White Liberals Present Themselves as Less Competent in Interactions with African-Americans

[laughing dog]

Conservatives: Look everyone, libruhls are elitists!!11!
Liberals: Uhoh, we'd better start talking empathetically to groups instead of being intellectually detached. Let's do that.
Conservatives: Look everyone, libruhls are talk empathetically to everyone now, even black people. Now they're elitists and racists!!111!

Can I put that post in my garden to scare away the crows?

Put right underneath the photo of Murray Rothbard.

 

[ronburgundy]

Here is a 2017 meta-analysis of 21 similar studies:

Meta-analysis of field experiments shows no change in racial discrimination in hiring over time
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/09/11/1706255114.full

This is real, Loren. Repeatedly evidenced, not assumed. It's ongoing and commonplace. And since you have been shown other studies like this, and others of a related type, many, many times on this forum, you already know it to be the case, you just prefer to pretend otherwise.

I do not doubt the existence of racial discrimination, but combining 21 piles of shit just gets a big pile of shit. The resume/application studies all have the same problem of using names to imply race that are confounded with not only frequency of the name (most common name versus extremely rare), but also how how foreign or non-English speaking the name sounds and objective associations with education level and SES. The meta-analysis only tells use that employers respond differently to the name "Emily" than "Lakisha", and provide no evidence that this is due to any racial implications of the names.

While the analysis includes some studies that used in-person interviews of people with "similar" resumes, those were the older studies because that method is less common now due to the in-person interviews being less common in general. Thus, no conclusions about change of discrimination over time can be made from those studies. Also, the in-person studies have their own problems, since they rely upon an assumption that the different interviewees are acting identically in an actual uncontrolled interpersonal interview situation, which is implausible even for two different people of the same race. Plus, these interviewees are part of the research team and aware of and likely believers in the hypothesis being tested (Thus, making the studies not true experiments). In fact, if the interviewees were acting in a natural authentic manner, then the black interviewees would likely act with less confidence. A growing body of research on "stereotype threat" that shows that if a person merely is aware that their is a stereotype about their group doing worse on a task, then the person will actually perform worse and lower than their real capabilities.

What is needed to get valid data on actual racial discrimination in hiring is situations where all job-relevant information is on "paper" and thus equivalent, and yet race is directly conveyed in some manner that, unlike names, does not confound race with other relevant variables (such as an pic of the applicant or just a racial identification question included as part of the application).
There are studies that have done this, but all were excluded from that meta-analysis.
I will make a separate post about a glaring example of such a study, so we can keep discussion of it separate from the issues raised here
and that apply to the problems with all "name" based studies such as many claiming evidence of racism, whether in hiring or the type in the OP.

Some good points there.

However, I am going to politely suggest that you are being (a) too dismissive of the 21 studies which don't use explicit race information in the resumes (such as stating ethnicity) and (b) too accepting of the study you posted shortly after which did explicitly state it (but only in some resumes).

In reverse order, doing (b) first. It is a single study, and also, partly as a result of this the sample size is much smaller than for the meta-analysis of the 21 studies (for which the sample size was a total of approximately 55,500 resumes).

Sample size isn't magic and does nothing to fix the flaws in method. It only overcomes problems of avoiding patterns that emerge by random chance due to sampling error. And it is a basic fact of probability that an increase in sample size has exponentially diminishing benefits once you go beyond a couple hundred observations. The one study I referenced sent out a total of 1374 resumes, which given the absolute massive size of the observed differences, random sampling error is not a plausible account for the effects. And even if you unreasonably assume that it might have been sampling error, that would still mean that any actual anti-black racism in hiring by these companies is so extremely rare that random sampling error could make the results come out in the extreme opposite direction.

Also, it isn't really a "single study". As those of us who conduct large complex research designs know, the difference between a "single" study and multiple studies is an arbitrary matter of how you choose to present it. They replicated the method in 3 regions and 3 different employment domains and analyze each separately. They could have just as easily presented them as multiple studies, and conceptually they are the same as replications (although by the same lab), each with enough observations to have the statically power to rule our sampling error. In no region or domain was their a bias in favor of white, and in all 3 regions and domains there was a numerical bias in favor of blacks, though it was too small to reach significance in 1 region and 1 domain.

Third, the study is older than any in the 21, being from 1980, and may represent out of date information (the situation regarding the prevalence of affirmative action policies may have differed for example, and I read in a very recent article in The New Yorker that businesses were 'expansive in their efforts to adopt affirmative action throughout the 70's'). I am aware of one other study from around the time of the one you posted which showed similar results (blacks favoured over whites) but in that 1978 study, resumes were only sent to companies which were operating an affirmative action hiring policy, which may have skewed the results, which were slight in any case.

Yes, unfortunately the domain of research on racial discrimination has suffered greatly from being dominated by ideologues with little regard for scientific rigor. They use methods that allow for many other factors to produce the result, then interpret it as only being due to race. Thus, there are almost no field studies in the last few decades that have manipulated perceived race directly and very little acknowledgment that this is a problem. I explicitly acknowledged the limitations of the study I referenced and didn't present it as evidence that their is no discrimination in other areas or more or less today. I present it as a contrast in method where the results can be more validly interpreted as a response to race itself, and that it's results do provide strong evidence that for a significant % of large companies there was more "reverse racism" than racism in 1980. Which does imply that there is likely reverse racism today, especially in contexts where the decision makers are likely to be motivated by either personal views, institutional policy, or fear of scrutiny to increase minority representation. It doesn't imply there is no anti-black discrimination, either in 1980 or today. But the meta-analysis you presented provides little valid evidence either way.

