Racism in the Job Market

Imagine being a young black student who is about to graduate from a four year-university. You seem to be in the minority, not just racially, but in success as well. It seems that, for some reason, all of your white friends already have jobs lined up for after graduation, whereas all of your employment applications have been turned down. However, it's not that uncommon for a college senior to be unemployed, so you don't fret much. Fast-forward six months: you're still unemployed, despite the fact that everyone else you knew from school eventually found a job. You have the exact same credentials as them; a good GPA, a degree in the same field, and an internship under your belt. What is it that is preventing you from being employed like your classmates? If you've been keeping up with my blog over the past few months, the answer will not surprise you.

I've presented you with a ton of research that has been done to shed light on the racial bias that still permeates most facets of society. Often times, people don't even realize that they are being racist. Could this "phantom" racism affect the employment of minorities as well? There is significant evidence to say that, yes, there is an inherent racial bias in the job market, even in modern times. While it is common knowledge that it was harder to find a job as a black person for much of our nation's history, many would be surprised to hear that there is still a gap in employment, and socioeconomic standing in general, between minorities, especially black, and white people. According to the source, the unemployment rate for African-Americans is an entire 50% higher than it is for white people. According to many blacks, there is blatant discrimination by employers based on race. For instance, one University of Chicago graduate who was quoted in the previous link said

"one hiring manager became excited while talking to him over the phone about how lucky the company was to hear from someone with a top business school education, but once the company representatives met him and saw that he was Black, 'Their eyes kind of hit the ceiling a bit. It was kind of quiet for 45 seconds.'". 

Some of you reading this may attribute this discrimination to the education gap between minorities and whites. While this definitely does contribute some, it doesn't explain every statistic. For instance, the unemployment rate for white college graduates in 2013 was around half that of black graduates. Since both of these groups have the same amount of education, why are they seeing different results in terms of employment? There are many possible causes, but race seems like the most likely culprit. Many different researchers have resorted to conducting experiments like this one, where they send identical resumes to firms with only two variables changed: race and name. In the linked example, an African-American woman owned and operated two Monster accounts (a job-searching service on the Internet), one being listed as white, and the other, black. Everything else was kept the same. Ultimately, the woman's white alter-ego received nine phone calls and seven emails, whereas her real account only received two emails, both of which also went to her fake profile.

With numbers and research like these, it is very hard to comprehend how somebody could try to deny that racism is still prevalent in American society. Of course, what occurs today is nowhere near as bad as what was happening in the 1960s and earlier, but many would be surprised to learn how little progress American society has actually made in being inclusive of all races. Trends like these, as well as the gap in education, are reasons why African-Americans, and minorities in general, remain more prominent than they should be in poor neighborhoods and in prisons. Sadly, this is an issue that we probably won't do away with for many decades, as it would require sweeping social and economic changes. However, in order to have any ounce of credibility when we call ourselves a "land of opportunity", Americans must do their part in destroying racism from the bottom up.

Race & Education

Education is a very interesting institution because, one way or another, everybody has to go through it. Obviously, some are more successful than others. Because of this, education is a good place to look at points of demographic divergence and see trends. While researching for my persuasive essay about the socioeconomic achievement gap, I found many disturbing things out about how American kids are doing in schools. Basically, unless you are well off, white and straight, you have a decent chance of experiencing some sort of setback in your academic career, whether you notice it or not. Since this blog is about race, I'd like to delve deeper into the statistics behind racial achievement in school.

If you couldn't guess, there is a problem when it comes to race in education. Many different minority groups such as blacks or Hispanics make, on average, worse test scores than their white peers. This happens across the board; it doesn't matter the subject or the class. This gap extends to every single minority group, save only for Asian-Americans, who actually tend to do better than even whites in an academic setting. Also, minorities have problems graduating high school with only just above 70% of Hispanics and 68% of blacks graduating. This is obviously a huge problem, since education is what prepares our children for the world, giving them the skills they need to succeed. How is it that entire ethnic groups can be doing so much worse than whites? It's preposterous to propose that black or Hispanic people are just less intelligent, since there is no evidence to support such a claim. What is it, then, that is causing these minority students to achieve at such low levels? Nobody has completely figured it out yet, but there are many different theories.

