White Convicts As Likely to Be Hired As Blacks Without Criminal Records

Ezekiel Edwards

White Convicts As Likely to Be Hired As Blacks Without Criminal Records

Anyone claiming that racism is no longer alive and well in the United States, in addition to considering the race-driven circumstances surrounding the Jena 6, or statistics demonstrating that prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty when the victim is white than when the victim is black (particularly if the defendant is black), or studies demonstrating that blacks receive harsher sentences than whites for equivalent drug crimes, or the fact that even though more whites per capita smoke marihuana than blacks, blacks are arrested and prosecuted at a far higher rate, should read a recent study by Princeton University examining employment discrimination titled “Discrimination in Low Wage Labor Markets.”

In the largest and most comprehensive project of its kind to date, 13 young male applicants, presenting the same qualifications and experience, split into teams and went on nearly 3,500 entry-level job interviews with private companies in supposedly left-leaning, "progressive", multicultural New York City, jobs ranging from restaurants to manufacturing to financial services. After recording which applicants were invited back for interviews or were offered jobs, two sociology professors looked at the hiring practices of 1,500 prospective private employers, focusing specifically on discrimination against young male minorities and ex-offenders.

Some of the study's findings are depressingly familiar. For instance, young white high school graduates were twice as likely to receive positive responses from New York employers as equally qualified black job seekers. It also reaffirmed not only that former prisoners are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market, but also that, again, black ex-prisoners are in a much worse position: positive responses from employers towards white applicants with a criminal record dipped 35 percent, while for black applicants similarly situated it plummeted 57 percent.

However, the study revealed that our society's racism extends even deeper: black applicants with no criminal record were no more likely to get a job than white applicants with criminal records just released from prison! In other words, while whites with criminal records received low rates of positive responses, such response rates were equally low for blacks without a criminal background. Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study's finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records.

So, even when a white employer knows that the white applicant she is interviewing is a convict and the black applicant has never been in trouble with the law, she is as likely to hire the white applicant as the black applicant. Given how wary our society is of ex-offenders, and how difficult it is for ex-offenders to obtain gainful employment, this finding reveals the depth and breadth of racism in the job market.

Imagine what the results would be if the researchers tested the inverse?!? We would be hard-pressed to find a single employer as likely to hire a black person with a criminal record as a white person without one, and the differences between rates of positive ressponses would stretch across the Sahara.

The study reaffirms the dire situation for black ex-offenders. Blacks comprise a disproportionate number of the 2.3 million people behind bars, and thus are disproportionately affected by laws barring people with criminal records from certain employment and educational opportunities. Even when applying for jobs they are legally qualified for, black ex-convicts face dual discrimination on account of being black and having a criminal record.

Amazingly, the study found no evidence that an applicant's educational credentials countered the stigma of incarceration, suggesting that once the "criminal record" stigma attaches, it may never relinquish its grip.

But what the Princeton study shows is that blacks who have never stepped foot inside a prison face not only unequal competition from whites without rap sheets and comparable competition from similarly situated blacks, but they can also be squeezed out of the job market by whites exiting penitentiaries. A level playing field it is not.

As for ex-prisoners, with thousands leaving prison every day, our country should expand reentry programs for prisoners (both inside and outside of prison), ease employment restrictions for people with criminal records, repeal laws disenfranchising prisoners and ex-offenders, ensure that ex-offenders can easily correct mistakes on their rap sheets, and, most importantly, move away from nationwide policies of mass incarceration, frantic prison-building, arrest-happy policing, and fighting a costly, ineffective, and inhumane war on drugs, all of which contribute mightily to our bursting-at-the-seams prison population.

But even then, our country faces an even tougher task, one that we have failed miserably at for hundreds of years, and one that cannot be accomplished merely by repealing a statute or rewriting a policy: getting rid of discrimination against people of color. And for anyone who thinks racism is no longer an issue in America, think again.

Comments

I'm glad that you posted this. It makes me feel better about the fact that I can't get employed out here in West Virginia in an entry level position even though I'm a college graduate with honors.

It's disturbing to read this, but nonetheless its not entirely surprising. Although improvements have been made in promoting racial equality and combating racism, it is obvious from the persistent economic and health inequalities, and incidents such as the situation in Jena, LA, that four hundred plus years of systematic racism and injustice cannot be completely undone in the course of two generations. It is nevertheless disturbing to know that the hiring rates are so disparate, as this statistic is probably more reliable for determining the scale of disparity in the workplace than unemployment statistics, which of course demonstrate the same disparity: http://pubdb3.census.gov/macro/032006/perinc/new03_128.htm

Only barely mentioned in passing:

Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study's finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records

Hmmm...and why, in this study, did they not more fully test the minority employers? Was it because they are likely to find that the racism they were looking for exists in all races?