Regarding (a). First Lakisha was only one name used. In the first study cited, there were 36 names used altogether, including 9 different ones for 'African-American female'. Second, surnames were also included, so for example Lakisha was paired with the surname Washington, thereby adding to the racial clue and reducing the possibility of the person being mistaken for a foreigner. Finally, all names were matched against the most frequently used names, for the ethnic group they were intended to represent, in the region to which the resumes were sent.

The Lakisha-Emily paradigm is the most common and frequently adopted. Also, most the most common names for blacks are also common among whites, such that most people with that name are white. For example, there are more black boys named "Anthony" than "Tremanye" (one of the names used in the 36 name study), and yet most boys named "Anthony" in the US are white. Because whites outnumber blacks in the US by 6 to 1, names that are relatively common and has phonetic ties and roots to English words will imply a white person. The names that would reliably imply a non-white person are names that are overall rather uncommon and have foreign sounding roots. Which is why that study using 36 names used female names rooted in African and Arabic languages like Lakisha, Aisha, Kenya (and actual foreign country), while the "White" names were more like Emily, Jill, and, Sarah. And use of many names doesn't matter if the problem exists for some of the names. They don't show that the results emerge with each name, but rather lump the result together for the whole batch of white vs. black names. Just one or two names that imply to some employers a non-native English speaker would be sufficient to produce the reported results.

In addition, even if a name is highly common among blacks and only among blacks, that means that it is relatively uncommon to the most of those doing the hiring and would still be more likely to sound foreign to them. Plus, adding "Washington" to "Lakisha" only reduces the problem, it doesn't solve it. If a person is being thoroughly analytic about it, then sure, they should use all that information to consciously reach the conclusion that the applicant is likely an American black, but of course that is not how people work. The effect is subtle and usually below overt awareness. The name Lakisha still sounds like a foreign word and their brain reacts to it as such, with the accompanying "Washington" merely weakening that impact to be somewhere in between just "Lakisha" alone or just "Washington" alone. The effect only needs to be subtle, small, indirect, and on a small % of the employers to wind up accounting for the result.

 

[ronburgundy]

For the record, nothing in the OP studies imply that anyone was "dumbing themselves down", nor is there any evidence that anyone was trying to appear "less competent", despite the baseless pseudo-science conclusions being drawn by the study authors.
People were given a limited set of adjectives to choose from to put in a letter to someone. The so-called "less competent" words were simply the more common wildly understood words that most people would naturally use. The "more competent" words were those that conveyed similar meaning but were needlessly more esoteric and less commonly used, like saying "euphoric" rather than "happy", which one would use when one is more concerned with showing off and establishing social status than with making sure the listener understands what you are saying. In fact, Euphoric and melancholy are likely to be overly dramatic and extreme in their implied emotions in most situations where "happy" and "sad" are more generally applicable. Thus, use of the "competent" words implies someone trying to hard.

So what? The reality was liberals changed the words, conservatives did not. It doesn't matter why people picked one word over another, it does matter that they made different picks depending on the race of the person they were talking to. We have a decision in which race is clearly a factor and no other reasonable explanation for it--thus a strong suspicion of racism.

Funny how you are among the first to see the flaws in the exact same methods when they are used to conclude racism in hiring, but then gleefully and irrationally leap to the conclusion of racism by liberals here. I've explained in detail why using more commonly understood terms to communicate with a person with a Swahili name of Lakisha makes sense, regardless of the race of the person with that name. In fact, that major confounding factor of implied language proficiency of the other person matters even more in these studies than the hiring studies, because the outcome variable is use of language.

The liberals lower their speech level, the conservatives don't.

Yeah, that is called a floor effect. The conservatives were already talking at a "lower level" than liberals when speaking to Emily. There was less room for them to lower it any further when speaking to Lakisha. There were only two options to choose from for each concept. If they already chose "happy" over "Euphoric" when speaking to Emily, then there was no "lower" word to choose for Lakisha.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Well, great point other than this wasn't the case at all:

The researchers found that liberal individuals were less likely to use words that would make them appear highly competent when the person they were addressing was presumed to be black rather than white. No significant differences were seen in the word selection of conservatives based on the presumed race of their partner.

One of the other studies linked to earlier (and now I can't find it, I think ruby posted it) demonstrated exactly what I was saying, that conservatives actually increase their level, or whatever the term was, when speaking to minorities in work related situations.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

IF by "cultural" you mean poverty, then yes. Poverty accounts for more variance in who goes to college than any other factor and most of the racial gap in college attendance.
Look at the graph below with compares college enrollment rates for kids graduating from public non-charter schools, depending upon the high or low income of the neighborhood which is highly related to school quality, and other variables including race and urban vs. suburban vs. rural.

Note that poverty is to a fair degree the result of cultural factors. Where you are going wrong is thinking it's a cause.

Income of the neighborhood trumps (pun intended) the other factors.

All other factors? Or only the factors shown in the graph?

Because absent fathers are a big hurt. As is one's mother having children early.

No, it only suggests that when companies are hiring college educated applicants who have a tangible demonstrated work ethic and minimal qualifications in the form of a degree, then racist assumptions about applicants have less room to play a role. And even then, the observed results may only apply to large companies that likely have very low % of black employees and fear they might garner an investigation by the EEOC. There is not a rational basis to generalize that discrimination does not occur outside these situations, and it is prior acts of discrimination that create the highly unequal playing field that then impact decisions that favor whites though not directly due to their race.