One of the most plausible theories is that, since minorities are more likely to be impoverished, this crosses over to the classroom. As was mentioned before, poor people are disadvantaged in school from the beginning. They have more cognitive difficulty right off the bat, and this bad trend only gets worse later in their academic career because being bad at school makes it harder to get better. Also, schools with large amounts of poverty are likely to not have much funding as well, which could definitely affect learning. According to this article, African-Americans are exposed to high-poverty schools at a much higher rate than whites. Could it be that poverty is the only reason behind whites out-performing minorities in school? It could be a large contributor, but research suggests that the problem goes deeper in many ways.

One popular theory with certain researchers is the "acting white" theory. This is a theory that suggests that black kids are discouraged, explicitly or implicitly, from succeeding at school because their peers judge them for "acting white". This is something that can make sense; peer pressure is very effective to teenagers, especially when you live in a dangerous neighborhood where every friend you have helps. Also, many black celebrities have confessed to have experienced talk similar to this. Even Barack Obama referenced this theory as a Senator in 2004, saying "Children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white.". Barack himself has certainly read a book or two in his youth, so is what he is saying true?  According to some, this theory is absolute malarkey. What these young, black scholars experience is the same sort of treatment that I and many other kids got as a kid. The "acting white" accusation is, in reality, just an extension of being called a nerd or a geek. While being called a nerd has probably discouraged one or two kids from succeeding academically, it is not a widespread social problem that needs to be solved.

When trying to solve a problem, it is very hard to think of of preventative measures when you have no idea about the causation of said problem. I have only talked about two ideas that are tossed around -- there are dozens of potential reasons as to why there are achievement gaps in American schools today. It could be as simple as having English as a second language; an issue that is probably very relevant to the millions of children who are born to illegal immigrants. While the issue itself is ambiguous, the goal is straightforward: to provide every single American child with the same opportunity to succeed in a country that prides itself in giving everyone "equal opportunity". It is often stated that a goal of the American economy is "economic equity". I find it very hard to believe that equity is achievable when minority kids are performing at a lower academic level before they get into middle school. These are the things that need to be fixed, guys.

Racism at Home

In most people's eyes, racism in America is a regional problem at worst. To most people, the face of racism is an impoverished man from North Carolina with a rifle in one hand and a can of smokeless tobacco in the other, or an old, Kentuckian woman who clutches her pearls at the sight of a minority. Many believe that American racism only occurs within the Dixie South. I would be willing to bet that around zero people were surprised when a study came out in 2013 that made the claim that the South is the more racist half of our country. While I wouldn't disagree with these people, I would say that the gap in racism is mightily overstated. While it is not as conspicuous as it is south of the Mason-Dixon line, discrimination is still present even in Pennsylvania. This is something I noticed while in high school, which I will talk about here.

I come from a quaint little town in south-eastern PA named Wernersville. I've placed a dot on a map to show exactly where I come from:

Now, I didn't live in the most backwoods part of the state, but the area wasn't exactly a liberal haven, either. The first day of hunting season was basically a holiday where I'm from. One of the defining characteristics of Berks County, however, is Reading. Reading is the main city in Berks, and it lies smack-dab in the middle of the county boundaries. What makes Reading notable is that, in 2012, it was coined the "poorest city in the nation", with 50% of its residents living under the poverty line. Also, despite the overwhelming white-ness of the surrounding area, Reading is ~56% Hispanic, with over 30% of its residents claiming Puerto Rican ancestry (Reading also became famous for its ugly christmas tree this past holiday season, but that's another story). A former coal town, Reading really lost its luster once the industry slowed down, as well as when the Monopoly-famous Reading Railroad declined in importance.

What does this have to do with racism, you may ask? First off, Reading was kind of the joke of the county. Reading kids were seen as trashy and incapable almost all of the time. Also, if there was a new student in my school district who happened to be Hispanic, most people assumed that they were fresh out of Reading. Opinions of them would differ greatly from those of other kids. Weirdly enough, I never got such a treatment when I showed up as a biracial kid from the city, but maybe that was because I acted "white". Even teachers would crack jokes about the "immigrants" from Reading, as if they were somehow separate from your average white student. 

