THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 4, 2003
CAPITAL
By DAVID WESSEL


Racial Discrimination Is Still at Work in U.S.

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 www.northwestern.edu 3
*For Bureau of Justice Statistics data, see www.ojp.usdoj.gov 4

ABOUT DAVID WESSEL
David Wessel, 49, The Wall Street Journal's deputy Washington bureau chief, writes Capital, a weekly look at the economy and the forces shaping living standards around the world. He also appears frequently on CNBC.

David has been with The Wall Street Journal since 1984, first in the Boston bureau and then the Washington bureau, where he was chief economics correspondent. During 1999 and 2000, he was the newspaper's Berlin bureau chief. He also has worked for the Boston Globe, where he shared a Pulitzer Prize for a series of stories on the persistence of racism in Boston, and at the Hartford (Conn.) Courant and Middletown (Conn.) Press.

He is the co-author, with fellow Wall Street Journal reporter Bob Davis, of "Prosperity: The Coming 20-Year Boom and What It Means to You" (Random House/Times Books, 1998), which argued that the next 20 years will be better for the American middle class than the previous 20 years. Write to him at capital@wsj.com 5.

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB106262466678910800,00.html
Hyperlinks in this Article:
(1) http://online.wsj.com/articles/capital_exchange
(2) mailto:capital@wsj.com
(3) http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/2002/WP-02-37.pdf
(4) www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/piusp01.pdf

Want to know why someone would hire a lesser qualified white person over a black person of equal or greater qualifications? Because if it doesn't work out, for whatever reason, YOU CAN'T FIRE A BLACK PERSON without a large risk of a major discrimination lawsuit. I've seen it happen a dozen times, a black person just isn't doing the job, they get let go, next thing you know Jesse Goddam Jackson is on your front step with TV cameras. Firing a white guy, no one cares.
In case no one ever told you before, that's why.

Under that rationale, one should never hire a woman because she might sue for sexual harrassment.

In case you ever wondered why opponets of Affirmative Action are always screaming that qualifications should be the only factor in determine hiring practices, when the above advocate of racial prejudice proves that all that talk about hiring the best one for the job is bull, it's because equality hurts white privilege. In case no one ever told you before, that's why.

...firing white guys, but other richer more powerful white guys. Should Jesse Jackson sue a white guy for racial discrimination againt another white guy. Your beef is with the richer more powerful white guys not black people who aren't firing you, stupid.

This being an ararchist site, let's keep some things in mind.

In a world where anarchy is the way of life, people will associate and not associate with whomever they will. There will be no "affirmative action" to voice any opinion on race or gender or sexual orientation or anything. People will be free from laws which impose such ridiculous notions as "the collective needs to reflect the population's sex, gender, etc... as a whole", but will rather be able to pick and choose those to whom they believe would best fit into collective. That said, given the choice between two evils (anarchy or liberalism), to live in anarchy is much superior to living under liberalism and its policies.

White privilege, my ass. What I'm talking about, jackass, is being able to hire and fire as I choose, as an employer, the owner of a business. I wouldn't fire someone just for being black, if he's making me money, that would be idiotic. But the way the system is going, the odds are too good an employee who ISN'T making me money, who is not going do the job, and who is black, is essentially unfirable. I know this actually makes sense to you fools, with all your concern about white privilege, but to a business owner, it is leftist, Democrat, Jesse Jackson horseshit.

Oh, and Common Sense, you are REALLY an idiot. Where the fuck did you come up with being fired by a black man making any difference? Maybe you really ARE Jesse Jackson.

There is no where written or even implied that this is an "anarchist site". So your initial premise is false.

As for your definition of anarchy, you are most definitely confusing it with tyranny. Because if people are truly free to dismiss laws and rules then the majority would most certainly confiscate the wealth and power (which laws protect) of the minority that is dominating, stealing from and oppressing the masses. Meaning any privileges you receive as an white person, a man, an American would no longer be recognized and honored by the masses of non-whites, non-males, and non-Americans that outnumber them. In other words, under anarchy, your goose is cooked. At any rate, your attempt to rationalize racism (and sexism), by appealing to anarchy which you also do not believe in is woefully inept. Try again.

...an anti-racism organization and cannot defend a white guy who is fired by another white guy on the baises of racial discrimination, genius. Your the one who said that "[Jesse Jackson defends blacks who were fired but] Firing a white guy, no one cares." Your beef isn't that whites aren't defended it's that blacks are. That means that your just against blacks not FOR whites keeping their jobs.

Yeah, white privilege. That's when lesser qualified whites are given priority (or privilege) over more qualified non-whites. That is the whole point of the article. And if you want to discriminate against African-Americans, then don't get upset when they organize a boycott against your business. Then you'll hardy be making ANY money, silly racist.

