Government Should Not Legitimate Systemic-Racism Confessions

[u/HooverInstitution]

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/12/15/government_should_not_legitimate_systemic-racism_confessions_152087.html

[u/rightful_vagabond]

My problem is that I've never seen a good definition of systemic racism that accurately applies to the US and isn't covered under other terms. There's interpersonal racism, present effects of historical racism, legal explicit racism (which is illegal), and disparate racial impact of laws (which is also illegal).

[u/ryes13 → u/rightful_vagabond]

A good example would be the 2004 “Names Bias” hiring study [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/0002828042002561]. Essentially people with identical resumes were much less likely to be called for an interview just because they had a black sounding name. This type of racism is systemic because multiple employers fell prey to the same bias so it’s not individual interpersonal racism. To your other examples it isn’t historical because it’s happening now. It isn’t legal or disparate impact of law because the law isn’t causing it.

Also while this study is illustrative, something to keep in mind that it is just measuring the first step of the hiring process. This is the easiest step to measure and quantify in this manner. This indicates that there may be other systemic problems that we can’t measure via studies like this.

Edit: To respond to comments below, the study has been replicated multiple times including in 2024: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32313/w32313.pdf. It’s a real effect, not made up.

Edit 2: Comment below is making it seem like the “Names Bias” was debunked by another one because it couldn’t find the same effect. There’s a link to a website (Datacolada) that says it’s because they didn’t control for socioeconomic status. If you read the study that website is referencing (which was looking for bias based on college credentials and not race), the original authors don’t say that. They say they probably didn’t find the effect because they were using different methods (online ads instead of paper ads, different jobs, etc). So it isn’t accurate to say that they debunked it.

The Datacolada website (which is actually pretty interesting) was theorizing it might be because they used different names which indicated higher socioeconomic status. But the author of that post even says that these are preliminary results and don’t do the work needed to untangle race from socioeconomic status. From that website: “this conclusion is tentative as best, we are comparing studies that differ on many dimensions (and the new study had some noteworthy glitches, read footnote 4). To test racial discrimination in particular, and name effects in general, we need the same study to orthogonally manipulate”

[u/AwardImmediate720 → u/ryes13]

Except that study doesn't control for socioeconomic status. It compared stereotypically low-class black names to stereotypically middle or upper class white names. Due to that missing control that study can be thrown right out.

[u/ryes13 → u/AwardImmediate720]

I don’t know if you can throw the study right out. It measured a real effect. Does class get mixed in with assumptions about race? Sure, but that’s also a significant effect. At the end of the day, someone is less likely to get a callback simply because of how their name sounds. And the fact that they assume these stereotypically black names are lower class is also a significant effect.

Edit: To the people downvoting me, the study was again replicated in 2024 and analyzed for both race and gender https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32313/w32313.pdf