If it truly were about racism it would persist even with a demonstration of being qualified. What we have here is a population where the applicants are actually equal--and it's reflected in what we see--if there's any racism it's AA-racism. That strongly suggests that what we see without the controlled situation is not about race but other factors.

The vast majority of the "research" that shows "discrimination" is seriously flawed, taking disparate results as proof in the face of obvious other factors.

The flaws of the research is largely due to inherent practical obstacles to conducting a true controlled experiment that allows clear causal inferences while also being realistic enough to have implications for actual hiring situations.

When they fail to consider whether race is a proxy for socioeconomic status they failed. Period. Because most "racism" turns out to be socioeconomic status, not race.

It is clear instance where absence where absence of direct evidence is not in any way evidence of absence. There is evidence beyond reasonable doubt that a large % of US whites hold racist views against blacks. There is also plenty of evidence that such worldview beliefs impact many aspects of behavior. Thus, it would be just short of an inexplicable miracle if many whites did not discriminate against blacks in many situations. The general information we know combine to make this conclusion a near logical certainty. Those who demanding direct experimental evidence of it before accepting this conclusion is just intellectual dishonesty fueled by racism itself.

Proof beyond doubt? The only thing I have heard in this regard is that stupid IAT--which in reality simply shows it's easier to learn something that to change the pattern you learned.

(For example, more blacks have criminal records and those with criminal records rarely get good jobs no matter what race the are. Or take that bit about blacks getting inferior treatment in the ER--yes, it's true--but its a matter of the ER, not their race. Inner city ERs don't provide as good care as suburban ERs and more blacks go to the inner city ERs.)

Yeah, but those factors are themselves partly a product of racial discrimination and most certainly a partial byproduct of historical discrimination. I realize that these indirect downstream impacts of prior discrimination require a different type of response and are just inherently problematic to remedy at all, because it is not possible to know exactly where the discrimination occurred and which portion of the outcome is tied to past discrimination effects. For example, some blacks are criminals for the same reasons some whites are criminals, but the greater criminality of blacks is largely if not entirely a product of accumulated discrimination, whether it was the criminal being directly mistreated at some point in their own life or going all the way back to the Jim Crow laws and slavery that created cultural forces that fuel poverty, helplessness, and distrust for the "law". We can and must acknowledge this reality while still holding criminals themselves at being immediately responsible for their actions.

Inner city ERs don't provide as good care because of money. It's generally socioeconomic, not race. (Although there is something of a racial component--from an unwillingness to get rid of bad docs who are black.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Because the main problem, as he sees it (I think) is cultural disinclination on the part of blacks to better themselves. See for comparison: asians.

Not that there isn't at least some truth in that of course. Imo, there is. But it's quite complex in overall terms.

It's not so much about being willing to better themselves as not looking on a long enough time horizon. The effect is an unwillingness to better oneself, but that's because the payoff from education is far enough down the road that they don't value it.

If that was done, the question after that would become 'how many Americans are actually up for enacting social measures even on socioeconomic grounds'?

I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

 

[Jarhyn]

Because the main problem, as he sees it (I think) is cultural disinclination on the part of blacks to better themselves. See for comparison: asians.

Not that there isn't at least some truth in that of course. Imo, there is. But it's quite complex in overall terms.

It's not so much about being willing to better themselves as not looking on a long enough time horizon. The effect is an unwillingness to better oneself, but that's because the payoff from education is far enough down the road that they don't value it.

If that was done, the question after that would become 'how many Americans are actually up for enacting social measures even on socioeconomic grounds'?

I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

Well, when "right now" is supremely shitty, there's much more psychological pressure to escape it. The desperation if wanting to make the awfulness stop drives a shortsightedness that is difficult to ignore.

 

[Mumbles]

What I find amusing (and disturbing) about all this is that its the liberals are the ones that have ranted on for many years about the evils of racial profiling and stereotyping, and yet they are the ones stereotyping and profiling black people as less competent, while the conservatives are treating them much more as equals. More evidence that I think I'm living in the Bizarro world.

Take a look at the study - they simply didn't establish *statistical* significance in how much conservatives simplify their language around black groups - from the looks of things, it's more a matter of gettin a larger sample of conservatives than anything else. It *definitely* doesn't say "republicans don't shift their language, at all".

 

[laughing dog]

I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

You really cannot help it.

 

[untermensche]

Yes "the blacks".

That monolithic group that all think and act alike.

 

[ruby sparks]

Some good points there.

However, I am going to politely suggest that you are being (a) too dismissive of the 21 studies which don't use explicit race information in the resumes (such as stating ethnicity) and (b) too accepting of the study you posted shortly after which did explicitly state it (but only in some resumes).

In reverse order, doing (b) first. It is a single study, and also, partly as a result of this the sample size is much smaller than for the meta-analysis of the 21 studies (for which the sample size was a total of approximately 55,500 resumes).

Sample size isn't magic and does nothing to fix the flaws in method. It only overcomes problems of avoiding patterns that emerge by random chance due to sampling error. And it is a basic fact of probability that an increase in sample size has exponentially diminishing benefits once you go beyond a couple hundred observations. The one study I referenced sent out a total of 1374 resumes, which given the absolute massive size of the observed differences, random sampling error is not a plausible account for the effects. And even if you unreasonably assume that it might have been sampling error, that would still mean that any actual anti-black racism in hiring by these companies is so extremely rare that random sampling error could make the results come out in the extreme opposite direction.

