
Unemployed Black Woman Pretends to be White, Job Offers Skyrocket (2012) - nashequilibrium
http://www.techyville.com/2012/11/news/unemployed-black-woman-pretends-to-be-white-job-offers-suddenly-skyrocket/
======
wpietri
Since there were only 5 comments, I was hoping to get in before my fellow
white people began the search for every possible explanation other than the
obvious one. Alas, no.

Her experience is exactly in line with previous studies on this. E.g.:

[http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html](http://www.nber.org/digest/sep03/w9873.html)

And plenty of other people have stories like this to tell. For example, this
white guy with a gender-ambiguous name who suddenly got a lot more attention
when he added "Mr" to his resume:

[http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-
afte...](http://qz.com/103453/i-understood-gender-discrimination-after-i-
added-mr-to-my-resume-and-landed-a-job/)

And it's not just resumes. Bias also happens in real-world auditions:

[http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/](http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/A94/90/73G00/)

The truth is that most of us are unconsciously biased against and for all
sorts of people. I sure am. I didn't used to admit that, even to myself, but
then I took some of the Project Implicit tests:

[https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/](https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/)

The question isn't whether white people have some sort of in-group bias.
_People_ have all sorts of in-group biases, and white people are people.

The question is what we do about them. More specifically, the question for you
is what you, as a human, are doing about _your_ biases. And the question for
me is what I'm doing about mine.

~~~
burgerz
>my fellow white people began the search for every possible explanation

contrary to your idea of white people having white guilt or whatever and
trying to justify this, the posts in this thread indicate (rightly) that
discrimination exists and that you deal with it and get over it.

~~~
codygman
Are you discriminated against? If you're a white male (like me), this is too
funny!

------
apsec112
"The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly
interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos,
partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news
site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be
quieter." \-
[http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html)

I'm pretty sure that personal experiences of discrimination qualify as
"intensely but shallowly interesting" content. It's "intense" because
racial/sexual/etc. discrimination is a very charged topic that people get
passionate about. (Not that this is bad, it's just the current state of
things.)

It's "shallowly interesting" because it doesn't teach us anything except "some
companies are racist sometimes", which everyone already knows. If companies in
field X are especially racist, that might be interesting. If specific company
Y was really racist, that might be interesting. If people were more or less
racist under circumstance Z, that might be interesting, etc. But since this
kind of content doesn't name specifics, all we can take away is "some
employers are racist sometimes under some circumstances" (according to one
person, whose account might or might not be completely accurate). That hasn't
been new information since, well, ever. Even if you went back to 1900,
everyone would already know this, it's just that most people would agree with
it, instead of objecting like modern-day people would.

~~~
coldtea
> _It 's "shallowly interesting" because it doesn't teach us anything except
> "some companies are racist sometimes", which everyone already knows._

I think you got it wrong. It doesn't have to teach you anything new. It's not
here to amuse you. It's here to enrage you and get you to do something about
it.

Now, if you are white, you might not find it amusing or interesting at all.
But if you are black, you can see into it something that fucks you chances,
and that's not funny at all, even if it's not novel or "everyone already
knows".

> _That hasn 't been new information since, well, ever. Even if you went back
> to 1900, everyone would already know this, it's just that most people would
> agree with it, instead of objecting like modern-day people would._

Yes, and in 2050 they might say:

"Even if you went back to 2013, everyone would already know this, it's just
that most people would not care, because it was not novel or interesting,
instead of getting enraged and trying to fix this as a modern-day people
would."

I mean, to me it's not very unlike reading about lynchings in 1910, and
saying: "Well, OK, this is not news, such things happen for two centuries.
Next news item please".

~~~
apsec112
Sure, but the purpose of HN is specifically to teach people things, and not to
create rage. The site guidelines make that pretty clear.

Also, is our problem really that people don't get outraged enough about race?
We've had a number of days-long, city-wide street riots about race. That's an
awful lot of rage we have already.

~~~
wpietri
I would find this position more credible if people were downvoting and
admonishing all the tech, business, privacy, and government rage.

I didn't notice anybody saying, "Hey, let's not get ragey about [the
NSA|Apple|patent trolls|Facebook|Google|Congress], we're here to learn, not
get upset."

You may personally be sincere, and if you have been equally assiduous on all
upsetting topics, I commend you. But more generally, I think the sudden tone-
policing that appears on race and gender discrimination topics has much more
to do with the topic than the tone.

~~~
smtddr
I agree with you...SO MUCH... you don't even know. Has anyone on HN checked
out Google+?. Particularly, anytime the official Google account "LifeAtGoogle"
posts anything about promoting/highlighting african-americans? It turns into a
crazy 100+ comments thread of arguments..every..single..time. I don't see this
kind of thing when someone posts about Chinese new-year, or just about any
other event about any other group of people. I made the mistake of getting
involved in one of those G+ threads and getting myself[1] all heated. Now I
don't bother trying to debate. I'm just sad that anytime anything attempting
to highlight positive things, or problems, for african-americans turns into a
storm of comments almost completely drowning out the original article/story.

1.myself=blackmale

EDIT: And now this story has disappeared from the front page superfast(less
than 45mins), while the the one about a lady adding "Mr." to her resume
remains on front page(For at least 3 hrs now)......

