Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment

Response paper - Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A field experiment

Devah Pager, Bart Bonikowski, and Bruce Western conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor marker revealing the shocking truth about contemporary racism. Black applicants were half likely as equally qualified whites to receive a call back or job offer. Moreover black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds did no better than white applicants just released from prison.

The issue was addressed with a field experiment: sociologists presented equally qualified applicants who differed only by race or ethnicity and made them apply to hundreds of entry-level positions in New York. Beyond the experimental estimates Pager, Bonikowski and Western explore the processes by which discrimination occurs: examining the interactions between job seekers and employers to highlight the range of decisions that collectively reduce opportunities for minority candidates.

Overall, their findings indicate that employers significantly prefer white and Latino job applicants, relative to equally qualified blacks (30.1% and 25.2% compared to 15.2% respectively). The white tester's racial advantage narrows substantially when criminal record was assigned to white participants only (17.2% and 15.4% compared to 13.0% respectively). When analysing how discrimination occurs on the level of interactions three categories stood out: categorical exclusion, shifting standards, and race-coded job channeling. Categorical exclusion is immediate or automatic rejection of black (or minority) applicant in favor of white applicant which occurs on the early stage of employment process. Second category of behaviour, shifting standards, is when employers' evaluations of applicants appear actively shaped or constructed thought a racial lens, with similar qualifications or deficits taking on varying relevance depending on an applicants' race. Finally, a third category goes beyond hiring decision, focusing on the job placement. Race-based job channeling represents a process by which minority applicants are steered toward particular job types, often those characterised by greater physical demand and reduced customer contact.

It is argued that with globalisation and marketization in a lesser-faire capitalistic society racism is replaced with fair Darwinian-like competition. This research complicates this commonplace assumption, showing how small businesses, who do not have hiring agencies and face less bureaucracy create a race-based discriminatory environment for a low-wage workers in the post-civil right era. Applying the Conflict Theory theoretical framework we can argue that as whites historically had privileges over other races in US they, as a group trying to maintain this higher status/power through racial discrimination. Implications of such conclusion should lead to a more favorable attitude towards affirmative action programs as an opposite to leaning toward abstract liberalism ideas. Striking findings of this research may help fight naturalisation of racism, cultural racism, and especially minimisation of racism in contemporary society.