Also, it isn't really a "single study". As those of us who conduct large complex research designs know, the difference between a "single" study and multiple studies is an arbitrary matter of how you choose to present it. They replicated the method in 3 regions and 3 different employment domains and analyze each separately. They could have just as easily presented them as multiple studies, and conceptually they are the same as replications (although by the same lab), each with enough observations to have the statically power to rule our sampling error. In no region or domain was their a bias in favor of white, and in all 3 regions and domains there was a numerical bias in favor of blacks, though it was too small to reach significance in 1 region and 1 domain.

Third, the study is older than any in the 21, being from 1980, and may represent out of date information (the situation regarding the prevalence of affirmative action policies may have differed for example, and I read in a very recent article in The New Yorker that businesses were 'expansive in their efforts to adopt affirmative action throughout the 70's'). I am aware of one other study from around the time of the one you posted which showed similar results (blacks favoured over whites) but in that 1978 study, resumes were only sent to companies which were operating an affirmative action hiring policy, which may have skewed the results, which were slight in any case.

Yes, unfortunately the domain of research on racial discrimination has suffered greatly from being dominated by ideologues with little regard for scientific rigor. They use methods that allow for many other factors to produce the result, then interpret it as only being due to race. Thus, there are almost no field studies in the last few decades that have manipulated perceived race directly and very little acknowledgment that this is a problem. I explicitly acknowledged the limitations of the study I referenced and didn't present it as evidence that their is no discrimination in other areas or more or less today. I present it as a contrast in method where the results can be more validly interpreted as a response to race itself, and that it's results do provide strong evidence that for a significant % of large companies there was more "reverse racism" than racism in 1980. Which does imply that there is likely reverse racism today, especially in contexts where the decision makers are likely to be motivated by either personal views, institutional policy, or fear of scrutiny to increase minority representation. It doesn't imply there is no anti-black discrimination, either in 1980 or today. But the meta-analysis you presented provides little valid evidence either way.

Regarding (a). First Lakisha was only one name used. In the first study cited, there were 36 names used altogether, including 9 different ones for 'African-American female'. Second, surnames were also included, so for example Lakisha was paired with the surname Washington, thereby adding to the racial clue and reducing the possibility of the person being mistaken for a foreigner. Finally, all names were matched against the most frequently used names, for the ethnic group they were intended to represent, in the region to which the resumes were sent.

The Lakisha-Emily paradigm is the most common and frequently adopted. Also, most the most common names for blacks are also common among whites, such that most people with that name are white. For example, there are more black boys named "Anthony" than "Tremanye" (one of the names used in the 36 name study), and yet most boys named "Anthony" in the US are white. Because whites outnumber blacks in the US by 6 to 1, names that are relatively common and has phonetic ties and roots to English words will imply a white person. The names that would reliably imply a non-white person are names that are overall rather uncommon and have foreign sounding roots. Which is why that study using 36 names used female names rooted in African and Arabic languages like Lakisha, Aisha, Kenya (and actual foreign country), while the "White" names were more like Emily, Jill, and, Sarah. And use of many names doesn't matter if the problem exists for some of the names. They don't show that the results emerge with each name, but rather lump the result together for the whole batch of white vs. black names. Just one or two names that imply to some employers a non-native English speaker would be sufficient to produce the reported results.

In addition, even if a name is highly common among blacks and only among blacks, that means that it is relatively uncommon to the most of those doing the hiring and would still be more likely to sound foreign to them. Plus, adding "Washington" to "Lakisha" only reduces the problem, it doesn't solve it. If a person is being thoroughly analytic about it, then sure, they should use all that information to consciously reach the conclusion that the applicant is likely an American black, but of course that is not how people work. The effect is subtle and usually below overt awareness. The name Lakisha still sounds like a foreign word and their brain reacts to it as such, with the accompanying "Washington" merely weakening that impact to be somewhere in between just "Lakisha" alone or just "Washington" alone. The effect only needs to be subtle, small, indirect, and on a small % of the employers to wind up accounting for the result.

Lots of very useful stuff there.

In general terms, my problem, if I were to try to respond individually or in detail to many of the caveats and criticisms (which are all valid, imo) would be that as an interested amateur and nothing more than that, I do not know how much weight to give them in this discussion. In order to remedy this, I would in the the first instance, need to not only re-read the first study and the second meta-analysis, but also probably scrutinise each of the 21 studies the latter uses, and even then I'd arguably need to go further and look at other types of study, including the one you cited (which I can't find a free pdf for). I might even usefully investigate similar methodologies for studying things other than job recruitment. And even after all that I'd probably need to learn a lot more about the relevant sciences and their methodologies generally.

I am broadly fine with the suggestion that 'studies, especially in the social sciences, may not be finding what they say they are finding', because apart from anything else, human behaviour is possibly one of the most variable and capricious things that capricious humans could attempt to study. Whether I should go as far as to say that in this case, because of inherent limitations, the studies "provide little valid evidence either way", I am not sure, and if I'm honest I'm still leaning towards thinking that they probably do show the things that they claim to, despite the limitations.