"There is no where written or even implied that this is an "anarchist site".

Talk to the collective. Believe me, they've made it very clear they don't like the right or the left. In their eyes, the right-wing (conservatives) wants the corporations to tell them how to live their lives, and the left-wing (liberals) wants the government to tell them how to live their lives. They want nothing to do with either. Just ask them.

"As for your definition of anarchy, you are most definitely confusing it with tyranny."

Well. let's just see how much or little you know about anarchy.

"Because if people are truly free to dismiss laws and rules then the majority would most certainly confiscate the wealth and power (which laws protect) of the minority that is dominating, stealing from and oppressing the masses."

I never said dismiss laws and rules. Don't put words in my mouth I never said nor implied.

The law says it's wrong to murder someone. Do you not committ murder because it's the law, or because you know inside you it's the wrong thing to do?

You see, in anarchy there are laws and rules, they are just not written down and they are not imposed upon people by a heirarchy.

What wealth? What power? In anarchy, there is no wealth. In anarchy, their is no heirarchy, therefore no power. The theft and oppression of which you speak comes from those in charge, and in anarchy, there is no government, their are no rulers, there is no "majority". So how can the majority "confiscate" something that doesn't exist?

"Meaning any privileges you receive as an white person, a man, an American would no longer be recognized and honored by the masses of non-whites, non-males, and non-Americans that outnumber them."

Exactly my point. People would be free to assoicate with whomever they wished without having to worry about being "diverse." For example, if a group of black (or white) people who don't like people of other races decide they want to collectively live and work together, who's to tell them they can't? Let's say this collective lives on a particular peice of land they work it and are peaceable with their neighbors and those around them. You may not like it or believe it to be wrong, but in anarchy, you and others are not allowed to impose yourselves upon people who are not harming others.

"In other words, under anarchy, your goose is cooked."

My goose would be just fine. I would join myself to a group of likeminded individuals and do my part for the betterment of the whole, just like I do now.

So, I see your understanding of anarchy comes short of reality. That's not surprising.

Isn't qualification for a particular job something to be determined by the one hiring?

Boy, are you ever in the wrong place.

There is no where written or even implied that this is an "anarchist site. "Talk to the collective. Believe me, they've made it very clear they don't like the right or the left. In their eyes, the right-wing (conservatives) wants the corporations to tell them how to live their lives, and the left-wing (liberals) wants the government to tell them how to live their lives. They want nothing to do with either. Just ask them." I repeat: There is no where written or even implied that this is an anarchist site. Because if people are truly free to dismiss laws and rules then the majority would most certainly confiscate the wealth and power (which laws protect) of the minority that is dominating, stealing from and oppressing the masses. "I never said dismiss laws and rules. Don't put words in my mouth I never said nor implied." I quote: "In a world where anarchy is the way of life, people will associate and not associate with whomever they will. There will be no "affirmative action" to voice any opinion on race or gender or sexual orientation or anything. People will be free from laws..." "You see, in anarchy there are laws and rules, they are just not written down and they are not imposed upon people by a heirarchy." And I repeat with added emphasis: Meaning any hierarchical privileges you receive as a white person, a man, an American will no longer be recognized and honored by the masses of non-whites, non-males, and non-Americans that outnumber them. In other words, under anarchy, your goose is cooked. At any rate, your attempt to rationalize racism (and sexism), by appealing to anarchy which you also do not believe in is woefully inept. Racism is a hierarchy Try again.

>I repeat: There is no where written or even implied that this is an anarchist site.

You didn't bother asking them, did you? Did you? You didn't.

>Because if people are truly free to dismiss laws and rules then the majority would most certainly confiscate the wealth and power (which laws protect) of the minority that is dominating, stealing from and oppressing the masses.

What wealth and power? There is no wealth and power in anarchy.

>I quote: "In a world where anarchy is the way of life, people will associate and not associate with whomever they will. There will be no "affirmative action" to voice any opinion on race or gender or sexual orientation or anything. People will be free from laws..." "You see, in anarchy there are laws and rules, they are just not written down and they are not imposed upon people by a heirarchy."

You gotta C&P all I wrote, not a portion of a phrase. Poor debating skills on your part.

The quote was "People will be free from laws which impose such ridiculous notions as "the collective needs to reflect the population's sex, gender, etc... as a whole", but will rather be able to pick and choose those to whom they believe would best fit into collective. "

>And I repeat with added emphasis: Meaning any hierarchical privileges you receive as a white person, a man, an American will no longer be recognized and honored by the masses of non-whites, non-males, and non-Americans that outnumber them. In other words, under anarchy, your goose is cooked.

