piusp01.pdf]
>