Minorities have been battling name discrimination in the job market for decades. I’m sure that the results of a new study confirming that employers are more likely to call back people with “white sounding” names [1] comes as no surprise to black people who have not gotten a call back from potential employers. Which is why many black people resort to whitewashing their resume. [2] This is something I find frustrating. The issue obviously lies with the companies. There should be no need for black people to change or hide who they are to get a job, but the world we live in forces them to. How infuriating.
To add insult to injury, blacks are not the only minorities to suffer from name discrimination. Chinese, Middle Eastern, and even female sounding names are less likely to lead to an interview. [3] From my perspective, employers will find any way they can to discriminate, so how can we fight against that.
Personally, I don’t think names should not be used on resumes at all. We should use identification numbers. Something publicly available like a driver’s license number. If there’s no name, race or gender cannot be inferred. Instead of listing dates where we worked at places, we should list how long we worked there, preventing employers from inferring age (thus discriminating against us for our age or lack there of). I have always believed that pictures on a resume are wrong, and should never be used. Employers who require resume pictures only do so in order to discriminate.
Our names were precious gifts from our parents. The idea that the modern workplace has sullied that gift by using it against us is villainous. We must calculate when, where, and how to use our given names in order to preserve our ability to achieve our occupational goals. Perhaps the future provides hope for a fair hiring system that allows us to essentially submit our qualifications and nothing more. Without the biases of race, gender, and age clouding the employers’ judgement, not only would hiring practices be more fair, companies would hire more qualified candidates.
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