Other than things I have already offered, some more points in support of what I just said might be, for example, (a) that I read that the use of 'ethnic names' has supporting prior research to suggest that it is a useful indicator of the relevant attitudes, (b) that even if the 'ethnic names' resumes is not a perfect approach, it still has a lot going for it, not least the amount of control that can be exercised over all other aspects of the material used, (c) the 2 studies I have read most closely do seem to be pretty rigorous, such as in questioning their own limitations (although not the main one you have highlighted) and trying to correct for things like possible publication and write-up bias, (d) the results of 'in person' alternative type of studies, which of course may suffer from slightly different potential limitations, do seem to corroborate the 'blind resume' studies, (d) despite all that you say (and I have noted it) if we accept that 'there is racism' I still think it would be overall slightly odd if it was not going on in this sphere of human activity, and finally, (e) even if the 'African-sounding' names do trigger a (possibly automatic or subconscious) response, and even if in some cases this prompts the reader to think 'possibly foreign', this may still at the very least indicate some sort of 'othering' bias and since the names are African-sounding and not for example Irish- or Russian-sounding, it may still be indicative of a racial bias in terms of a particular ethnicity.

All that said, if as you put it, "the domain of research on racial discrimination has suffered greatly from being dominated by ideologues" then all bets would be off. That, actually, is quite a damning claim, but I have no way of assessing it other than to say than I can see how it could be true. I would be curious to know if you would go as far as to suggest that that sort of bias (which I'm provisionally assuming you are suggesting is in favour of finding racism, rather than the opposite sort of bias) is why photos and/or explicitly-stated ethnicities are not part of such studies, for example. Or if not that, then why do those items (which, on the face of it, would seem likely, as you say, to improve the methodologies) not seem to be used more often nowadays?

Also, regarding dominating ideologies, my general impression is that there may be at least as many 'interested parties out there' who would surely be pleased to debunk studies showing persistent racism, and many of said interested parties would not lack the financial resources needed to have the necessary work carried out, and published widely if it concurred with their prior preferences or expectations. In other words, if there was decent evidence that something like affirmative action or political correctness was resulting in anything even remotely resembling a pattern of favouring ethnic minorities, or even just that blacks are not being discriminated against in this way, I think I'd have expected to be hearing more about it.

The bottom line(s) is/are that (i) it is good and useful to be reminded (especially by someone who seems far more familiar and knowledgeable than me) not to necessarily take from studies what they claim to be providing, and (ii) that I take the point about being more circumspect.

Do reiterate something you have already said if you feel I might not have addressed it.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

from the linked-to abstract:

Conservatism indicators included: self-reported political affiliation (liberal-conservative), Right-Wing Authoritarianism (values-based conservatism) and Social Dominance Orientation (hierarchy-based conservatism).

I think it is well-known that conservatism has relationships to authoritarianism, fear, and structured thinking, while liberalism has a relation to flexible thinking. It should not be surprising that conservatives are incapable of changing their words according to who they are speaking to, but that liberals are very capable of having flexible speech that changes along with the receiver of the communication. Since the measure of competence is a bit of a sham, at least according to several posters upstream, there really isn't a new finding here. That is, it is known that in addition to conservatives being authoritarian, liberals value empathy and so will try to be empathetic with persons who are different from themselves. So, since the language used is allegedly empathetic and cooperative, it's not what it is being framed as.

So imagine a Republican politician talking to his gardener, Jose. "Greetings Jose, all that work with lobbyists on deregulating vertical integration has exponentially increased my secret portfolio in my Cayman Islands accounts." Jose thinking: "Man, what a lucky a-hole. I wonder if I will have a job after he flees the country."

Meanwhile, Democratic politician talking to his gardener, Jose, who happens to be the same person. "Hey Jose. How's it going?" Jose: "Good." Dem Politician: "Great, keep up the good work. I gotta go work on one of my projects and so I'll see ya." [Project happens to be the same project of deregulating vertical integration but he doesn't say it]. Jose thinking: "Is this guy for real and really nice? I am not sure but he tries to be polite and empathetic."

 

[untermensche]

I think it is well-known that conservatism has relationships to authoritarianism, fear, and structured thinking,...

Thus the appeal to Christians.

Christians have multiple personalities.

They care about their fellow man and they are strict followers of authority.

Right now many of them are totally on the side of following authority.

It is amazing that the Christians I know that used to turn red in the face over Bill Clinton's "sins" don't care one bit about much worse from Trump.

Oh did I say?

Modern Christians in the US are fundamentalists and incredible hypocrites.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

It's not so much about being willing to better themselves as not looking on a long enough time horizon. The effect is an unwillingness to better oneself, but that's because the payoff from education is far enough down the road that they don't value it.



I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

Well, when "right now" is supremely shitty, there's much more psychological pressure to escape it. The desperation if wanting to make the awfulness stop drives a shortsightedness that is difficult to ignore.

However, the reality is that taking the shortsighted approach means the aid is basically wasted.

- - - Updated - - -

I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

You really cannot help it.

No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

 

[laughing dog]

No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

Nope. "The blacks" has long been recognized as deroratory/bigoted term because it denotes that all black people are the same. Just like the use of "the Jews" indicates Jews are a monolithic group, and its uses is usually associated with anti-semitism.

It is pretty ironic that someone who persistently wishes to look and treat people as individuals uses such a term as "the blacks".

So, the only distortion going on here is your attempt at deflection.

 

[Jarhyn]

However, the reality is that taking the shortsighted approach means the aid is basically wasted.

- - - Updated - - -

I think you will find a lot more support for helping the poor than for helping the blacks. The former is a good idea, the latter is racist.

You really cannot help it.

