^ I didn’t realize. So maybe, despite similar income and education levels of the parents, the boys aren’t finishing high school/college/whatever, is the suggestion?
I suppose that could be so. If being in prison or having a record is part of it - which it appears to be - that would affect completion of education. As well as other factors, like test scores, though those are apparently similar for black men and women but the women close the income gap with white women and the black men don’t close it with the white men.
^ @OHMomof2 @“Cardinal Fang”
While children’s educational attainment is discussed, it is not used as a control variable. If you look at the chart on 82, black men have higher rates of incarceration, lower rates of high school graduation, and lower rates of college attendance at almost all income levels. I suspect the difference would be even more stark, if they included college graduation and not just college attendance. It should be obvious that high rates of incarceration and lower education attainment leads to lower income. However, if you want to know why black men have lower educational attainment and higher incarceration rates, you have to look outside the scope of the study.
This Canadian study shows clearly that racism exist, folks with names like Jill Wilson, call-backs are not influenced by the perceived quality of school attended. On the other hand, if your name is Maya Kumar, your call-back rate is highly influenced by the perceived quality of your alma mater. It looks like employers are looking for a double-guarantee.
Yet here on CC, the advise to ORMs is not be so concerned about the eliteness of their school. I think they have a good reason to be concerned, don’t you?
The pre-exclusion era Chinese immigrants,@ucbalumus, were selected for their ability to work under extreme conditions that would kill most people. During the exclusion era, those made it to Canada made it as “paper sons”. (The family bought false papers from other families who had sons that died prematurely, e.g.). Chinese women’s entry into Canada were strictly forbidden so these men would go back to China to get married, then returned to Canada alone.
I found these classmate quite bright, and conscientious too. They would plow through senior year calculus and physics where most Canadian students would avoid like the plague. Almost all the ones I know have done well.
I think we are living in very interesting times. Few in the West know that at the dawn of Mao’s takeover, the average life expectancy in China was about 37, and the average GDP per person was lower than sub Sahara Africa.
People of color who attend the good to great law schools are recruited on a totally different path at the top law firms than white or Asian students because they are so desirable. Most of those law firms pay new hires who haven’t take the bar yet to stay at home and study for X period of time and either pay for bar review courses or pay a special bonus after passing. So it’s not just that the better schools give better preparation for the bar, but also provide better opportunities for studying and prep after employment because of hiring preferences for graduates of those schools.
Sorry but law schools no matter how good don’t prepare one for the bar. That’s why they have bar review programs. Stuff on the bar is relatively basic but there is lots of it. Much is first year stuff which is forgotten by bar time.
“People of color who attend the good to great law schools are recruited on a totally different path at the top law firms than white or Asian students because they are so desirable.”
This in itself has unintended consequences, though. Just like in the example from a few pages back, people are aware that law, accounting and other professional firms recruit minorities under diversity initiatives and worry that since the qualifications used for the initiatives are different that they might be getting a professional that isn’t as qualified as what they’d expect from the firm. They’re not anti-diversity, they’re anti- paying top rates for the quality of professional they’d get for lower rates from another firm, and so the lower qualifications of the diversity hires worry them. Most clients go to the top firms and pay outrageous rates because they want or need ninja-level service. There are real differences between levels of quality in service at different professional levels.
And that’s why the Big Four partners tried to legitimize the black tax partner by introducing him as a Harvard grad. To reassure clients who are about to pay $400-$500 an hour for those services that the person providing the service is at the top of the profession because of what he knows, not the color of his skin. And that works, as long as the clients haven’t had a kid go to college recently and realizes that even college admissions are heavily race skewed as well.
I don’t know the answer to this. It’s important to offer opportunities to people regardless of skin color; it’s weird and wrong that top colleges and certain professions have so few minorities in their ranks. But. The affirmative action initiatives may be short term gain with other costs. I empathize with my friends who are angry and embarrassed when people are suspicious of their qualifications and wonder if they’re in their position because they were a top student or because the Firm needed a ______ (fill in the blank with whatever group was needed at the time).
I think the only solution is for black men to try to emulate black women. The study shows black women have better outcomes than black men. Black women are a highly educated demographic. If there is greater push for education amongst black men, then perhaps this issue goes away. It’s not as if black women aren’t black, right? And so the success of black women seems to counteract this narrative that it’s systematic racism. From my perspective, there needs to be a greater emphasis on making the right choices. (Ex. Not having children out of wedlock, actually getting married, avoiding criminal behavior, getting educated). It’s important that these get instilled at a young age so that the next generation and generations beyond that can reap the benefits.
