> * Both black and Hispanic men were less likely to receive a positive response from employers—including a call back or email for an interview or a job offer—compared with white men.
> * Men with criminal records were more likely than women with criminal records to receive a negative response from employers.
> * White men with a criminal record had more positive responses than black men with no criminal record.
Here's a PDF. White people with a criminal record are received more positively than noncriminal black-sounding people.
"Employment discrimination against people with criminal records, especially in entry-level positions, is rampant, as demonstrated by a 2005 report produced by the Commission called “Race at Work: Realities of Race and Criminal Record in the NYC Job Market” written by Drs. Devah Pager and Bruce Western. [1] The report relied on results from matched pairs of testers of young white, Latino, and African-American men who applied for 1470 entry-level jobs throughout New York City. Not only were whites more likely to get a callback or job offer than Latinos or African-Americans, African-Americans were nearly half as likely to be considered as whites.[2] When white testers presented with a recent felony record, they were as likely as Latinos and much more likely than African-Americans to receive a callback or job offer.[3] Overall, people with criminal records are only half as likely to get a call back than those without; for African-American applicants, the likelihood is reduced to one-third.[4]"
I think the claim is that prohibiting employers from asking about criminal records disadvantages black people precisely because black people commit more crimes. If they're allowed to ask about criminal records, then the non-criminals, black or white, are all on an equal footing. If they're not allowed to ask, then they'll assume that the black applicant is more likely to be a criminal.
[ I have no idea whether or not this claim is actually empirically true. ]
If you account for blacks who are ex-felons or on parole who can't get jobs, black people are much more likely to be unemployed than whites.
A Western study shows that black people with a criminal history are half as likely to get a return call than whites with similar history in low level positions. Further, even for blacks without a criminal history,this same study shows that they are about half as likely to get a return call than whites with the same background.
This doesn't even include the roughly 15% of the black population currently being held in U.S. prisons who may or may not eventually be released and find that no one will hire them.
Source: UC Irvine Criminology, Law & Society C7 taught by Professor Seron Spring 2010.
Some studies* have found that black men with a conviction experience significantly more hiring discrimination than white men, so the pool of "people with convictions struggling to get a job" is probably even more skewed towards black people.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/10/the-blac...
"For her research, Pager pulled together four testers to pose as men looking for low-wage work. One white man and one black man would pose as job seekers without a criminal record, and another black man and white man would pose as job seekers with a criminal record. The negative credential of prison impaired the employment efforts of both the black man and the white man, but it impaired those of the black man more. Startlingly, the effect was not limited to the black man with a criminal record. The black man without a criminal record fared worse than the white man with one."
Black people commit and are convicted of commiting significantly crime more than white people per capita. Whether this is due to racism, economics, or whatever is irrelevant, but when you can't check specifically for criminal records race becomes an excellent proxy. ~4% of white men will go to jail at some point in their life vs about 28% of black men. https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/Llgsfp.pdf
That said, sex is also an excellent proxy since men commit far more crime than women. I wonder if women are more likely to get hired when criminal background checks are forbidden?
As that Wikipedia article notes, prohibiting questions about criminal records makes employers substantially less likely to hire African-Americans, since race is a strong proxy for arrest rate: https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/133/1/191/4060...
I think there are statistics showing that black people are much more likely to be arrested for committing the same crime as a white person, and thus more likely to have a criminal record even if they don't commit more crimes.
For starters, If you're convicted of a crime, you are much more likely to receive a shorter prison sentence than a minority. The sentencing difference between whites caught with cocaine and blacks caught with crack is an example of this. In general, when interacting with law enforcement for whatever reason (traffic stop, suspicion of drug possession of marijuana, etc.), you are much more likely to receive a warning and not be arrested or given a ticket compared to a minority. Also, when driving across the panhandle of Texas, the police are less likely to stop you. Whenever I've driven through there, police take one look at me and like clockwork, pull me over, often times calling their K9 unit out.
On dating websites, you're more likely to appeal to more women than a minority. And if you date outside of your race, the parents of your significant other are more likely be more accepting of you than someone who is black.