No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

You seem to miss my point: it is pointless to try to encourage an uneducated, desperate population to play the long game, when that is a position that is utterly unable to penetrate the ignorant but intuitive "things are shitty now, so I need help now."

If we want to make things better, we need to start by easing up the shittiness of that life, so that there is room in the undereducated life to plan further than the next meal.

 

[Mumbles]

However, the reality is that taking the shortsighted approach means the aid is basically wasted.

- - - Updated - - -



No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

You seem to miss my point: it is pointless to try to encourage an uneducated, desperate population to play the long game, when that is a position that is utterly unable to penetrate the ignorant but intuitive "things are shitty now, so I need help now."

If we want to make things better, we need to start by easing up the shittiness of that life, so that there is room in the undereducated life to plan further than the next meal.

Hilariously, every survey and study has shown that black people, as a group, are strongly in favor of good jobs, good schools, and and police that catch actual violent criminals instead of just throwing people around at random. Unfortunately, far too many people (particularly outside the south) seem hellbent on denying any of this to them, insisting that they're all "thugs", that they simply refuse to learn (and will destroy any good school they're allowed into), and so forth.

Sharp glare

 

[Loren Pechtel]

However, the reality is that taking the shortsighted approach means the aid is basically wasted.

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No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

You seem to miss my point: it is pointless to try to encourage an uneducated, desperate population to play the long game, when that is a position that is utterly unable to penetrate the ignorant but intuitive "things are shitty now, so I need help now."

If we want to make things better, we need to start by easing up the shittiness of that life, so that there is room in the undereducated life to plan further than the next meal.

In other words, you are saying poverty can't be solved.

 

[Jarhyn]

However, the reality is that taking the shortsighted approach means the aid is basically wasted.

- - - Updated - - -



No, you can't help distorting anything you don't agree with.

You seem to miss my point: it is pointless to try to encourage an uneducated, desperate population to play the long game, when that is a position that is utterly unable to penetrate the ignorant but intuitive "things are shitty now, so I need help now."

If we want to make things better, we need to start by easing up the shittiness of that life, so that there is room in the undereducated life to plan further than the next meal.

In other words, you are saying poverty can't be solved.

No, I'm saying "living in poverty" has to be solved before we can even START to address "the factors which lead to generational poverty".

Yes, it costs more than just throwing money at the education problem, but there isn't a choice. We let the disease run rampant, we even helped it along with some smallpox-blanket shaped student loans. But now we either have to treat those affected by the largess of the rent seekers in addition to vaccinating against it in new case s or the problem will just continue to spread.

 

[ronburgundy]

Sample size isn't magic and does nothing to fix the flaws in method. It only overcomes problems of avoiding patterns that emerge by random chance due to sampling error. And it is a basic fact of probability that an increase in sample size has exponentially diminishing benefits once you go beyond a couple hundred observations. The one study I referenced sent out a total of 1374 resumes, which given the absolute massive size of the observed differences, random sampling error is not a plausible account for the effects. And even if you unreasonably assume that it might have been sampling error, that would still mean that any actual anti-black racism in hiring by these companies is so extremely rare that random sampling error could make the results come out in the extreme opposite direction.

Also, it isn't really a "single study". As those of us who conduct large complex research designs know, the difference between a "single" study and multiple studies is an arbitrary matter of how you choose to present it. They replicated the method in 3 regions and 3 different employment domains and analyze each separately. They could have just as easily presented them as multiple studies, and conceptually they are the same as replications (although by the same lab), each with enough observations to have the statically power to rule our sampling error. In no region or domain was their a bias in favor of white, and in all 3 regions and domains there was a numerical bias in favor of blacks, though it was too small to reach significance in 1 region and 1 domain.



Yes, unfortunately the domain of research on racial discrimination has suffered greatly from being dominated by ideologues with little regard for scientific rigor. They use methods that allow for many other factors to produce the result, then interpret it as only being due to race. Thus, there are almost no field studies in the last few decades that have manipulated perceived race directly and very little acknowledgment that this is a problem. I explicitly acknowledged the limitations of the study I referenced and didn't present it as evidence that their is no discrimination in other areas or more or less today. I present it as a contrast in method where the results can be more validly interpreted as a response to race itself, and that it's results do provide strong evidence that for a significant % of large companies there was more "reverse racism" than racism in 1980. Which does imply that there is likely reverse racism today, especially in contexts where the decision makers are likely to be motivated by either personal views, institutional policy, or fear of scrutiny to increase minority representation. It doesn't imply there is no anti-black discrimination, either in 1980 or today. But the meta-analysis you presented provides little valid evidence either way.

Regarding (a). First Lakisha was only one name used. In the first study cited, there were 36 names used altogether, including 9 different ones for 'African-American female'. Second, surnames were also included, so for example Lakisha was paired with the surname Washington, thereby adding to the racial clue and reducing the possibility of the person being mistaken for a foreigner. Finally, all names were matched against the most frequently used names, for the ethnic group they were intended to represent, in the region to which the resumes were sent.

