A Black man has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against a hotel in Detroit, Michigan, alleging the hotel only offered him a job interview after he changed the name on his resume, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNN.
Dwight Jackson filed the lawsuit against the Shinola Hotel on July 3, alleging he was denied a job when he applied as “Dwight Jackson,” but later offered an interview when he changed his name to “John Jebrowski.”
The lawsuit alleges Jackson was denied a job in “violation of Michigan Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
Is ‘Dwight Jackson’ a black sounding name? I’d have assumed the person was white if I’d read that name.
Dwight not so much, but Jackson, yes.
To the point that “Jackson” became jazz/jive-era slang that was the equivalent of “hey, what’s up?” when black people who used that slang were talking to each other.
Five of em were pretty famous. One even became the king of pop.
It’s also an extremely common surname for those of English/Scottish/Irish descent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_(name)
I’d be more willing to buy that they looked him up on social media and didn’t like what they saw. Whether or not that was his profile picture (race), or something he posted, is something I can’t answer.
But the name alone isn’t something I’d believe.
Over 50% of the people with that surname are Black.
https://discover.23andme.com/last-name/Jackson
That’s nationally too. So in a place like Detroit with a large Black population, I feel like people would assume Dwight Jackson was Black.
Agreed, it may just be a case of they weren’t hiring but then they were or the first resume was lost or a different manager looked at the resume. There are so many reasons what it could be that it shouldn’t be assumed race was a factor unless the hotel specifically said so.
Edit: reading the article I can see the guy applied many times before changing his name. I am slightly more convinced it was based on his name but it could still be they weren’t hiring but then they were. Or maybe they just wanted to meet the guy with such an awesome sounding name “Jabroski” sounds like something you would say in the 90s when Pauly Shore was popular. Memorable names stand out and make an impression.
these, among others, are the reasons why i didn’t take the same action when i resubmitted my resume under a very WASPy sounding name and the desire gets re-ignited every time i get an interview request after re-submitting my resume the same day my original resume was rejected.
Can you expand on this at all? I’m very curious.
i don’t think there’s anything to expand upon: i submit my resume; then they reject me; then i resubmit the same resume but with different formatting along with a WASP sounding name on the same day i received the rejection; and then they request an interview from me.
Also need to take location into account here. Detroit is 77% black Seems it would be pretty easy to show discrimination is there is a hotel in Detroit that is lacking in black employees.
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Middle-aged white guy here. First and last names, total white bread. Middle name? Black. Think “Tyrone” or “Trevon”. (LOL, Trevon shows a spell check error on one of the top 20 black male names.)
Couldn’t get a response on my resume for 6-weeks, nada. Changed the email to take out my middle name. Next week, 3 interviews and a solid job.
Had a black neighbor with a valley girl accent show up to an interview. 8 white girls waiting for their interviews. They showed her the door and said there was a mistake, no openings. She eventually got hired since her preacher was a top dog at the place.
The good thing about racists is that they’re fucking stupid. Just interview the person and say nothing instead of making up an obvious lie.
But what if the interview goes well… Then what? We can’t just hire them. Then we’ll be forced to maybe face… Something. Not sure exactly what…
Just interview the person and say nothing instead of making up an obvious lie.
You don’t get it, they consider this a humiliation inflicted by them on someone they want, well, humiliated. Eh, and sometimes it is true.
I have a Latin surname. I am sure it’s cost me in some circles. But in others it’s an advantage. At least for me I think it kind of evens out.
Yeah, me too. I’m a white woman with an Asian last name and a gender neutral first name. Honestly, I think my gender neutral first name opens more doors for me than the Asian last name closes.
LOL, Trevon shows a spell check error on one of the top 20 black male names
My autocorrect replaces “human” with “juman”! wtf
I’ve witnessed this first hand from the hiring side for an IT position. I was going through resumes with my boss and he straight up said, “I don’t want any hispanics, I want a white guy.” while tossing anything with a hispanic name to the side without even looking beyond that. This was in Orlando in an area with a large hispanic population. The kicker is that my boss was actually hispanic himself!
The kicker is that my boss was actually hispanic himself!
In the UK we call that racist taxi driver syndrome. A lot of immigrants come to the UK and because it’s a good money earner, or at least because they think it’s a good money earner, they tend to buy a taxi.
Anyway you get in and suddenly they start telling you about all their world views, usually it’s along the lines have there been too many immigrants. Even though they are an immigrant themselves.
Very much a case of shutting the door behind themselves.
Haha so true. I remember some my friend’s family going on about how we should all vote leave because of all the immigrants.
