The following comes from the cached version of a Yahoo search for a joint MIT/University of Chicago study mentioned in Al Franken's recent book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them.

Sendhil Mullainathan of MIT and Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago conducted a study between July 2001 and May 2002 in which they responded to 1,250 job advertisements in Boston and Chicago. They sent four applications in response to each job ad; two applications contained "black-sounding names" (derived statistically from birth records, the names included "Tamika," "Tyrone," etc.) and two applications contained "white-sounding names" (Amy, John, etc.). One each was of "high quality" (lots of qualifications) and were equivalent; the others were of average quality (fewer qualifications) and were equivalent. The names and resume contents were randomly matched up in such a way that black-sounding names appeared above resume contents that for other job applications white-sounding names were attached to (and vice versa). The black-sounding and white-sounding resumes were thus not just equivalent---they were identical

Through the study, Drs. Mullainathan and Bertrand were told by many professionals, "Oh yes, you'll see discrimination all right---reverse discrimination!" However, this is not what they found

They found that one of ten white-sounding job applicants received a callback for an interview, while only one of fifteen black-sounding job applicants did. This indicates decisively that some discrimination is going on based on the perceived race (through name) of the job applicants

Further, they found that those high-quality resumes with white-sounding names are 30% more likely to receive a callback than their average-quality counterparts. However, high-quality resumes with black-sounding names are not more likely to receive a callback than their counterparts. (There is apparently a very minute improvement for high-quality resumes with black-sounding names, but it is too small an improvement to derive reliable conclusions

This is absolutely significant. At a time when many claim that we have achieved racial equity, a time when many are arguing against affirmative action based on the fatuous presumption that it has fulfilled its mission, this study sweeps away their arguments completely. According to the authors of the study, you can pretty much pick a week of the study, and the long-term trends show themselves; thus, the date was not a factor. You can pretty much pick a business size too---from small businesses to large firms with HR staff, all sizes of business show this same dispicable racism in the application process

For more on this study, you can read the New York Times piece by Alan Krueger over on J Bradford DeLong's blog, or you can listen to the Tavis Smiley show segment [RealAudio] (which includes an interview with Dr. Bertrand) or the hour-long Connection interview with Dr. Mullainathan.



When the study is published, I will post my further thoughts on this topic, and point to any online resource that publishes it.