The Lakisha-Emily paradigm is the most common and frequently adopted. Also, most the most common names for blacks are also common among whites, such that most people with that name are white. For example, there are more black boys named "Anthony" than "Tremanye" (one of the names used in the 36 name study), and yet most boys named "Anthony" in the US are white. Because whites outnumber blacks in the US by 6 to 1, names that are relatively common and has phonetic ties and roots to English words will imply a white person. The names that would reliably imply a non-white person are names that are overall rather uncommon and have foreign sounding roots. Which is why that study using 36 names used female names rooted in African and Arabic languages like Lakisha, Aisha, Kenya (and actual foreign country), while the "White" names were more like Emily, Jill, and, Sarah. And use of many names doesn't matter if the problem exists for some of the names. They don't show that the results emerge with each name, but rather lump the result together for the whole batch of white vs. black names. Just one or two names that imply to some employers a non-native English speaker would be sufficient to produce the reported results.

In addition, even if a name is highly common among blacks and only among blacks, that means that it is relatively uncommon to the most of those doing the hiring and would still be more likely to sound foreign to them. Plus, adding "Washington" to "Lakisha" only reduces the problem, it doesn't solve it. If a person is being thoroughly analytic about it, then sure, they should use all that information to consciously reach the conclusion that the applicant is likely an American black, but of course that is not how people work. The effect is subtle and usually below overt awareness. The name Lakisha still sounds like a foreign word and their brain reacts to it as such, with the accompanying "Washington" merely weakening that impact to be somewhere in between just "Lakisha" alone or just "Washington" alone. The effect only needs to be subtle, small, indirect, and on a small % of the employers to wind up accounting for the result.

Lots of very useful stuff there.

In general terms, my problem, if I were to try to respond individually or in detail to many of the caveats and criticisms (which are all valid, imo) would be that as an interested amateur and nothing more than that, I do not know how much weight to give them in this discussion. In order to remedy this, I would in the the first instance, need to not only re-read the first study and the second meta-analysis, but also probably scrutinise each of the 21 studies the latter uses, and even then I'd arguably need to go further and look at other types of study, including the one you cited (which I can't find a free pdf for). I might even usefully investigate similar methodologies for studying things other than job recruitment. And even after all that I'd probably need to learn a lot more about the relevant sciences and their methodologies generally.

I am broadly fine with the suggestion that 'studies, especially in the social sciences, may not be finding what they say they are finding', because apart from anything else, human behaviour is possibly one of the most variable and capricious things that capricious humans could attempt to study. Whether I should go as far as to say that in this case, because of inherent limitations, the studies "provide little valid evidence either way", I am not sure, and if I'm honest I'm still leaning towards thinking that they probably do show the things that they claim to, despite the limitations.

Here's the thing, their claims about racism in hiring can be true, and yet their experiments still not "show" that those claims are true. It is critical to keep these things separate. If the methodological problems are real, then by definition, the studies do not "show" what they claim, because that would require that there are not plausible (and in this case probable) alternative explanations. Do you think that some employers are less likely to give a call back to a non-native English speaking or foreign born applicant? Do you think that some employers would sometimes read an unfamiliar name rooted in a foreign language in infer (whether consciously or not) that the person might be non-native speaking or foreign born? If your answer to these questions is "yes" (and rationally it should be), then the logically neccessary conclusion is that the results observed in these studies would have emerged even in a world without anti-black discrimination. Data only "show" that a claim is true, if the data would only have plausibly emerged in a world where that claim is true. Thus, these data do not show the claim is true, despite the fact that the claim might be true anyway and that you might have other basis to believe it is true.

I think there is basis to think that there is racial discrimination in hiring, but I don't think there is a sound basis to believe that the prevalence of it has not declined at all in the last 30 years. In fact, there is indirect evidence that makes this claim implausible, such as evidence that racist beliefs have significantly declined during that period, that blacks have become more educated, with many more blacks holding positions of authority and respect, including on being elected and reelected president, which was unthinkable in the 1980's. Given that racist assumptions and feelings about blacks would be the mechanism behind hiring discrimination, this makes it implausible that hiring discrimination has not declined.

In contrast, what would be less likely to have declined over the years would be employer motives to not hire non-native English or foreign born applicants. Which makes this mechanism not only plausible, but a more plausible explanation for the lack of change in the size of the difference in callbacks observed in those studies over time.


You have other reasons, perhaps very good ones, to think that employers have a bias against black applicants. That doesn't mean that racial discrimination is the best explanation for these particular data, particularly the lack of decline in the observed result, which is the main reason you posted the meta-analysis to being with.

Other than things I have already offered, some more points in support of what I just said might be, for example, (a) that I read that the use of 'ethnic names' has supporting prior research to suggest that it is a useful indicator of the relevant attitudes,

That research merely shows that if you ask people to decide whether someone named "Lakisha" is more likely to be black or white, most people will say "black". But the baby registry data also show, that only 1 in a 1000 blacks are named Lakisha and only a small % named with other such race-signalling names. Which means the names signal being a special non-representative sub-set of that race. Plus, nothing in that prior research addresses that those names also signal other things only incidentally correlated with race, such as language skills, education quality, cultural background, etc.., and they are just much less familiar words and simple lack of familiarity produces subtle negative feeling like anxiety that could easily tip the scale in a some cases.

(b) that even if the 'ethnic names' resumes is not a perfect approach, it still has a lot going for it, not least the amount of control that can be exercised over all other aspects of the material used, (c) the 2 studies I have read most closely do seem to be pretty rigorous, such as in questioning their own limitations (although not the main one you have highlighted) and trying to correct for things like possible publication and write-up bias,

They are rather dismissive of the limitations they briefly mention, and then go right on making strong causal conclusions. And the limitations I'm bringing up would be rather obvious to any expert in the field, so their failure to deal seriously with them suggests a deliberate effort to avoid noting the more serious flaws with their methods.

