Maybe this study has hit upon not so much a hidden form of racism as classism in corporate America. Were all African American candidates equally discriminated against, or did the ones that appeared to come from upper/middle class backgrounds have a distinct advantage. Perhaps names like LaToya or Antwon are seen as having come from lower income African American families. In that case, it would be less the color of one's skin as the perceived level of education/work ethic that is at play here. Did the researchers also send out resumes from Billy Bob and Norma Lou who graduated at the top of their class from West Virginia State U? If not, how can you be sure that racism alone is to blame?

I'd also be interested to know if the researchers actually sent candidates to in-person interviews.

Read the study. No one actually went on the interviews because these were cooked resumes (there have been other studies where trained candidates with cooked resumes have been used with similar results but is harder to get reasonable sample sizes with that sort of study).

Secondly, even if it were "classism". the perception that "LaToya" or "Antwon" are lower income/lower class names - is itself based on racial stereotyping.

No, this isn't a valid critique of the study's conclusions.

But you didn't address the second part of the question - did the researchers include Bubba Joe John Jim Jack as a potential candidate? That is an important question to ask because if not, the researchers conclusions at best only addressed that discrimination occurred - not WHY it occurred.

Second, the study doesn't answer WHY certain candidates were excluded, we can only surmise based on our own stereotypes. Do you know if any of the people receiving resumes were Hispanic? Black? Asian? How do we know all of them were white?

I dunno about the normalization of names like Bubba in the study. That's a legitimate question.

But the race of the evaluators doesn't matter. As the detailed work buy the New England Federal Reserve found in their similar study of loan applicants, the race of the evaluator has little bearing on their likelihood of applying prejudicial assessments. In fact they found a slightly ELEVATED bias against minorities if the evaluator themselves was a minorty.

I think that second part is important for this study in particular. Whether it applied to other studies is irrelevant to me.

You can hardly claim racism (in the traditional KKK sense) if a black HR person disqualifies a candidate because they're named "LaToya" or a hispanic HR person disqualifying someone named Pedro Garcia.

They may in fact be jumping to conclusions about the person's race and all the associated baggage that carries with it - but that's not what I would call racism. You can't claim to have been discriminated against unless you know who's on the other end and what their motivation was - otherwise all you're doing is feeding your persecution complex.

In any event I don't hold much faith in any of the studies the Undercover Economist presents - they're never complete or statistically valid.

Racism is applying false mythos based on physiognomy. So yeah a black person can act in a racist manner towards other blacks. Think about the slave overseer who treats other slaves as animals.

jumping to conclusions about the person's race and all the associated baggage that carries with it -

That is PRECISELY what racism IS. "jumping to conclusions" is pre-judgement aka prejudice. And the "associated baggage" is the false mythos. If that's not racism, what is?

When you say racism, you know the ideas that you bring up in your audience. Racism is always wrong, narrow minded and inappropriate. Stereotypes aren't always wrong, they aren't always narrow minded, and they are sometimes appropriate. When you claim that all stereotyping of blacks is racist by definition, you're not being reasonable, and you're certainly not correct. A racist assumes that there's some genetic inferiority of one race when compared to another. Stereotyping doesn't require the sort of belief of inherently present differences, but accepts that there are differences based on cultural and subcultural influences on people -- race being among those influencers.

Stereotypes actually almost always ARE wrong, precisely because they are abstractions and aggregations and thus do not fit any individual. So to apply a stereotype to an individual is almost guaranteed to be wrong.

The problem with your arguement also is that while it seems reasonable to assert that

[stereotyping] accepts that there are differences based on cultural and subcultural influences on people -- race being among those influencers.

Except that there is no evidence to support that "race" has any influence in and of itself on the cultural and sub-cultural influences on people. Furthermore - and more importantly - while it seems that "cultural differences" are a reasonable basis for making a choice between candidate A and candidate B - this really only is valid if the cultural differences are

• Validly interpreted (ie blacks are lazy HAS TO be true for it the be a non-mythologized stereotype)
• Applicable to the circumstance ("THEY don't value education" can only be a legitimate distinction if the job specifically requires advocacy or pursuit of education)

What makes your premise simply an excuse for racism is that there is almost never any actual application of the latter, and the former has yet to be justified in any statistically valid manner.

So what you are left with are emotionally driven stereotypes that are tied to visible phenotypes. And that is racism

"Almost always are wrong", which means that they sometimes are not wrong, which only goes to show that even you know that stereotypes are not inherently wrong, irrational or racist. Why fight it? Dismissed.

Someone who gets shot in the head sometimes survives.

That is a long way from saying that claiming there is no connection between being shot in the head and death is irrational, and inherently wrong.

