Introduction: Black-Sounding First Names Can Lead to Discrimination in Hiring

The research findings before a contributed article to Communication Intelligence

A study has again shown what has been previously discovered: Black-sounding first names are not an asset for job seekers. Such names instead are more likely to lead to discrimination, especially when employers are under time pressure.

This article will touch on the research findings and a subsequent article contributed to Communication Intelligence, the Newsletter, by Patrice Williams Lindo, the CEO of Career Nomad and Renaissance Coaching and Consulting, will discuss it.

The main points from the study from 1,500 people in all 50 U.S. states in 2022:

White Americans “who oppose affirmative action discriminated more than other people against job candidates with distinctly Black names, whether or not they had to make rushed decisions.

Names of workers perceived as Black were “more likely to elicit negative presumptions, such as being less educated, productive, trustworthy and reliable, than people with either white-sounding names or racially ambiguous names.”

“Most real-world hiring managers spend less than 10 seconds (on average) reviewing each resume during the initial screening stage. To keep up that swift pace, they may resort to using mental shortcuts – including racial stereotypes – to assess job applications.”

“We found that requiring the study participants to select a worker within only 2 seconds led them to be 25% more likely to discriminate against candidates with names they perceived as Black-sounding.”

“However, making decisions more slowly is not a panacea.

“We found that the most important factor for whether more deliberate decisions reduce discrimination was a participant’s view on affirmative action – the consideration of race in a workforce or student body to ensure that their share of people of color is roughly proportionate to the general public or a local community.”

“White participants who opposed affirmative action were more than twice as likely to select an applicant with a white-sounding name compared with applicants perceived as Black – whether or not they had to make the simulated hiring decision in a hurry.

“By contrast, giving white participants who favor affirmative action unlimited time to choose a name from the hiring list reduced discrimination against the job candidates with names they perceived as Black-sounding by almost half.

“The data showed that this decline had to do with people basing their decision more on their perceptions of a worker’s performance, rather than relying on mental shortcuts based on their perceived race.”

Communication Intelligence, the Newsletter, questions that come to mind:

What’s being communicated to Black America and the rest of society?

What’s the status quo communicate?

What could committed, sustained improvements communicate?

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