RACIAL BIAS PERSISTS, NO MATTER WHAT CONSERVATIVES SAY

In a recent essay on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, black
conservative Shelby Steele maintained, "The great lie of today's black
protest is that racism still holds blacks back. It does not." Simply
stated, that is the conservative critique of the civil rights movement:
Racism is over, let's move on.

That canard has trickled down into mainstream society, and many white
Americans now believe that race no longer affects personal prospects of
success or failure.

A recent Gallup Poll asked, "Do you feel that racial minorities in this
country have equal job opportunities as whites, or not?" Fifty-five percent
of whites polled said yes. Other polls have revealed similar numbers.

In some ways, those sentiments are understandable. This nation has made
progress in discouraging expressions of overt bigotry. But racial
disparities persist, and many analysts trace them to biased cultural
attitudes and prejudiced social policies that are so deeply woven into the
fabric of American life they are virtually invisible.

But according to a number of recent studies, overt racial discrimination is
still easy to find - if you know where to look.

In one of the most innovative of these new studies, Marianne Bertrand of
the University of Chicago and Sendhil Mullainathan of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology used a field experiment to measure the extent of
race-based job discrimination in the current labor market.

Their study is titled "Are Emily and Brendan More Employable than Lakisha
and Jamal?" The researchers sent fictitious resumes in response to
help-wanted ads, each resume was randomly assigned either a white-sounding
name (Emily Walsh, Brendan Baker) or a very black-sounding name (Lakisha
Washington, Jamal Jones).

The study found that applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent
more likely to get called for an initial interview than applicants with
black-sounding names. What's more, higher-quality resumes provided little
advantage for black applicants.

"For us, the most surprising and disheartening result is seeing that
applicants with African-American names were not rewarded for having better
resumes," Bertrand said.

Two other recent studies found similar results through the use of
matched-pair testing. The Legal Assistance Foundation of Metropolitan
Chicago and the Chicago Urban League used the technique to gauge the extent
to which race affected the employment opportunities for blacks in the
Chicago suburbs.

The study found that when white and black job seekers had the appropriate
qualifications and experience for the position, whites were far more likely
to be called back than blacks. A Chicago Urban League analysis of the data
concluded that the study actually understated the extent to which "deeply
entrenched racism still blocks equal opportunity for blacks in the labor
market."

Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager conducted an experiment in
Milwaukee that dispatched white and black men with and without prison
records to job interviews. Not surprisingly, whites without drug busts on
their applications did best; blacks with drug busts did worst. However,
white applicants with prison records were still more likely to be hired
than black men without one.

This issue is particularly relevant to a black community in which high
numbers of black youth spend time in the criminal justice system. The U.S.
Bureau of Justice Statistics projects that 30 percent of black boys who
turn 12 this year will spend time in jail in their lifetimes, if current
incarceration rates stay constant.

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system also are a large part of
the problem. For example, blacks constitute about 13 percent of the
nation's drug users, but they make up 58 percent of those sent to prison
for drug possession, according to the Sentencing Project, a criminal
justice think tank.

A 2000 study by Human Rights Watch found enormous differences in the
white/black rate of imprisonment for drug use in the United States. The
study found the greatest disparity is Illinois, where blacks were jailed
for selling or using drugs at 57 times the rate of whites. The report also
found that blacks make up 90 percent of the inmates imprisoned for drugs.

These studies make clear that racial biases persist. Those who claim we've
arrived at a colorblind society are blinding themselves to reality.

Reprint from Knight Ridder Tribune. Salim Muwakkil is senior editor of In
These Times magazine (www.inthesetimes.com), a Chicago-based publication.