Mate, you were born in Napoli. You’re as Italian as spaghetti. I’m not that kind of British person and, as far as I’m concerned, you’re more than welcome here but you’re the “immigrant” you hate so much. Not only that, your that being that person while banging on about how bad immigration is to a group of very obviously white native British people. It was just the most bizarre thing ever.
He still has an accent.
I genuinely wanted to be like “but we like you.” I don’t think that would have gone down very well though.
I’ve spent too much of my life not speaking up at all. Then, I finally achieved speaking up by summoning anger and fear to motivate me. But my presentation is harsh and unfriendly.
My challenge now is to learn to disagree, when it needs to be done, but in a friendly and respectful way.
I genuinely wanted to be like “but we like you.” I don’t think that would have gone down very well though.
Maybe you should have, I’m almost certain somebody did it later in another conversation. Better from a friend and so on.
I’m Chinese and I am also extremely weary of hiring someone from China. Pretty scared of CCP spies TBH.
This is actually really fascinating to me, the idea that citizenship/nationality is a bigger factor in how you feel and that race isn’t a key factor. It tells me maybe society (globally, generally) is getting less plainly racist, but anxieties around nationality (and what that could indicate about individual attitudes and intentions) is obviously rising and taking its place, so racism ends up being obliquely adjacent to the more direct fear of the state. In other words, general society is making progress with being comfortable with people of different races, whereas country of origin becoming more worrying and slowing down progress.
What a strange disconnect there. We don’t fear individuals, we fear what they represent.
(I ate a gummy an hour ago tho sooooo I feel like I’m just stating the obvious so … Maybe?)
I think it’s not that.
Just when you are a member of a minority, communicating to others of the same minority feels weird.
Along patriotic lines - either you are a bit less real than them, or they than you, first.
Second, more importantly, among certain minorities some people trust “their own” more for business, employment, anything, and thus there are scams based purely on that.
Third, with people of a bit different background you are more eager to give some benefit or doubt or something when they show their personal downsides, with people of “your” group those downsides are much more infuriating and there’s a fallacy of presuming you understand them better.
thus there are scams based purely on that.
There absolutely are. The ownership of the company I work for is of a particular nationality, and every single time we have been given counterfeit bills as payment it has been from another member of said nationality, which the owner thinks is one of his “buddies.”
Every time.
And it’s usually those same guys trying to rip us off in other ways, too. I keep telling him that these motherfuckers are trying to take him for a ride about 75% of the time and it’s plainly visible from an outside perspective, but he won’t hear it. They’re his countrymen. (No, I won’t say which nationality.)
You won’t, but being Armenian (EDIT: by heritage, but not so much by immersion, so especially prone to meeting such attempts), I’d guess they are either Armenian or Georgian or maybe Jewish.
Pretty scared of CCP spies TBH.
Okay, but this is a fundamentally different reason that isn’t born out of general racism or xenophobia.
It’s maybe not ideal, but I don’t consider this to be a morally reprehensible attitude.
“From China” and “Chinese(-American)” aren’t the same thing
I wasn’t expecting that. I would understand that there a slight positive involontary bias towards candidates with a familiar-sounding name, but such shameless behavior is astonishing
That’s not that surprising, if their Hispanic boss was from Cuba, they’re probably a conservative and consuming a lot of right wing propaganda. I know a conservative Puerto Rican who’s afraid of the ms13 gang. He lives in rural NJ.
I know a few Hispanics who really don’t like being Hispanic. Like refuse to talk in Spanish but when abuela calls he will.
If you are hiring in IT and skip everyone without a white-sounding name, you are definitely going to have a much smaller hiring pool.
Oh shit…
Are Latinos over represented in your company with respect to the population? That would be a defensible position for your boss on this. I mean if you had 85% Latinos that could be taken as evidence of some sort of ethnic bias in favor of Latinos.
That would be a defensible position for your boss on this
Not legitimately, in my opinion. A candidate should never be hired or rejected to meet certain quotas.
His name was already about as white bread as it gets. This is a real and genuine problem when it comes to hiring, but it’s going to be a huge uphill battle for him to prove anything here.
When I think of the name “Dwight” I think of Eisenhower or the character from The Office. Not this guy.
Are there a lot of white Jacksons though? Legitimately asking, I don’t know any Jacksons personally and basically only drum up the obvious as far as famous folk lol
He doesn’t need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a civil suit. Essentially, his face value evidence is strong enough to win unless the hotel can provide clear explanation of how it did what it did, for example if they had different people processing different stacks of papers. At the same time, the plaintiff will have a chance for discovery, so who knows what will happen on that front.
