I understand that overtime and without government intervention in labor markets that employers that discriminate based on race will suffer economic penalties compared to those that do not. What accounts for the fact that African-Americans with black sounding names will receive fewer callbacks with comparable resumes to whites with white sounding names?
A study at the University of Chicago that I linked to above discusses this fact. What is a possible explanation for this? Is it just human beings resulting to stereotypes above the facts listed below on the resume?
Many employers get tons of resumes, and it doesn’t make sense to interview everyone, or even spend that much time deciding who to interview. These ‘black-sounding’ names are (correctly or incorrectly) generally associated with poor social status, and often with other worse negative stereotypes. It’s likely that these names often just become another criteria that eliminates consideration, just like a low GPA or no experience. Why bother calling them back when you have more than enough people applying who are statistically (in truth or in perception) more likely to be what you are looking for.
Obviously a person with a crazy name might be the right person for the job, just like someone with poor grades, no experience, a prior felony, etc could be. But it is much simpler to just eliminate a certain percentage of applications right away than to bother looking for them.
I’m sure many people just want to find people who have traits they are familiar with. They have experience hiring people with professional sounding names, good grades, etc, and decide to just stick with that. I’m not saying it is right or the best method, but it just makes sense in some cases.
Of course, I’m sure there are also employers who see the name and think “I don’t want to hire a black person, and this person is probably black.” But as you said, they will have to pay for this discrimination if they are passing up qualified applicants.
Also you have to take into account that hiring a minority of any kind can potentially open you up to lawsuits down the road if you end up having to fire them. Thats an added business risk you have to take into account and probably results in at least some of this behavior.