Editorial objective:1- give diverse jobseekers sound information on job opportunities and how to successfully navigate the job search process,2- invite “employers of choice” to share success secrets and valuable information on where the jobs are.
Issue link: http://diversityemployers.epubxp.com/i/224970
rate has been below 8 percent. In contrast, there have been only fve years in which the white rate has exceeded 8 percent. Thus, black Americans are in a state of perpetual employment crisis that worsens—near Depression level— during national economic downturns." Exactly what unemployment fgures refect is hard to discern: Do they refect less opportunity for blacks, as the Gallup poll indicates blacks believe? Do they refect blacks' lack of skills, education or training? Do they refect a lack of effort at job hunting or, perhaps, an inability to job hunt for some reason, like incarceration? Two studies and 2012 BLS statistics reveal that when job qualifcations, education and incarceration are accounted for, racial job discrimination appears to remain. For a 2004 study, University of Chicago economist Marianne Bertrand and Harvard University economist Sendhil Mullainathan sent fctitious resumes in response to help-wanted ads appearing in Boston and Chicago The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that in August 2013 the overall black unemployment rate was 13 percent, compared with 6.4 percent for whites... newspapers. Resumes were randomly assigned white-sounding names, such as Emily and Greg, or black-sounding names, such as Lakisha and Jamal. White names received 50 percent more calls for interviews than black names, although both types of resumes presented similarly qualifed candidates. Even when black resumes were doctored with better credentials than white resumes, the fctional white applicants still received more employer responses. The researchers discovered that this racial gap was uniform across occupation, industry and employer size. A 2003 employment audit by Princeton University sociologist Devah Pager revealed that white entry-level-job candidates who had been incarcerated were more likely to receive calls in response to their applications than black candidates with prison records. "The ascendant American narrative proclaims that we have transcended the racial divide," Hamilton said, adding that blacks "are asked to 'stop playing the race card,' 'get over it,' and 'take personal responsibility' for the persistence of racial inequality." "It is a rhetoric that absolves public responsibility for the condition of black America. While the realities of structural racial inequality persist, [blacks'] agency to resist their economic condition will diminish and their willingness to accept the status quo will enhance." In 2012 the unemployment rate for white Americans with less than a high school diploma was 11.4 percent, but it was 20.4 percent for blacks in the same situation, according to the BLS. The unemployment rate for whites with a bachelor's degree or higher was 3.7 percent, compared with 6.3 percent for blacks. "Black Americans are more than justifed in believing they're at a disadvantage," said Alan Aja, deputy chair of Brooklyn College's department of Puerto Rican & Latino studies. "One would expect more educational attainment to yield outcomes in the labor market for black Latinos that is equal to that of their white counterparts, but the evidence from wage-differential studies only means one thing—racism." One recent development tends to illustrate that hiring discrimination still persists: On Sept. 23, 2013, the U.S. Labor Department announced that an administrative law judge ordered Bank of America Corp. to pay 1,147 black job applicants $2.2 million in back wages and interest for race-based hiring discrimination at the company's Charlotte facility. Americans overall tend to have a rosier view of blacks' job opportunities. In a Gallup poll conducted June 13July 5, 2013, that questioned people of all races, more than two in three respondents (69 percent) said blacks have as good a chance as whites to get jobs for which they are qualifed. Fewer than one in three (31 percent) disagreed. On Sept. 23, 2013, the U.S. Labor Department announced that an administrative law judge ordered Bank of America Corp. to pay 1,147 black job applicants $2.2 million in back wages and interest for racebased hiring discrimination at the company... "Americans as a whole are more positive about equal opportunities for blacks than blacks themselves are," the Gallup researchers wrote. "Thus, Americans overall may see the United States as closer to realizing King's vision than blacks do." Daniel Bustillo, a doctoral student in social policy at Columbia University, said Americans in general "conspicuously continue to choose to ignore empirical evidence related to historic and continuing racial bias in employment and its consequent effects." "Thus, when looking at the overwhelming preponderance of the evidence, which demonstrates that 50 years after the apex of the civil rights movement racial bias in employment remains an emphatic reality, the results of the poll are not surprising." u Dana Wilkie is an online editor/ manager for SHRM. Diversity Employers | DiversityEmployers.com | First Semester December 2013 29