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Comment by cperciva | Hacker News Reader

Names say something about the people who pick them. Yes, race; but also education, socioeconomic level, and community. The black population of the US is heavily weighted towards poor education and poverty, so when people think of "typical black names" they're often thinking of typical poor uneducated black names.

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I think you're trying too hard to explain how a bias against black names isn't a bias against the racial group. The article said they used archetypal black names such as "Latoya" or "Tyrone". Taking this at face value, there is no indication of lower socioeconomic level unless you're taking being black itself as the indication. We're not talking about made up ghetto names that we all love to disparage these days. Being biased against standard <racial group> names is in fact a bias against <racial group>.

You don't see a lot of black guys named "Tyrone" walking around Harvard.

Latoya and Tyrone are common black names, and they're also strongly associated with lower socioeconomic level because lots of blacks are in a lower socioeconomic level. The sorts of professional, educated black families that send their kids to good schools and from there to good jobs don't name them these lower-class names.

Tyrone is just not a common name at all anymore. You're not likely to meet someone named Tyrone at a Crip hangout.

So you're saying that any black name is automatically associated with lower class. I would contend that this proof that bias against names is bias against the race.

Edit: just to explain a bit more: my point is that Tyrone and Latoya are not indicative of lower class, any more than simply being black is. Thus a bias against those names is a bias against black in general.

If I recall correctly, names that are considered distinctively black but not actually African do tend to be associated with lower-class blacks. It's unfortunate but AFAIK that's the way the world is, largely because blacks historically have felt pressure to seem more "white" as they've moved up in society. So it's hard to disambiguate the two factors.

I'd bet you'd see a similar bias against lower-class white names like Bubba or Leroy or most of the names here: http://babynamesworld.parentsconnect.com/forum/topic88623.ht...

If it is purely economic, you probably also wouldn't see as much bias against black-sounding names that don't have negative connotations such as Michael Jackson (it might get a smirk, but if it is indeed about economic bias, the name of a prestigious black man should be a good demonstration).

Supporting data: a while ago, a German study showed a heavy bias amongst teachers against children with certain names, among them Dennis, Chantal, Jaqueline and (evoking the most extreme bias) Kevin. While these may be completely neutral in the USA or France, they're not traditional German names and typically chosen after movie or sports stars (Kevin allegedly first appeared in Germany after a certain movie came out, while at the same time British football player Kevin Keegan played in the Bundesliga). And that is something typically done by uneducated parents, while educated people prefer biblical or historical namesakes.

a bias against the names Cletus or Billy Bob says nothing of the white racial group at large.

A bias against Cletus or Billy Bob is a bias against a subset of a racial group. When the name you're biased against is represented by the entire group, it the only conclusion is that it is a bias against the racial group itself.

Lets take this a bit further. For your resume to not be biased against from the start, you have to not have a "typical" black name; essentially erasing any indication of your race from your resume. How is that not a bias against the race?

You guys are seriously straining logic here.

"... Names say something about the people who pick them. ..."

There is a freakonomics discussion about the power of name choice in "Super Freakonomics", CH6, "Perfect Parenting, Part II; or: Would a Roshanda by Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?" which hints at this ~ http://freakonomicsbook.com/freakonomics/chapter-excerpts/ch... and http://www.slate.com/id/2116449/ though the message I got was the signaling the name gave to others & the recipient of the name mattered more.

"Names say something about the people who pick them. Yes, race; but also education, socioeconomic level, and community...."

You are forgetting one not-so-minor fact that the resumes were _identical_ to the white ones'. Are you saying that the recipients just looked at the names and didn't even bother to read the resumes??

I'm saying that having seen the names people didn't read the resumes as closely, yes.

It could also mean that they read them differently. Say they took two years more than normal for high school. On the one hand, that can trigger thoughts about laziness or lack of intelligence. On the other, it can trigger thoughts about perseverence (many others would have given up), or about how the recruiter 'lost' two years in high school, too, because his father died in a house fire.

