July 5, 2009
What’s in a name? Certainly not a job if it sounds ethnic
Jenni Russell
Recommend?
Names are powerful signals. They conjure up images. Fareeda Khan. Thandi Zuma. Henrietta Cavendish. Leroy Smith. Read them and, in an instant, a shadowy impression forms in your mind. Before you know anything else about an individual, you start making assumptions about them based on what you know or have read about Fareedas, Henriettas, Leroys or Zumas.
In Britain in 2009, having a name that doesn’t sound white can lose you a chance of a job. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has just sent out bogus CVs in response to a thousand job vacancies. In every case it sent one application with a name that sounded British and white and one application with a name that sounded as if it was from an ethnic minority.
The fake applicants had near-identical qualifications and experience. Yet, 44 years after the Race Relations Act outlawed discrimination on the grounds of race, the imaginary white applicants were significantly more likely to be given interviews than the imaginary nonwhite ones. Although the DWP has not finished analysing the data, Vera Baird, the solicitor-general, said the evidence suggested “there was quite a strong sense that there is race discrimination going on”.
The DWP conducted the experiment because there is a real problem with finding a job in Britain if you are not white: 73% of the general population are employed, but only 60% of ethnic minorities are. For some, part of the explanation is they leave school without many qualifications, but that is certainly not the whole story.
Overall, people from ethnic minorities don’t even get the jobs their qualifications make them fit for. In 2003, No 10’s Strategy Unit concluded that all minority groups – “even those enjoying relative success, like the Indians and Chinese, are not doing as well as they could be, given their education and other characteristics”. That year the Institute for Employment Studies found that while employers were not short of ethnic minority applicants, they “failed to progress through the recruitment system compared to whites”.
This is not a minor matter. Cutting groups and communities off from jobs keeps them poor and socially isolated and makes individuals angry and depressed. It makes successful role models rare. Yet it is very difficult for any one person to be able to show that the reason they didn’t get called to an interview or offered a promotion was their race. The appeal of an experiment such as the DWP’s is its simplicity. No explanation other than discrimination is possible. But neither the Tories nor the employers’ organisations accept that this evidence is worth acting on.
Theresa May, the Tory spokeswoman on work and pensions, called the research “a waste of taxpayers’ cash”. The CBI questioned whether the research was fair and then added loftily: “Job applicants are already protected from discrimination when going through the recruitment process and can take legal action if treated differently.”
This is, of course, legalistic nonsense. It’s rare for anyone to know they are being treated differently and rarer still for them to want to go to the law about it. As it happens, I have a close friend who knows exactly how rife discrimination is because she carried out the same experiment as the DWP.
A Sri Lankan married to an Englishman, when she qualified as an accountant she applied in her maiden name for a couple of dozen jobs. As Sonali Jayasuriya she was not called to a single interview in two months. Alarmed, she started filling in forms in her married name and Sonali Young was given interviews for every job she inquired about.
Her case gives us a clue about what may be going on in the workplace. It would be naive not to think that in some cases straight racism is the issue. A few years ago a third of Britons thought it would be problematic to work for a boss of a different race. But it’s often likely to be something rather more subtle: that employers are looking for someone whose signals indicate they could fit in with and belong to the existing group.
Overwhelmingly, people recruit others like themselves. We prefer working and socialising with a homogeneous group. It makes life simpler. When recruiters scan CVs they are essentially decoding them, drawing conclusions about people’s background, attitudes and skills.
If outright racial prejudice were the issue, Sonali’s foreign first name, or her dark skin, should still have ruled her out. But her English surname signalled, accurately, that she was already partly integrated into the dominant culture. She was easy to absorb and her career has flourished.
The preference for those outsiders who wish to integrate exists in all societies. That understanding, sometimes fuelled by fear, is why so many Jews arriving in England or America in the past, chose to Anglicise their names. That decision carried the implicit message; I am willing to be part of your group. It is a powerful message, easily understood. It works universally. A white friend of mine in South Africa was given her Zulu name at birth. In a country where whites are often resented, her non-white name means that she is welcomed everywhere, every day. She is profoundly grateful for it.
Over the past 40 years in Britain the assumption of the past, that it was the task of newcomers to fit in, has disappeared. The official language has become one of welcoming difference. In practice that helps to create real barriers for individuals from ethnic minorities who are trying to get on in the workplace. They have been cut off from the social codes, networks and unwritten rules of the host community.
Bridging those gaps is imperative because we can’t afford to live in a country where racial divisions grow, and are fuelled by poverty and unemployment. One of the answers is to make it easier for those who want to to integrate. People hold onto cultural difference so resolutely partly because they have no confidence that they will have a valued place in the host society if they surrender it.
Integration begins with work, which is the route to giving people status and pride. Which is why it makes sense to support the government’ s answer to the prejudice it uncovered; banning names from application forms. Employers are objecting, but at least the very first hurdle in a job search would be eliminated. Because as long as the first reaction to “Leroy Smith” or “Fareeda Khan” is “black”, rather than “potential CEO”, there is a genuine problem here.
What’s in a name? Certainly not a job if it sounds ethnic
Quote