And I repeat

My goose would be just fine. I would join myself to a group of likeminded individuals and do my part for the betterment of the whole, just like I do now.

>At any rate, your attempt to rationalize racism (and sexism), by appealing to anarchy which you also do not believe in is woefully inept. Racism is a hierarchy Try again.

There is no racism in anarchy. People will not receive special priviledges based upon whether they are red, yellow, black or white like they do now. All people are equal in class, free to associate or not associate with whomever they will.

If a collective of people determine they want to include only certain people based upon certain criteria, they have every right to do so. There is no governing body to tell them they can't. Are you going to march to Montana and tell a collective of white people who aren't bothering or hurting anyone and are simply living off the land that they have to become more diverse? No, you won't. You have no right to tell people who they must and must not associate with. If you don't like it, you can choose not to associate with them. You can tell others that you don't approve. That's your recourse. But, you can't tell other people how to live their lives or who they must associate with. That's not how anarchy works. In that manner and many others, anarchy is far superior to liberalism.

I repeat: There is no where written or even implied that this is an anarchist site.

You didn't bother asking them, did you? Did you? You didn't.

I repeat again: There is no where written or even implied that this is an anarchist site.

Because if people are truly free to dismiss laws and rules then the majority would most certainly confiscate the wealth and power (which laws protect) of the minority that is dominating, stealing from and oppressing the masses.

What wealth and power? There is no wealth and power in anarchy.

The wealth and power that exists now. We don't currently live under anarchy.

I quote: "In a world where anarchy is the way of life, people will associate and not associate with whomever they will. There will be no "affirmative action" to voice any opinion on race or gender or sexual orientation or anything. People will be free from laws..."

"You gotta C&P all I wrote, not a portion of a phrase. Poor debating skills on your part."

It still does not detract from the fact that you said people would be free from laws. That you later contradicted yourself is of no consequence to me. It just means that you don't know what your talking about.

"If a collective of people determine they want to include only certain people based upon certain criteria, they have every right to do so. There is no governing body to tell them they can't. Are you going to march to Montana and tell a collective of white people who aren't bothering or hurting anyone and are simply living off the land that they have to become more diverse? No, you won't. You have no right to tell people who they must and must not associate with. If you don't like it, you can choose not to associate with them. You can tell others that you don't approve. That's your recourse. But, you can't tell other people how to live their lives or who they must associate with. That's not how anarchy works..."

Believe what you will. But anarchy is not racism. So if you want to build an aparteid-like state in Montana where you have to be white to live there, good luck to you. Just don't call it anarchy. Or just don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you do. What you're talking about is still racism, not anarchy. Try again.

>I repeat again: There is no where written or even implied that this is an anarchist site.

This is an anarchist sire. Ask one of the editors. Apparantly you didn't read the LA-IMC inter-office memos that were in the net before they removed them once dingo was unveiled. Obviously they consider the right-wingers on here to be assholes. What would surprise idiots like you is that they also consider left-wingers like you be be assholes. You think people like you are welcome here. You're not. They hate both sides. To them right-wingers just want corporations to tell them what to do, and left-wingers just want big government to tell them what to do. You should have read the memos and you would have know this already. Just ask them. They'll tell you. That you won't ask demonstrates to me that you don't want to find out that it is. That's seems pretty normal for people like you. You decided something and no amount of evidence otherwise is going to change your mind. Typical fascist.

>It still does not detract from the fact that you said people would be free from laws. That you later contradicted yourself is of no consequence to me. It just means that you don't know what your talking about.

I said "People would be free from laws which impose such ridiculous notions as.....", and then I went on to name specific laws we would be free from. I never said "People would be free from all laws. Period." Learn to comprehend.

>Believe what you will. But anarchy is not racism. So if you want to build an aparteid-like state in Montana where you have to be white to live there, good luck to you. Just don't call it anarchy. Or just don't expect anyone to take you seriously when you do. What you're talking about is still racism, not anarchy. Try again.

" if you want to build an aparteid-like state" - that would be impossible in anarchy. It is, however, possible to have a collective where the participants just happen to be all white or all black or all brown or all yellow or all red.

There is no racism in anarchy. An all white collective in Montana would simply be a group of individuals who have agreed to work together for a common cause. That they are all white is incidental. If someone came along and asked why they were all white or accused them of not including other races, they would simply say that they are a group of people who have agreed to work collectively who happen to be all white, and at this time they have no desire nor need to expand their collective.

Then again, I actually believe that there are WMD's in Iraq, so what do I know? Not a whole hell of a lot!