Page 152 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

6. RACE COMPOSITION
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1992 and 2001, Blacks in America continue to be more than twice as likely
as their White counterparts to be unemployed (U.S. Dept. of Labor, 2002).
Indeed, as we highlight below, there is evidence that Black workers face
disparities in treatment and opportunity at every step of the employment
process, from recruitment and hiring, to mentoring and day-to-day life
within organizations.
Differences in treatment and opportunities between Blacks and Whites
begin even before applicants appear at the organization's door. Interviews
with employers indicate that they commonly recruit applicants by word-
of-mouth referrals or by targeting advertising of job openings to particular
neighborhoods, often avoiding inner city or predominately Black neigh­
borhoods (Kirschenman & Neckerman, 1991). Because word-of-mouth re­
ferrals travel through employees' social networks, they tend to produce
applicants similar to those employees already in place. This can mean that,
at the outset, Blacks and Whites have different levels of knowledge and
awareness of job openings. Moreover, studies show that equally qualified
Black and White applicants have different experiences during the selection
process. A series of clever studies, called "audit studies," examined the dif­
ferential outcomes of Black and White job applicants who were matched in
qualifications, credentials, and interviewing skills (e.g., Bendick, Jackson, &
Reinoso, 1994; Turner, Fix, & Struyk, 1991; see also Bendick, 1998). Because
the pairs of individuals in these studies were so matched, any differences
in their treatment was attributed to race (for a critique of the audit study
method, however, see Heckman, 1998). Studies of this sort conducted by the
Urban Institute in Chicago and Washington D.C. found that Black males
were three times as likely to be turned down for a job as White males
(Mincy, 1993). Similarly, audit studies conducted by the Fair Employment
Council of Greater Washington, Inc., showed that White applicants were
almost 10% more likely to receive interviews than were Black applicants
(Bendick et al., 1994). Overall, the Fair Employment Council studies found
that over 20% of employers treated Black applicants less favorably than
White applicants. Finally, a more recent study that manipulated names
(Black-sounding versus White-sounding) of job applicants on matched re­
sumes found that applicants with White-sounding names were 50% more
likely to be called for interviews than were those with Black-sounding
names (Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2003).
These kinds of disparities in recruitment and selection processes likely
are responsible, in part, for differential Black and White representation
across occupations. United States Department of Labor statistics show that
Blacks are severely underrepresented in some occupations and overrepre­
sented in others, often those with lower status. For example, in 2001, Blacks
made up only 10% of management and executive ranks, while making up