Minority Numbers
(Not) Paying for Diversity: Repugnant Market Concerns Associated with Transactional Approaches to Diversity Recruitment
Summer Jackson
Administrative Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In a 20-month ethnographic study, I examine how a technology firm, ShopCo (a pseudonym), considered 13 different recruitment platforms to attract racial minority engineering candidates. I find that when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms focused on racial minority candidates (targeted recruitment platforms) but not when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms on which the modal candidate was White (traditional recruitment platforms), ShopCo managers expressed distaste for what they perceived to be the objectification, exploitation, and race-based targeting of racial minorities. These managers' repugnant market concerns influenced which types of platforms ShopCo adopted. To recruit racial minorities, ShopCo eschewed recruitment platforms taking a transactional approach that emphasized speed, quantity, efficiency, opportunity, and compensation, in favor of platforms taking a developmental approach that emphasized individuality, ethics, equity, community, and commitment. I show that ShopCo managers had different relational models for recruiting based on the race of the candidate. By exploring the new mechanism of repugnant market concerns, I aim to increase understanding of employees' resistance to DEI initiatives, which can create barriers to workplace reforms even when organizations are committed to change.
New Experimental Evidence on Anti-Asian Bias in White Parents' School Preferences
Greer Mellon & Bonnie Siegler
Sociology of Education, forthcoming
Abstract:
Existing research has found evidence of widespread anti-Asian bias in the United States, yet limited work has examined whether anti-Asian biases affect parents' school preferences. In this article, using a conjoint experiment, we examine White parents' views on schools with varying percentages of Asian students. We find that respondents strongly prefer schools with fewer Asian students, and we examine potential mechanisms that may explain these preferences. We do not find evidence that our results are driven by academic stereotypes. Instead, participants anticipated less student-level "fit" and less "commonality" with parents at schools with larger Asian populations, in line with past research on anti-Asian bias and stereotypes. Our findings extend existing literature on race and school choice and speak to the importance of addressing anti-Asian discrimination in U.S. educational settings.
Racial and ethnic differences in the consequences of school suspension for arrest
Benjamin Fisher & Alex Widdowson
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing body of literature has demonstrated that when schools suspend students, the suspension acts not as a deterrent but as an amplifier of future punishment. Labeling theory has emerged as the predominant explanation for this phenomenon, suggesting that the symbolic label conferred along with a suspension shapes how other people perceive and respond to labeled students. Few studies, however, have attended to racial/ethnic differences in this process even though critical race theory suggests the consequences of suspension likely differ across racial/ethnic groups due to prevailing racial/ethnic stereotypes. This study uses six waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Youth 1997 (N = 8,634) to examine how the relationship between suspension and subsequent arrest differs for White, Black, and Hispanic students. Using a series of within-person analyses that control for time-stable personal characteristics, this study finds that suspension amplifies Black and Hispanic students' risk of arrest relative to that of White students. White students' risk of arrest was not amplified by suspension and, in some models, was diminished. This study's findings underscore the importance of understanding the labeling process as different by race/ethnicity and indicate that suspension is particularly harmful for Black and Hispanic relative to White students.
Racial Disparity in Leadership: Evidence of Valuative Bias in the Promotions of National Football League Coaches
Christopher Rider et al.
American Journal of Sociology, July 2023, Pages 227-275
Abstract:
The authors propose that racial disparity in organizational leadership representation will persist until valuative bias favoring white men ceases to influence advancement from the lower-level positions where most careers begin. They consider how racial disparity results from the organizational matching of individuals to positions with different advancement prospects (i.e., allocative bias) and by the provision of differential rewards within those positions (i.e., valuative bias). Analyzing career history data for over 1,300 National Football League coaches from 1985 to 2015, the authors find that white assistant coaches were promoted at higher rates than Black coaches -- holding constant many factors including unit and individual performance -- both before and after a league-wide intervention explicitly implemented to close the racial gap in leadership representation. They further demonstrate that this white promotion advantage is specific to the position typically occupied before promotion to head coach. Simulations demonstrate how racial disparity persists even absent bias in positional allocations; eliminating valuative bias at early career stages is, thus, necessary to achieve racial parity in leadership representation.
Does College Prestige Matter? Asian CEOs and High-Skilled Immigrant Hiring in the US
Eunbi Kim
Work, Employment and Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the hiring discrimination literature, employers are depicted primarily as majority members who strive to bolster their privileged group status by limiting immigrants' employment opportunities. While minority employers are expected to be less discriminatory towards immigrant hiring than their majority counterparts, our argument contradicts this expectation. Building on the segmented assimilation and social identity literature, we analyse the disparities in organisational support for high-skilled immigrant hiring among Standard and Poor's (S&P) 1500 firms (2009-2018) with a focus on organisations led by Asian CEOs. We find that firms with Asian CEOs tend to have a lower intent to hire high-skilled foreign workers compared to those with CEOs of other races, but such a negative effect improves significantly when the Asian CEOs received a prestigious college education. This article extends theoretical discussion on hiring discrimination by emphasising the importance of CEO minority status and education.
Spillover Effects of Black Teachers on White Teachers' Racial Competency: Mixed Methods Evidence from North Carolina
Seth Gershenson et al.
American University Working Paper, June 2023
Abstract:
The US teaching force remains disproportionately white while the student body grows more diverse. It is therefore important to understand how and under what conditions white teachers learn racial competency. This study applies a mixed-methods approach to investigate the hypothesis that Black peers improve white teachers' effectiveness when teaching Black students. The quantitative portion of this study relies on longitudinal data from North Carolina to show that having a Black same-grade peer significantly improves the achievement and reduces the suspension rates of white teachers' Black students. These effects are persistent over time and largest for novice teachers. Qualitative evidence from open-ended interviews of North Carolina public school teachers reaffirms these findings. Broadly, our findings suggest that the positive impact of Black teachers' ability to successfully teach Black students is not limited to their direct interaction with Black students but is augmented by spillover effects on early-career white teachers, likely through peer learning.