Employers demonstrate a tendency not to grant interviews to applicants with black-sounding names, as compared with equally qualified applicants with white-sounding names, according to a new survey. Researchers sent out some 5,000 bogus resumes for both hypothetical "white" named and "black" named applicants in response to newspaper ads in Boston and Chicago. The result: Resumes with white-sounding names elicited 50% more responses than ones with black-sounding names.
It's clear that discrimination lives, but it's also worth asking if something else is afoot. African-American employees, as members of a protected class under the civil rights laws, can threaten to bring racial discrimination suits if they are fired or not promoted. Whether a suit is groundless or not, business insurers almost always urge employers to settle out of court since legal costs are so exorbitant (and negative publicity is best avoided, in any event).
Given this situation, many employers have come to believe that, all things being equal, it's best not to hire more minority applicants than is necessary to avoid scrutiny, or even grant unnecessary interviews (since if interviewed, but not hired, a premise for a civil rights suit has still been established). Employers will not speak publicly about this, but many, in private, more than hint this is the case.
Isn't this at least worth acknowledging as we debate the value of a national workplace anti-discrimination law making gays and lesbians a protected class? The proposed federal Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) is the prime goal of the big, national, gay political lobbies, and I"ve said before I believe its passage could send a strong, symbolic message of inclusion. But that doesn't mean we should ignore possible unintended, and negative, consequences in making employers hesitant about hiring openly gay applicants (especially since ENDA, unlike the civil rights laws protecting racial minorities, won't be buttressed by either affirmative action mandates or judicial decisions requiring gays to be hired at least in proportion to our numbers in the local population).
Asking such heretical questions doesn't make your typical
lesbigay activist very happy, but a movement on auto-drive isn"t,
ultimately, in anyone's best interest.