Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Discriminations

Legal Commentary

: Discriminations

The New York Times On Hiring Discrimination ... Again

Five days ago the New York Times published a front page article on the job hunt travails of black college graduates, an article I criticized here. Now, here they go again: today?s ?Whitening? the Résumé adds little or nothing to what was published last week.

Well, there was this: Michael Luo, the New York Times reporter, finds it ?startling? that black job seekers, fearing discrimination, often attempt to disguise their race.

That seemed startling somehow, maybe because of the popular perception that affirmative action still confers significant advantages to black job candidates, a perception that is not borne out in studies. Moreover, statistics show even college-educated blacks suffering disproportionately in this jobless environment compared with whites, as that [earlier] article reported.

What studies? And is there evidence that the black applicants who are ?suffering disproportionately? are in fact proportionately qualified?

On what may be a related point, last week the National Science Foundation published an initial report from its Survey of Earned Doctorates, and the demographic data there may well have some bearing on job prospects, and not just of those with doctorates. A breakdown of that demographic data can be found here.

30,791 doctorates in all fields were awarded to U.S. citizens or permanent residents in 2008, and 2030 of them went to blacks. But of those black doctorates, 758, or over 37%, were in education. 241, or a little under 12%, were in physical sciences or engineering. By contrast, 24% of all the doctorates earned by whites and Asians were in physical sciences or engineering.

If we assume that the demographic distribution of undergraduate majors is not significantly different from the distribution of doctorates, it is certainly possible that black college graduates have a ?disproportionately? harder time finding jobs because they ?disproportionately? earned degrees that carry less weight in the job market.

Full post as published by Discriminations on December 06, 2009 (boomark / email).