"1. Black job applicants are about half as likely as white applicants to get an interview callback.
Our individual biases have an impact beyond our one-to-one interactions. S. Michael Gaddis, a sociology professor at UCLA, has published multiple studies on name discrimination in the workforce and how implicit biases about which names that "sound more/less white" lead to discriminatory hiring practices.
Gaddis spoke with Bustle via email regarding the cultural importance of examining things like name discrimination. "Examining discrimination on the basis of names in job applications is the primary way researchers can document racial discrimination in the 21st century," Gaddis said. "The most recent work in this area suggests that black applicants are only 40-60% as likely as white applicants to receive a callback for an interview, even when the applicants' qualifications are the same."
"It also doesn't matter if the applicants are applying for low-wage jobs that do not require college degrees, or applying for jobs with degrees from Harvard, Stanford, and the like," Gaddis continues. "African-Americans still face significant discrimination in the labor market." This disparity can be found across multiple fields. On resumes, on college applications, in elections, our culture still discriminates against names that don't sound white or male."
2. 58 percent of prisoners are black or Hispanic, despite making up one quarter of the U.S. population.
The way the justice system disproportionately affects people of color goes beyond wrongful convictions. The above statistic comes from the NAACP’s criminal justice fact sheet, which also mentions that in 2001 one in six black men had been incarcerated at some point in their lifetime. Overall, black people are incarcerated at six times the rate of white people.
Ava DuVernay’s film 13th examines the way the criminal justice system disproportionately affects black people, specifically as it relates to the 13th amendment which abolished slavery. As the trailer points out, the language in the amendment makes an exception for criminals. If you haven’t already, watch the Oscar-nominated 13th on Netflix and learn about how race and mass incarceration are deeply intertwined in the United States."-Bustle.com
