Mar 15, 2021
Have you heard of “resume whitening”?
Racial discrimination in the job market can occur not only in the wage outcome but also in the early stage of recruitment. The latter also substantially contributes to economic inequality by deterring minority groups from occupational attainment. There is an on-going discussion on policy reform that pressures employers for a more equalized, transparent recruitment process. However, in this blog, I want to talk about another solution to this matter, which I considered as a “self-rescue” approach. We often regard minority groups as victims of discrimination and try our best to them. However, we tend to overlook the question of how and what did these disadvantaged groups do in order to help themselves in such situations.
Studies have shown one approach that has been employed widely by racial minorities is to alter their self-presentation to avoid predicted discrimination in the labor market. In detail, stigmatized individuals will attempt to conceal or downplay their racial attributes to “pass” as a member of the dominant group. In response to the fact that “Resumes containing minority racial cues, such as a distinctively African American or Asian name, lead to 30–50 percent fewer callbacks from employers than do otherwise equivalent resumes without such cues” (Gaddis, 2015), minority job applicants will use the practice of “resume whitening.”
The intuition behind such behavior can be explained through the basic concept of supply and demand in which workers (suppliers) should tailor themselves (selling products) to the taste of employers (buyers). Therefore, if employers have a preference for and are willing to pay higher compensation for white workers, then job seekers are expected to adapt themselves to the demand in the job market.
Particularly, in Kang et al’s studies, they found that 60% of her sampled population engaged personally in resume whitening and “…. two-thirds of all interviewees reported knowing others (typically friends or family members) who whitened their job application materials; thus awareness of this phenomenon was common even among those respondents who said that they did not personally engage in it.” (Kang et al, 2016)
In the same studies, she also found that even for employers that present itself as valuing diversity, there is no reduction in discrimination against unwhitened resumes.
These findings fascinated me a lot. It shows a contradiction to the book that I recently read “Almost black: The True Story of How I Got Into Medical School By Pretending to Be Black” by Vijay Jojo Chokal-Ingram. Overall, I am illuminated by the fact that race might not be immutable as I used to think, and that racial presentation can be manipulated to serve one’s benefit.
Citation:
Gaddis, M. S. 2015 ‘‘Discrimination in the credential society: An audit study of race and college selectivity in the labor market.’’ Social Forces, 93: 1451–1479.
Kang, Sonia K., Katherine A. DeCelles, András Tilcsik, and Sora Jun. “Whitened Résumés: Race and Self-Presentation in the Labor Market.” Administrative Science Quarterly 61, no. 3 (September 2016): 469–502. https://doi.org/10.1177/0001839216639577.
