Black-sounding names require 50 percent more job applications for a callback

Evidence

In a 2004 study, researchers crafted résumés with a white-sounding name and a black-sounding name, and sent them out in response to employment ads. Job applicants with white-sounding names needed to send out about ten résumés to get an invitation to interview, while job applicants with black-sounding names needed to send about fifteen résumés (50 percent more); the resulting paper was called “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal?” — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 375

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• SEED: The Emily/Greg vs Lakisha/Jamal study is a clean, recognizable data point for an essay about how facial neutrality fails in hiring.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing material on how ostensibly neutral processes (names, labor markets) encode racial disparity.

Related

• Black-sounding names on résumés require fifty percent more applications than white-sounding ones (similarity 0.93)
• Resumes with Muslim names get fewer callbacks than same-qualified white applicants (similarity 0.84)