Fighting one's prejudices is really hard.

Key difference . . . names are chosen by a person's parents, while email addresses are chosen by a person for themselves.

Focusing on the name, which the person can't control, instead of on the person's accomplishments (resume), which the person can absolutely control, would seem to be an indicator of bias.

I don't think your point holds up.

You don't think that your parents' income or education level has an effect on your later success?

And sure, it would be better to ignore names and focus on a resume -- but people rely on subconscious cues all the time. If your only goal is to find good candidates as quickly as possible, a subconscious cue which is usually correct works to your advantage -- whether it's "people with degrees from Harvard are stuck-up snobs", "people who write their resumes in LaTex are good coders", or "people with weird names like 'jewyl' are useless".

Making important decisions based on stereotypes rather than facts tends to be frowned upon these days. And (at least in the US) it opens yourself up to huge discrimination suits if you base your discrimination on protected classes like gender or race.

I'm not saying that people should do this. Only that they do, and (barring legal consequences) it's advantageous to do so.

This just seems odd given that you have a page of information which is probably a lot more informative. But that's kind of the definition of racism -- even in the face of evidence that would contradict your stereotype you'll cling to your stereotype.

Sure, you have a page of information which is more informative. And you have Google, which is probably even more informative. And you could start phoning college professors and get even more information.

There's a point where the cost of gathering information exceeds its value. Unfortunately, that point sometimes comes halfway through reading a resume.

When you're comparing the candidate against someone else with the exact same resume that differs only by name, the rest of that information is not useful, because it doesn't help you distinguish between the choices.

But isn't that the point of the statement. It would be like saying that if you saw the candidate in person and they did the job equally well, but one had dark skin and the other light skin, so we used their skin color to distinguish -- but then trying to argue that skin color isn't really a proxy for race, since some black people could be lighter than a white person.

To me it just sounds like racism covered up.

Thanks for this. I swear the mental gymnastics people go through to convince themselves their biases aren't about race are amazing (note I'm not calling anyone racist here).

First thing we all need to do is be willing to flat out admit our own faults without any rationalizations. That's the only way we'll ever be able to overcome it.

I would only consider racism a fault if it leads you to make bad decisions. In the hypothetical situation where two candidates differ only by their race, that won't happen.

Interesting logic. Of course people's resumes don't reflect the entirety of the candidate, so it is likely that basing decisions to move further based on race will eventually cause you to pass up the better candidate. Sounds like a fault to me.

The alternative of ignoring race gives you two identical candidates. If choosing a particular race consistently gives you worse results than choosing randomly would have, that's still evidence supporting racism as a general rule - you're just being racist in the wrong direction.

I just don't buy that it does. We're not picking two random people off the street here. These are people who have passed all the filters needed to have their resumes sitting in front of you. From education, to experience, to HR, to phone screen, etc. If, at this point, the two candidates still look identical, I don't think race gives you any meaningful signal. The black candidate has already proven that he has risen above any disadvantages he might have statistically faced. In fact, this should even be a plus in his column because he had the determination (or raw intelligence) to overcome his disadvantaged lot in life and be sitting in front of you, on equal footing with a white candidate who (statistically) had many advantages given to him.

Which statement? That wasn't the point of your statement that the resume provided more information than the candidates' races. It actually provides no useful information if the other guy has the exact same qualifications. Your example is the same. They do the job exactly the same, so you decide based on the skin color. What would you think about someone who tells you "you should have just decided based on their performance?"

In response to cperciva's comment . . . Statistically? Sure . . . on an individual basis? Should be irrelevant . . . that's why we base employment decisions upon the resume of the individual and not based upon the resume of the parents.

This is not completely true. Of the 10 or so people I have hired, 3 had resume names different from their legal names. One had a Pakistani name, another was chinese, and one had a ghetto name.

It is well known that you can put whatever name on your resume you want. It is not until after you are hired that you have to submit documentation.

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