Edit: @“Cardinal Fang” It’s possible that black women are perceived differently because they are more educated. A dramatic increase in black male education might change that perception for black men. An emphasis on education in Asian communities has most certainly shifted the way people look at Asians from the days of exclusion and removal.
It’s not always or only that. Some of it is that the number of diverse candidates is so small that the firms have to court them and stand out in some way to be chosen by them. These candidates are often the best of the best, so why shouldn’t they get the best deal?
Racism does not necessarily affect both men and women equally. One of the common anti-black stereotypes is the “dangerous criminal” one, but that is mainly applied against men and high school age boys. To the extent it may increase the frequency of negative contacts with police and school discipline (i.e. more likely to be seen as “suspicious” and have the police or school discipline called on them, even when doing nothing that is illegal), and the severity of consequences of such contacts (i.e. the greater punishment for the same offense phenomenon), that can make educational and other achievement more difficult for black men versus women.
Sigh… some of the comments on this thread show me know we have a long way to go.
It is never okay to be introduced as “the black person who attended, insert top tier school”. If you are a minority recruited to a top company then you have to perform once you are there. So if you are there, clearly you performing up to the company’s standards. So the only reason for a person’s credentials to be included in an introduction is to make the non person of color feel better.
When I used to travel, without giving up to much information, I was responsible for onboarding accounts between 3-100 million dollars. I lost count of the number of times I walked into a meeting and got “the look”.
There are enough studies that show there is bias, and black males get the worst of it. If you don’t think that is the case. You can look at what happened after we had a black president , and the number of unarmed shootings of black men. White men are many times taken into custody knowing they committed a horrific crime, insert any number of the most recent events.
While racism undoubtedly exists, we need to remember that if Obama were allowed to run a third time, he would have likely won.
Regarding the number of unarmed shootings of black men, it is 1) Lower than the number of unarmed white men shot by police, although you would never know that based upon what gets shown in the news, and 2) Roughly proportional to the underlying crime rate of black men.
We don’t know the true underlying crime rate of black men or white men; we only know the rate at which they are arrested and convicted. If there were no racial inequities in who gets arrested, convicted and incarcerated, then it would make sense to compare the rate of police shooting of unarmed black men with the rate of crimes committed by black men-- but we don’t know the latter. I make a different conclusion: The justice system arrests and convicts too many black men, and also shoots too many unarmed black men, two results that follow from the same cause.
"If you are a minority recruited to a top company then you have to perform once you are there. So if you are there, clearly you performing up to the company’s standards. "
Sort of. At some companies, the desire to recruit and retain minorities is such that there is more tolerance for performance issues. And even at companies that aren’t part of that group, no client wants to be the one that the nonperforming employees are working on while they work through their PIP. It’s not like a firm realizes an employee isn’t working out and fires him/her immediately… there’s usually a period of months where the employee is given a chance to improve while still working.
There is the way things should be and the way things are. Corporate clients paying top dollar aren’t usually in their position because they’re dumb. And to ask them to swallow without question the idea that yes, your firm recruits minorities that didn’t perform at school or in testing at the same level as the other employees of the firm but those prior underperformers will surely be operating at the exact same level once hired is naive.
Should firms be working to hire people from all backgrounds and races? Yes. But the way it is currently done causes people to question (often wrongly) the competence of minorities. That’s harmful and the minorities that are top performers and could compete without affirmative action are the ones that are most injured by the practice.
@milee30 What guarantee do I have if I am a client that the white employee I am given is up to the task? Why is it assumed because I am a minority I don’t know wth I am doing ?
Yes you mentioned we can compete, but when you have folks tossing our resumes because of a name it makes it hard to get in the door.
I don’t want incompetence if you are making my burger or handling my million dollar acct. It should not be assumed that a person of color is incompetent. It’s a problem that lies with the employers not us.
Especially when preppy mostly-white sports produce most of the athletic hooks that consume a large percentage of admission spots in the prestigious colleges that are preferentially recruited by consulting and investment banking companies. Or in the employer recruiting process itself, according to https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-03-22/wall-streets-lacrosse-mafia .
It can be a problem with employers which have to deal with racist customers – a much harder problem to solve than just a problem with employers, since that racism is much more diffuse, yet collectively significant in market power.
I agree. It’s a problem when people assume anything about a person just based on race, gender, or any other characteristic that has nothing to do with an individual’s performance level. Totally wrong.
I just worry that some of the methods used to try to address this issue are causing other issues.
None of it is fair and none of the fixes are easy and without complication.