(d) the results of 'in person' alternative type of studies, which of course may suffer from slightly different potential limitations, do seem to corroborate the 'blind resume' studies, (d) despite all that you say (and I have noted it) if we accept that 'there is racism' I still think it would be overall slightly odd if it was not going on in this sphere of human activity,

This relates directly to my first point above. You are using other information and data outside these studies to support the general conclusion of racism in hiring (which is fine and rational to do), but then using that to decide that these studies empirically show that this conclusion is true (which is not valid to do). What the studies empirically demonstrate and what you think is true due to other information are separate things. And note that even if you think racism would have to have some impact on hiring that doesn't support the conclusion of this meta-analysis that this impact has not changed in the last 30 years.

and finally, (e) even if the 'African-sounding' names do trigger a (possibly automatic or subconscious) response, and even if in some cases this prompts the reader to think 'possibly foreign', this may still at the very least indicate some sort of 'othering' bias

Sure, but it's a very different type of "othering", especially when it conjures the ideas that the person may have limited proficiency with the language essential for them to perform their job effectively.

and since the names are African-sounding and not for example Irish- or Russian-sounding, it may still be indicative of a racial bias in terms of a particular ethnicity.

Sure, this might be true and it might not be true. The studies do not show either way. They merely provide data consistent with that hypothesis but also consistent with several other hypotheses for which we also have other prior information to suggest are true. My ability to predict someone's gender from their name is consistent with me being psychic, but because it is also consistent with other highly plausible explanations, it does not show I am psychic or even qualify as evidence of it. And while you have more a priori reason to doubt that I am psychic that is a separate issue from when the data in question show.

Also, you just unwittingly hit upon a very simple method that would vastly improve these studies that none of these researchers has bothered to try all these decades: Simply make the "white" names foreign sounding names from predominantly white countries like Russia. What does it say about the competence of the researchers in this area that in 30 years, virtually none (and maybe truly none) have even bothered to mention this issue of the foreign/language implications of the "black" names, let alone bothered to improve their method by using "white" names with similar foreign/language implications?

All that said, if as you put it, "the domain of research on racial discrimination has suffered greatly from being dominated by ideologues" then all bets would be off. That, actually, is quite a damning claim, but I have no way of assessing it other than to say than I can see how it could be true. I would be curious to know if you would go as far as to suggest that that sort of bias (which I'm provisionally assuming you are suggesting is in favour of finding racism, rather than the opposite sort of bias) is why photos and/or explicitly-stated ethnicities are not part of such studies, for example. Or if not that, then why do those items (which, on the face of it, would seem likely, as you say, to improve the methodologies) not seem to be used more often nowadays?

Well, the early studies that did use more explicit race information (like the study I referenced) did not reliably show discrimination and sometimes showed reverse discrimination. Given that the methods researchers switched to as at least if not much more problematic in allowing causal inference, it is hard to imagine and honest intellectual justification why they would not at least give equal weight to both types of approaches and evaluate theories in light of all the data. Which leaves some kind of motivation to find a different result as a rather plausible account.

I obviously cannot know whether the poor quality of research and lack of serious consideration of the methodological problems is due to incompetence, deliberate dishonesty, and a mix of the two. Perhaps the use of racial names seemed honestly like a good idea at first and was just another way of approaching the problem, and when it gave more desired results than more direct manipulations of race, researchers came to preferred it.

What I do know is that this is just one example of this example of the lack of rigor and honest dealing with methodological problems in the field of racism research. The glaringly obvious problems with measures of "implicit racism" are another, and arguments about those problems almost always come from outside the field with racism researchers continuing to employ the methods and make unqualified conclusions about people racism from the data. Another is that almost all studies only use white participants. This may be b/c when non-white participants are also used they show the same pattern of results, and this undermines the conclusion that the observed response is motivated by racist beliefs rather than some other factor only incidentally associated with race.

Also, regarding dominating ideologies, my general impression is that there may be at least as many 'interested parties out there' who would surely be pleased to debunk studies showing persistent racism, and many of said interested parties would not lack the financial resources needed to have the necessary work carried out, and published widely if it concurred with their prior preferences or expectations.

There are right wing ideologues who occasionally put out papers to disprove racial discrimination. However, they don't do original empirical research, but rather are usually people with an economics background who take existing large datasets and conduct complex multivariate correlational analyses on them. They are often employed by right-wing "Think-tanks" like the Heritage Foundation.

But studies on racism that actually design and conduct empirical experiments happen almost entirely within academic social science departments like sociology, social psychology, and ethnic studies. And the research is done by people who chose to make a career out of studying racism, because as in all the sciences, people specialize and most do all their research within a rather narrow subfield. There are very very few conservatives in those departments at all, let alone those who chose to make a career of the sort who would want to manufacture evidence of non-discrimination. Mostly that is because right wingers generally dismiss the social sciences (and academia in general) as not being a valuable or respectable profession. This is partly b/c reality has a liberal bias, so conservatives tend to devalue science to seeks to reveal that reality. But also b/c people aren't going to make a career out of trying to debunk a particular hypothesis, partly b/c that's just not enough motivation and partly b/c it's nearly impossible to get research published in any area of social science when your data show null results (e.g., no effect of race on the outcome measure). Then, of course, there is the "ironic" problem of a person who does research that supports conservatives views having to be hired by people who are overwhelmingly liberal to extreme left and who are in favor of policies like AA that use race to increase minority representation.