Findings from a new study indicate that “black-sounding” names are less likely to get a reply from public service providers.
source article-www.citylab.com
It’s been well documented that people with names like LaKeisha or DeShawn, which became popular among African Americans during the civil rights era, can face disadvantages in the job market.
But that’s not the only place they are likely to bump up against conscious or unconscious biases. A recent study finds that a LaKeisha is much less likely to get a response when they contact public librarians or school district officials than, say, a Becky. And when they do, it’s less likely to be polite.
The researchers looked into a range of public sector institutions—from school districts and libraries to sheriff’s offices, county officials, and even job center veteran representatives. They focused on these because they offer public services, like education, knowledge, safety, or employment, that help cities run and potentially help narrow racial and economic gaps in society. “A lot of these services have a human component,” said Mirco Tonin, an economics professor at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy, who coauthored the report. “People are the main assets.”
But what if these very people who were administering these services were helping exacerbate inequalities instead of shrinking them? To test this, Tonin and his colleagues collected all available email addresses of local service providers. There were around 19,000 accounts in total—half of the total number of providers in the U.S. at the time of the experiment. Then over two months in spring 2015, they sent them emails with questions, signing off with names that “strongly evoked” race.
They found that emails from “black-sounding” names (examples: “DeShawn Jackson” and “Tyrone Washington”) were 4 percent less likely to get a response, compared to identical emails from senders perceived as white (“Greg Walsh” and “Jake Mueller.”) The difference in response was particularly stark in emails to sheriffs’ offices, but also statistically significant in libraries and school districts. ..Read more from the source article
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