Kieran Healy reports from the American Sociological Association:
Posted by DeLong at August 24, 2003 08:49 PM | TrackBackCrooked Timber: Incarceration and the Labor Market : Devah Pager has won this year's Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association.... Devah studies the effect of incarceration on labor market outcomes. Her approach was to conduct an audit study of employers, sending in applications for real jobs using vitas for matched pairs of black and white men.... Pager found that blacks "are less than half as likely to receive consideration by employers relative to their white counterparts, and black non-offenders fall behind even whites with prior felony convictions." In other words, even though being black and having served time both negatively affect one's employment opportunities, controlling for education and skills you are better off being a white male with a felony conviction than a black male with no criminal record...
That's why we have footnotes, Charles, click on the link
In any case, the usual suspects will just tell us to bite the bullet and accomodate however we can to whites, whether it's changing our names or decreasing our crime rate. Because you know it's not THEM who has the problem, it's US.
Posted by: ItAintEazy on August 25, 2003 09:33 AMIf this were 50 years ago we could have asked the employers why they are behaving this way, and many of them would have been happy to tell us.
Now we have political correctness, and they will all be too afraid to tell us anything.
Posted by: JK on August 25, 2003 10:46 AMI'm sorry, but JK it was better to have racism socially acceptable rather than shamed?
Posted by: Rob on August 25, 2003 10:55 AMWhy does a paper that essentially copies research previously done by others (http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html) get a best dissertation award?
Posted by: Michael on August 25, 2003 11:09 AMWhy does a paper that essentially copies research previously done by others (http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html) get a best dissertation award?
Posted by: Michael on August 25, 2003 11:13 AMMichael, the link you provided doesn't work. The error message, btw, is on the UC server.
Posted by: Adam Morgan on August 25, 2003 12:13 PMMichael's link will work if you remove the spurious close-parenthesis at the end.
http://gsbwww.uchicago.edu/news/capideas/spring03/racialbias.html
Part of the answer to his question is that the studies are very different. Pager's study is done with live testers, while the Bertrand and Mullainathan study described on the UChicago site was based on resumes alone (both useful approaches, although the B&M study has some real problems*). Also, of course, dissertations aren't (or shouldn't be) judged simply on the novelty of the press releases that could be derived from them. By the way, Pager wrote up her study before B&M even finished their field work.
*Pager's work may, too; I've just barely skimmed the one paper I found online, which does seem very good. http://www.northwestern.edu/ipr/publications/papers/pageraudit.pdf
Posted by: Mark Lindeman on August 25, 2003 01:37 PMOne could also argue that there is an age-discrimination as well in the US,
against the youngest,
http://blogofpandora.blogspot.com
much the same way as Virginia Postrel argues that "French Socialism" discriminates
against the oldest.
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/index.html
One could also argue that there is an age-discrimination as well in the US,
against the youngest,
http://blogofpandora.blogspot.com
much the same way as Virginia Postrel argues that "French Socialism" discriminates
against the oldest.
http://www.dynamist.com/weblog/index.html
In Gombrowicz' novel Pornografia, there's a character who repeats everything quietly to himself immediately after he says it.
Posted by: zizka on August 25, 2003 06:14 PMIn Gombrowicz' novel Pornografia, there's a character who repeats everything quietly to himself immediately after he says it.
Posted by: zizka on August 25, 2003 06:14 PMIn Gombrowicz' novel Pornografia, there's a character who repeats everything quietly to himself immediately after he says it.
Posted by: zizka on August 25, 2003 06:19 PMSorry about the second repetition.
Posted by: zizka on August 25, 2003 06:36 PMRob,
"I'm sorry, but JK it was better to have racism socially acceptable rather than shamed?"
Was it really such a great achievement to just drive it underground (evidently not very far underground either) while stultifying public discussion for two generations?
I'm in favor of genuine social progress, and I don't think the thought police approach helps us very much. As this research reveals, it hasn't really done much to help those in need of it.
My personal experience has been that liberals' use for public policy is mainly as a tool to distance themselves personally from public policy problems.
Posted by: JK on August 25, 2003 06:37 PMJK seems to be one of those who uses everything whatever as a reason to bash liberals. Looking at this situation, would anyone else have triumphantly come to the conclusion that the real underlying problem (and root cause?) here is political correctness?
Well, unfortunately, yes. Lots of people. They seems imbecilic and vicious to me, but then I'm a liberal elitist who doesn't care at all about black people.
Posted by: zizka on August 25, 2003 06:41 PMSee also NBER Working Paper #9873, "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal: A Field Experiment on Affirmative Action." Having a "white" name resulted in 50% more call-backs, given otherwise identical resumes.
Posted by: Matt on August 26, 2003 07:22 AMMark,
Obviously I missed your earlier post. Can you please outline the "real problems" with Mullainatan and Bertrand?
Posted by: Matt on August 26, 2003 07:36 AMJk,
Tsk, Tsk. You seem to make an egregious error in logic. Note the study compared whites and blacks TODAY, not whites now and blacks in the 50s or whites and the 50s and blacks today!
Your argument is specious: Blacks are much better off today then they were in the 50s. So there was nothing driven "underground". There is still discrimination. The most horrible, outward discrimination has been removed (i.e., "colored" water fountains, hotels, restaraunts, "Coon Chicken, ad nauseum).
The point of the study is that blacks TODAY are possibly worse off then even white felons. It says nothing about before.
Posted by: Flaffer on August 27, 2003 02:40 PMDiscrimnation is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate all foriegnors.and blacks
Discrimnation is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate all foriegnors.and blacks
Discrimnation is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate all foriegnors.and blacks
Discrimnation is awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I hate all foriegnors.and blacks
I am not sure if Ican get the answer but Iwant to ask I am an Englisn teacher and a master degree student I have a survey about descrimination & education and I added descrimination in american education to my survey I really would be appreciate if you can send me information about it. Thanks a lot.
Posted by: berna on January 2, 2004 10:32 AM