------
jeremyjh
This has been studied more formally as well, here is one paper from 2004:
[http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf](http://scholar.harvard.edu/mullainathan/files/emilygreg.pdf)

They found only a 50% increase in call-backs for "white sounding" names, still
I think this story is quite credible.

~~~
LargeWu
"only" a 50% increase?

~~~
jeremyjh
In the submitted article the difference was much larger; she got 9 call-backs
with the white name versus 0 with her ethnic name.

~~~
finnw
"Ethnic" is _not_ a synomym of "non-white."

~~~
jeremyjh
I didn't say it was. The author of the submitted article used this term to
describe _her_ name though.

------
jgs1
Isn't it likely that Monster has some sort of "freshness" indicator that might
rank new profiles higher than old ones that haven't been updated in a while?

A better experiment would have been to create two similar profiles at the same
time with the only difference being the name and diversity questionnaire.

~~~
anon808
At some point her real resume was fresh, and it doesn't sound like she
experienced the same level of response then that she received on her fake
fresh resume. Of course maybe the insurance industry wasn't hiring as eagerly
when her real resume was fresh. Oh well, let's just assume it's experiment
error and her conclusions are baseless. There, I feel better.

~~~
nashequilibrium
I actually added this link to run an experiment. I have been playing around a
lot with the nltk package and after I saw the one link similar to this on the
front page, I remembered that this story got flagged for not being techie
enough. So now that we are getting a discussion going I can run sentiment
analyses on the comments to text for variances on different levels.

~~~
wpietri
I look forward to seeing the results. This story is already off the front page
despite clearly deserving to be there from vote counts. Feel free to email me
if I can help.

------
ck2
Meanwhile the supreme court continues to attempt to rollback protections for
equal treatment like society is all grown up now.

ps. this article seems like dejavu, I swear I've read it before here

------
rooshdi
How does this get flagged off so quickly when there's a sexism article on the
frontpage?

------
mynewwork
"She had no prior work experience and had applied for a clerical position, but
was offered a higher post as an executive manager making close to six figures"

Does this anecdote not sound crazy to anyone else? Racial discrimination by
name is well documented in other studies, but her classmate's experience seems
implausible.

~~~
wpietri
I think the situation is crazy but the story is entirely plausible.

It could happen in a good way. We've all met absurdly bright young hackers
whose resumes haven't yet caught up with their talents. Or even proto-hackers;
there are several people I've encouraged to get into the field because they
obviously had the right inclinations and a background that would make them
great. Maybe this hiring manager saw a lot of raw talent they thought they
could put to work. I know a couple of people who ended up managers very young
and were great at it.

Or it could happen in a bad way. We can all think of people we're working with
and said, "How in the world did they get that job?" Idiocy, venality, lust,
nepotism, or even reasonable mistakes. And let's not forget the "B players
hire C players" phenomenon.

Either way, I am not shocked at all that things like that happen.

------
lightyrs
Correlation does not imply causation.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation#Examples_of_illogically_inferring_causation_from_correlation)

~~~
foobarbazqux
Causation implies correlation though. That is, correlation is a necessary
condition for causation.

~~~
api
As I heard it explained once: correlation does not imply causation, but it
does jump up and down and point and gesticulate wildly in its general
direction.

~~~
foobarbazqux
Ha ha. To be fair, every time you hit reply, somebody dies within 3 seconds.

------
DanBC
"Diversity information" should not be forwarded on to anyone except the
statistician[1] in the personnel department who is creating charts to show
that the company is making efforts to not exclude people.

It's probably time that companies started asking for a different form of
resume / CV - without any age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, or
disability information on it.

We could probably design a suitable experiment to satisfy everyone that the
phenomena is real. I'd be interested to see what happens if 10 people send 3
CVs each for a company - same information but with "Mr Kim Johnson", "Mrs Kim
Johnson", "Yolanda Johnson" swapped in for the name.

------
mathattack
This is a very true and real problem, and there is significant data and other
studies to support her assertion.

That said, the title is a little misleading as it's "Job Inquiries" that
skyrocket, not offers. Of course it takes one to get the other....

------
grannyg00se
"If you don’t believe that racism in the job market is real, then please read
this article"

Stopped reading.

Yes, I believe racism, sexism, ageism, and a number of other _isms_ in the job
market are real. It's not a _job market_ issue. It's a human being issue. As
long as your resume has to get past a human then you're going to have all of
those biases to contend with.

~~~
wpietri
Human being issues get solved through discussion and examination. Including
self-examination. By ragequitting after the first paragraph, you're cheating
yourself.

However, this is a specifically a job market issue because as a society we
have committed to making hiring reasonably fair.

Also, these biases are not immutable; they change over time. For example,
there was a strong anti-Irish bias in the 19th century in the US and England.
So I think your "humans are flawed so shut up about injustice" routine is
neither correct nor helpful.

------
jamesjguthrie
I want to see results of an experiment like this done in the UK for a standard
call centre/restaurant/shop/etc. kind of job. All those places have Equal
Opportunities Policies, which some say, means they will prioritise anybody
over healthy, straight, white, British, non-religious males.

I want to know if it's true.

------
dennisgorelik
New resume generally attracts more attention than resume that was posted long
time ago.

That could explain the difference.

------
burgerz
employers should be allowed to discriminate however they wish. forced equality
leads to more inequality. but i love the comments saying she should call the
justice department because she didn't get a job because "she was black" when
all she did was used two different names.

