Public sector layoffs among African-Americans

Kathy Newman wrote about how low SES minorities rely on public sector jobs for social mobility in her book, No Shame in My Game. Newman studied young adults in Washington Heights and nearby areas who were employed in fast food restaurants, as well as some young adults who had applied but were not hired for fast food jobs. Jobs were scarce in the neighborhoods she studied, so that even these fast food jobs had a great deal of competition. Many youth, particularly African-Americans, studied for civil service exams, and regarded these jobs as one of their only ways to achieve a middle class existence, but even these jobs were hard to get. The relatives of her study participants who got civil service jobs were able to build middle class lives for themselves, move to the suburbs, and be role models for the rest of their families. Growing up in a diverse community, I knew at least one minority family who had achieved upward mobility thanks to a federal civil service job.

The current backlash against government, combined with tight budgets, has meant that many African-Americans with these coveted civil service jobs are in danger of losing them. That conclusion was self-evident, or should have been, but I hadn't seen the issue raised (and the issue hadn't occurred to me), until seeing this NY Times article.

People like to mock the government for having exacting requirements to document the procedures followed to ensure that there is no measurable discrimination. I don't how how much time I've spent filling out the EEOC paperwork for the dozens of faculty jobs I've applied for in my life, for instance, and the extensive other measures to make sure that people get treated equally. As much as everyone might mock these efforts, and I'm sure that they are imperfect and clunky, they do seem to have produced more equal opportunity for minorities than the private sector has been able to offer. The private sector may be more "efficient", but they are also less likely to hire people with distinctly minority-sounding names, according to randomized experiments, such as "Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?".

Attractiveness ratings

A Psychology Today article about attractiveness ratings in the Add Health data has yielded some interesting responses: that it's wrong offensive inanity and apparently not unprecedented awfulness that can't be replicated in reanalysis and could cause the author to join the Bell Curve author at a conservative think-tank and become an anti-PC crusader.

One aspect that I've not seen discussed is whether the author has anything in common with his research targets given that in other contexts, it's been widely noted that both African-American women (the target of the original article) and Asian men (like the author) are marginalized in the dating marketplace: e.g., on this African-American dating website, OK Cupid's data analysis, and a roundtable where I presented at American Sociological Association included a paper about how gender stereotypes hurt Asian-American men because Asians in general are considered "feminine" and African-American women because African-Americans in general are considered "masculine": hyperfeminine women and hypermasculine men are considered desirable, but feminine men and masculine women are not. Separate research documents how Asian men may feel emasculated, and allegedly business research documents issues with incorrect condom sizes in Asia.

Marginalization is a well-known explanation for bigotry, although of course not an excuse.

Sarah Palin has a new ad featuring women who, the ad implies, are traditional, sensible moms who know best. The ad makes vague statements like "We don't like the direction this country's going," as the camera lingers over blonde, brunette, grey, and white-haired daughters, mothers, grandmothers, of all shades of white, and even one in a wheelchair with "Don't Tread On Me" on the wheelchair's back. That sure sends a message, but I darn well hope that was completely unintentional. Right?