If you were accepted to a prestigious university or received a job offer for a lucrative position, you wouldn't have to endure people questioning your abilities and whispering "He's only here because of affirmative action." I've experienced this despite scoring above the mean in all relevant categories. If you want a recent example of this type of behavior on HackerNews, look here and ctrl-f for gydfi: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13779165
> "Yup, you get the job because of your skin color and your genitals".
I don't think anyone has ever said this specifically. I believe that you're falling into the same trap as the individual that I pointed out above, assuming that you are at a disadvantage for a job because you don't get extra consideration for being a woman or a minority. There is no advantage. In fact, it is still a disadvantage. Even in Silicon Valley, a woman gets paid less for doing the same work as their male colleagues. If you want a recent example, look at the revelations coming out of the sinking ship that is Uber.
That not withstanding, In my experience as part of the team that does hiring where I work (tech company), I find other members show a bias for those who resemble their culture, that culture being people familiar with dank memes and who play video games. They don't realize that when choosing their preferred candidate that they have a preference. It doesn't mean they are racist, sexist, etc. It just means that they have a cognitive bias that they may not be aware of.
> Yet people are happy to claim that there's some kind of conspiracy to keep another race in power. I dunno... I've never been contacted and asked to join the conspiracy.
It's not a conspiracy headed by some cartoonish, mustache twirling villain. It is just the historical remnant of a time when the social order was segregated by race. Just because the civil rights act was passed in the 1960's does not magically wash away the effects of institutionalized racism. Institutions take time to change. It's certainly better than it was, but it's not perfect.
Do you have an arrest record? If not: there's the magic power. Statistically speaking, a poor young black male is much more likely to have an arrest record than a poor young white male.
Edit: holy batman the downvotes. I never considered the possibility that maybe #hnwatch is right.
Communities of color are over-policed. There's a huge racial divide in income, and crimes that tend to be committed by the poor (like shoplifting, loitering, and fare-evasion) are far more likely to be prosecuted than crimes committed by the wealthy (smoking some weed in your suburban living room, fudging your taxes a bit). The end result is that people of color are more likely to have an arrest record, even if they're just as likely to commit a crime as a white person.
because it isn't obviously racist. you can't just say "more african americans and hispanics are arrested than whites or asians, therefore, police are targeting african americans and hispanics unfairly." that's not how it works.
wrt. drug-related crimes, sure, there seems to be a weird disparity (does it take into account 'casual' drug users vs. 'hardcore' drug users?).
you can't say that african americans are arrested at unfair rates. it's more nuanced than that: african americans are probably arrested unfairly for drug-related crimes, but they probably aren't for violent crimes.
unfortunately, I think this is a compounding problem: more african american men in prison means more single-parent households (that are probably also in poverty), which means more crime, which means more african american men in prison.
Black people are more likely to be convicted of drug crimes even when they use drugs at the same rates as white people. Similar for traffic crimes.
Many crimes are poverty-related theft for subsistence, which rich people never need to be tempted with (as they get handouts from their parents) aren't particularly relevant if someone gets a job that eliminates poverty. And childhood poverty is correlated to race.
So yeah, screening by criminal record is intertwined with structural racism.
Tl;dr Since employers cannot ask about criminal history, they use stereotypes to make there decision instead. Studies show the stereotype filtering leads to worse outcomes for PoC.
I came here to say this, thank you for finding the souce.
Simple general comment here, no political valence intended - 13% of the adult male population and 33% of the black adult male population have felony convictions [1].
A felony record is still a scarlet letter in employment and other areas of society. So whatever's causing it, whatever we do about it, this is a huge weight on the male population and on black males in particular.
We can't seriously attempt to address racial issues in the US without addressing this.
From: https://csgjusticecenter.org/reentry/posts/researchers-exami...
> Key findings include:
> * Both black and Hispanic men were less likely to receive a positive response from employers—including a call back or email for an interview or a job offer—compared with white men.
> * Men with criminal records were more likely than women with criminal records to receive a negative response from employers.
> * White men with a criminal record had more positive responses than black men with no criminal record.
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