The reason that stereotypes will SOMETIMES fit is precisely because given the huge variance of any population, you can alwasy find outliers to fit anything.

People from the South have an accent -- that's a stereotype, and it's true. Black people tend to use certain speech patterns, that's a stereotype that is also true an extremely high percentage of the time. Both of those accents are influenced by culture -- Southern Culture, and Black Culture -- and the accents both feed back to the culture itself, reinforcing it and keeping it distinct from the larger culture. You shouldn't be obtuse on purpose; there is no doubt that there are differences between the subcultures of white people, black people, Hispanics and Asians. It's not racist to mention those differences. If you think otherwise, then you're simply wrong. Dismissed.

That's an interesting example. The stereotype that "people from the south have an accent" is actually false. EVERYONE has an accent. Every region has regional patterns of speech that a large percentage of the population adopts. But the only indicator that these speech patterns actually provide is the regional association.

Furhtermore the regional associations are hardly predictive. So called 'southern' accent is actually very close to the old british accent, and thus you cannot even use the accent to draw conclusions.

And it is completely FALSE to assert that those accents are influence by culture. They are purely audio-linguistic patternings - vocal muscle-memory (that's why singers lose their native accents and pick up whatever accent is associated with that song).

And this is precisely where stereotypes like

People from the South have an Accent

goes so horribly wrong. You USE it as a marker for culture - when it is nothing of the sort. You USE it as a means of stereotyping and drawing conclusions that you have about the imagined or projected cultural values that are associated.

And those are just that, imagined or projected. And thus the "stereotypes" associated with your projections are just incorrect.

When the variance across a subculture is equal to or greater than the variance within the general culture (and that is the case in all of thes "subcultures" you are referring to) then they are not useful means for drawing conclusions. Yet the stereotypes about these "subcultures" are used to do exactly that. And hence they are worse than useless, they are mythologies

I have a southern accent, and I know I do because I know live among people in the Midwest who have what I would call the lack of any accent (perhaps you'd call it a Midwestern accent?). I also tend not to be able to spell, because I was taught to spell by phonics, which means that when I "sound out" a word to spell it, I tend to leave out a vowel or two. In other words, what started out as simply mimicking my parent's mode of speech turned in to a sort of educational handicap which in turn reinforces a stereotype of Southern People (that we can't spell too good). I'm here to tell you that is a true statement -- I know that nobody in my family can spell worth a damn, even the well educated ones. There are obviously systemic reasons behind our collective inability to spell (there's no law which says we should have been taught to spell by sounding things out, is there?), but that being as it is, there's still a solid chance that if you come across a Southern Boy and give him a big word to spell, he's going to fail you.

Hell, boy, you can argue until you're blue in the face that there are no valid stereotypes, and you're just going to pass out wrong. Stereotyping is built into our genetic blueprint, because our ancestors found it helpful to remember that bears, for instance, are more often angry than not. It may also be helpful to remember that a black kid with certain tattoos and a certain style of dress is just as likely to be a gang banger as not. You can certainly go through life rejecting that particular stereotype, and that's alright as long as you don't live in an area where gang-bangers live. Of course, where I come from, they call folks like you a mark ;).

Sure its built into our genetic blueprint. So are many other things that are "sub optimal" - The difference sensitivity to H2SO4 compared to HCN (cyanide), our attraction to fats and sweets in the diet, wisdom teeth and the appendix.

Speaking of gang-bangers - who is more likely to cause you harm: 4 black kids in baggies, 4 hispanic kids in baggies, 4 white kids in baggies?

Stereotypes don't work - as your example of spelling being used as a marker for intellect demonstrated. They are an outgrowth of the patterning our brains do, and just like in science we have to develop explicit methods to deal with the dramatic distortions this introduces (ie double blind and the null hypothesis). Overall the pattering works for basic things, but for more sophisticated things like human interactions, it is highly flawed.

I'm in KCMO, so statistically, I've bot the most to worry about from the black dude -- of course, another black dude has even more to worry about than I do in that situation. Second, at least in my area, is the white boy if I'm on the East Side. if I'm in NE KC, then I'm most worried about an Italian or Mexican. In S. KC, then again I'm worried about white boys. N. Kansas City gives you nothing to worry about, because it's just a bunch of rich kids, regardless of race. All of that is completely based on stereotypes (and some actual data...though I couldn't tell you the real numbers). Again, ignore good sense at your peril. I'm sure there are plenty of crack heads that love to see folks like you coming. Me? Maybe I'm missing some wonderfully inspiring urban poet who just happens to look like a gang banging piece of crap -- I'll risk it.