The problem with all such studies is that you can always find a way to set it up to ensure that you will find what you want to find.

Barely mentioned in passing:

Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study's finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records

A more thorough test of minority hiring practices might have brought forward the fact that racism is endemic to the human race in general.

In a colorblind America you would expect 70 out of 100 employees to be "white", 12 out of 100 to be "black" and 28 out of 100 to be "hispanic". I suspect that the ratios are actually much different for "white" employers, "black" employers and "hispanic" employers. And that they are all a bunch of racists......

Out here in Kansas we have an Oriental "kitchen" within a grocery chain store that is run exclusively by "hispanics". Somewhat scary in it's implications but the orange chicken is good.

Why is it "scary in its implications"?

I agree that the findings of the study are not entirely a surprise. Similar studies have been conducted before and consistently show the same results in that many employers (including minority employers) show preference on racial lines at all stages of the hiring process.

Fortunately, such discrimination is already illegal; however, it is difficult to pinpoint violations because the law requires that an offense be intentional and demonstrable. In a 2002 study conducted by two professors from the University of Chicago and MIT that utilized racially indicative names (i.e. there was a "Brad" and a "Tyrone") submitted with resumes of equal qualification. The study recorded how many of the applicants received callbacks or interviews based on resumes where the only significant difference was in the name. In findings consistent with this new Princeton study, it showed that applicants with "white-sounding" names were 50% more likely to receive a call for an interview than those with "black-sounding" names. What's more interesting in the context of this new study involves the apparent lack of impact of the credentials of applicants on the stigma of being an ex-convict. To bolster the comparison between blacks and white ex-convicts offered by the Princeton article, the former study found that the positive impact of the(identical)credentials of those with "white-sounding" names was far greater than that of those with "black-sounding names" on the chances of getting an interview. Just an interesting comparison I thought was poignant to this topic.

It seems, however, that studies like this do little to address the issue of racial discrimination in hiring practices beyond shining a glimmer upon it every five years. Greater accountability of employers through rigorous audits of this kind with actual penalties for violations would perhaps be prudent.

ATM,

Thanks for your comment. I was unaware of the Chicago/MIT study; not surprising, yet further indicative of how deeply embedded race-based assumptions are in our society and the harmful impact such assumptions have on people of color. I agree that greater accountability is needed, and feel that stronger and more aggressively enforced legislation would partially address the problem. Less practically, and more idealistically, we also need to discuss ways to change people's attitudes, promoting fairness and equality through enlightenment as opposed to solely through the threat of litigation.

I completely agree that at the very core, these racially motivated decisions are made on a personal and cultural level that needs to be adjusted significantly in light of this and many race-related endemic issues. Using race as a basis for any decision is beneficial to no one. Policy in this area is really hairy, however. I think an intense study of methods to change people's attitudes would be great and incredibly interesting. My first inclination is to implement diversity acceptance programming at the earliest level of education since racial preferences are learned early and generally in the child's home. This is, of course, a more long-term oriented strategy that would lay the groundwork for more sensitive discussions later in the child's academic career. There was a very good primer on this topic issued by the Teaching Tolerance Project entitled "Starting Small: Teaching Tolerance in Preschool and the Early Grades". I do think that tolerance does not go far enough. Our ultimate goal should be acceptance and not just toleration. I've always believed that short of the home, the early-grade school teacher is extremely important in shaping the future of our society.

The problem of discriminatory hiring practices is indeed so intractable because it has little to do with acceptance or even tolerance of diversity. The above commenter's support for (awfully Orwellian sounding) "diversity acceptance programming" would perhaps make for a better functioning society, but would not eliminate race-based hiring practices. This is because, given the large pool of similarly qualified job applicants that an ex-convict finds him or herself in, an employer has little else to use to choose between applicants besides race-based stereotypes based on assumptions about applicants' names and backgrounds. Even the employer most "accepting" or "tolerant" of diversity might then be expected to use (false) assumptions about the value added by hiring a white employee rather than a black employee. The solution to discriminatory hiring practices must be more radical and more positive: employers must be given incentives and reasons to hire non-white employees. On one hand, then, reentry programs that can differentiate ex-convicts from their non-convict peers are crucial; on the other hand, programs that reward employers with highly diverse workplaces, without necessarily imposing race-based quotas, are equally important.