Another catalyst of backhanded racism at my school was a child protection agency a town over named Bethany Children's Home. Bethany was a sanctuary for kids from troubled homes in Reading and across the country. This sanctuary just happened to lie within Conrad Weiser School District, so the kids who lived there went to my school. This was very controversial among many of the people in my town who didn't want their kids to go to school with "thugs" and "degenerates". 

The kids who went to Bethany were overwhelmingly black or Hispanic, and almost all of them came from bad neighborhoods in large cities. What was too hard for people in my district to understand was that black people from the city are not automatically criminals. While there were a few bad apples, like there are in any population of kids, most of the students from Bethany were extremely empathetic and humble people. They had a little bit of edge to them, but that's what happens to anyone who grows up in a dangerous environment. However, kids at Conrad Weiser did not hesitate in their discrimination. Whenever a fight occurred, everyone would automatically jump to conclusions: 

"Was it a Bethany kid?"

"Of course it was. His name was probably Daquan or something"

"Why do they even go here?"

All of this is indicative of a sort of veiled racism that my school district harbored for these Bethany students. My friend created a survey for our sociology class that dealt with topics concerning Bethany and racism, and it was so controversial that many teachers complained and he had to make a new one. The thing is, the survey was controversial because it was accusatory in nature -- it made people realize that they were racist in their beliefs. Over my time at Conrad Weiser, Bethany became a veil that allowed people to take the easy route and be racist without being open about it. 

This hidden racism is what tends to prevail among most Americans nowadays. While it is a huge social misstep to come out openly against a minority group, people still find a way to be racist by using different descriptors: thugs, welfare queens, and Bethany kids. When these terms are used, they evoke a certain image: a minority. This is something that, while decidedly true in my hometown and presumably many others, is hard for many people to accept. In my opinion, focusing on these backhanded discriminatory buzzwords is the next step in fighting racism in our country. Hopefully, within my lifetime, people will be able to accept this and fix themselves.

An Introduction To The Topic Of Race

One of the most important talking points in today's society is race. Race has governed our lives for centuries, and in many places across the globe, continues to influence society. Recently, there have been many events in our country that have brought race to the forefront of American discussion. Some of these events have been successes; others tragedies. For example, the election of President Barack Obama in 2008 was a significant milestone in the fight for racial equality. His was such a significant election that many Americans thought that, after that November day, we no longer lived in a racially divided country. Many used the phrase "post-racial" to describe this new society. Even more recent, however, was a string of African-American casualties at the hands of on-duty police officers. These tragedies garnered massive media attention, and caused many U.S. citizens to question the labeling of our country as post-racial. To this day, the debate continues over whether these killings were racially motivated or not, and what this means for our nation.

Before I begin this blog, I would like to make some clarifications as to what race actually is. First, race is a social construct that came into being relatively recently. If you do not have time to read the linked article--which I highly recommend you do, if only because it is very thought-provoking--I'll sum it up here. Essentially, race as a concept arose as recently as the 17th century as a direct result of the Atlantic slave trade. In their never-ending quest to divide and conquer the entire world, European empires took millions of Africans from their homeland and forced them to do much of the heavy lifting for the colonization effort. After many anti-slavery movements cropped up, slavers needed to come up with new justifications for the enslaving of African peoples. They started to accuse Africans of being genetically inferior, proposing that white Europeans had a "God-given right" to enslave these people. As generations were born with these ideas being forced into their heads, these assertions became the basis of racism. For the first time in human history, humans began discriminating against others based on physical characteristics, as opposed to cultural  and ethnic differences. With this, it is important to note that race is only a sociological concept--there is no such thing as "race" in biology or genetics.

I've decided to write about this topic because it is one that I am very passionate about. There are so many logical inconsistencies with statements made by every side of the argument and it truly grinds my gears. Also, although I've never personally experienced discrimination, I happen to be of mixed ancestry myself: my mom is white and my dad is hispanic. Overall, I am very excited to write about this topic, and look forward to discuss racial issues that I am passionate about.