Is 'Dwight Jackson' a black sounding name? I'd have assumed the person was white if I'd read that name.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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Dwight not so much, but Jackson, yes.
To the point that "Jackson" became jazz/jive-era slang that was the equivalent of "hey, what's up?" when black people who used that slang were talking to each other.
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Over 50% of the people with that surname are Black.
https://discover.23andme.com/last-name/Jackson
That's nationally too. So in a place like Detroit with a large Black population, I feel like people would assume Dwight Jackson was Black.
Agreed, it may just be a case of they weren't hiring but then they were or the first resume was lost or a different manager looked at the resume. There are so many reasons what it could be that it shouldn't be assumed race was a factor unless the hotel specifically said so.
Edit: reading the article I can see the guy applied many times before changing his name. I am slightly more convinced it was based on his name but it could still be they weren't hiring but then they were. Or maybe they just wanted to meet the guy with such an awesome sounding name "Jabroski" sounds like something you would say in the 90s when Pauly Shore was popular. Memorable names stand out and make an impression.
these, among others, are the reasons why i didn't take the same action when i resubmitted my resume under a very WASPy sounding name and the desire gets re-ignited every time i get an interview request after re-submitting my resume the same day my original resume was rejected.
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Middle-aged white guy here. First and last names, total white bread. Middle name? Black. Think "Tyrone" or "Trevon". (LOL, Trevon shows a spell check error on one of the top 20 black male names.)
Couldn't get a response on my resume for 6-weeks, nada. Changed the email to take out my middle name. Next week, 3 interviews and a solid job.
Had a black neighbor with a valley girl accent show up to an interview. 8 white girls waiting for their interviews. They showed her the door and said there was a mistake, no openings. She eventually got hired since her preacher was a top dog at the place.
The good thing about racists is that they're fucking stupid. Just interview the person and say nothing instead of making up an obvious lie.
But what if the interview goes well... Then what? We can't just hire them. Then we'll be forced to maybe face... Something. Not sure exactly what...
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8 white girls waiting for their interviews. They showed her the door and said there was a mistake, no openings.
This is baffling. She could clearly see the other girls, yeah? All applying for the same position?
How do you dismiss one candidate in front of others, and say there are no openings? I don't get it.
They just didn’t finish the sentence. ‘There are no openings for someone of your heritage.’
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I've witnessed this first hand from the hiring side for an IT position. I was going through resumes with my boss and he straight up said, "I don't want any hispanics, I want a white guy." while tossing anything with a hispanic name to the side without even looking beyond that. This was in Orlando in an area with a large hispanic population. The kicker is that my boss was actually hispanic himself!
The kicker is that my boss was actually hispanic himself!
In the UK we call that racist taxi driver syndrome. A lot of immigrants come to the UK and because it's a good money earner, or at least because they think it's a good money earner, they tend to buy a taxi.
Anyway you get in and suddenly they start telling you about all their world views, usually it's along the lines have there been too many immigrants. Even though they are an immigrant themselves.
Very much a case of shutting the door behind themselves.
Haha so true. I remember some my friend's family going on about how we should all vote leave because of all the immigrants.
Mate, you were born in Napoli. You're as Italian as spaghetti. I'm not that kind of British person and, as far as I'm concerned, you're more than welcome here but you're the "immigrant" you hate so much. Not only that, your that being that person while banging on about how bad immigration is to a group of very obviously white native British people. It was just the most bizarre thing ever.
He still has an accent.
I genuinely wanted to be like "but we like you." I don't think that would have gone down very well though.
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His name was already about as white bread as it gets. This is a real and genuine problem when it comes to hiring, but it's going to be a huge uphill battle for him to prove anything here.
When I think of the name "Dwight" I think of Eisenhower or the character from The Office. Not this guy.
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He doesn't need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a civil suit. Essentially, his face value evidence is strong enough to win unless the hotel can provide clear explanation of how it did what it did, for example if they had different people processing different stacks of papers. At the same time, the plaintiff will have a chance for discovery, so who knows what will happen on that front.
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jackson is an extremely common surname in the black community?? the fuck??
It's also extremely common in the white community. They're saying that his real name isn't one that would cause someone to assume you are nonwhite, like Will Dewitt, Ashley Jones, or Casey Smith.
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It's also an extremely common last name among white people. It tells you nothing on a resume. This dude's name is akin to someone named John Smith.
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We had something similar out here where a black family felt their home evaluation was really low when they were getting ready to sell so they had a white couple "show" the home to a different evaluator from the same company and surprise surprise the estimated value was like 30% higher for the white couple.
Hope he wins
Oh Detroit, you so silly.
Edit:: fixed link
Its even more comically bad than you describe and the link suggests.
The settlement was for a workplace racial discrimination lawsuit.
Discrimination^2
I hope this is not a thing either. Issue is the proof, bigots aint putting this shit in emails unless they are trump voters.
But from statistical angle it is getting hard to justify the bullshit system wide but every wrong is settled out if it is that bad.
Nobody is ever at fault tho
This is a well researched phenomenon.
It’s also been demonstrated that these sorts of biases have made their way into the AI models which are commonly used to review applicants.
Models reflect the biases of their training data, garbage in garbage out
There is clearly a LOT of discrimination that happens in the hiring process and basically no oversight or accountability. How else can workers fight discrimination like this without going to the lengths that this man did?
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Freakonomics talked about this ages ago
Not that they are a proper source or anything just... one of those things where it feels true and you keep seeing examples of it forever
Freakonomics lists all their sources at least
There's also been tons of academic studies on it that back it up.
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I often fantasize that one day I'd start my company and require that all resumes be submitted without a name on it.
This is trivially easy to do if you're having resumes submitted through a form. But companies are not doing it.
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