Employment Discrimination

Many things have changed for the better since the time when our nation’s primary antidiscrimination law, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was enacted. We have made some progress in combating discrimination in the workplace and making equal employment opportunity a reality, but the job is by no means finished. Rooting out the contemporary manifestations of discrimination may prove even more difficult than confronting the overt exclusion and segregation characteristic of earlier years.
Discrimination is inherently difficult to prove. Indeed, much of this course is devoted to explaining the methods that courts use to decide these complex cases. One indication that discrimination still exists is found in the markedly different employment outcomes such as higher unemployment rates, concentration in lower-level jobs, and pay disparities across different races, sexes, and national origin groups. Unequal labor market outcomes need not have discrimination as their cause, but they are consistent with the presence of discrimination.
A second type of evidence for the continuing reality of discrimination comes from the large numbers of discrimination cases heard by administrative agencies and courts. Not every case presents a valid claim; indeed, the majority of cases do not conclude with a finding of discrimination. But despite plaintiffs’ heavy burden in proving discrimination, courts and agencies decide in thousands of cases each year that discrimination has occurred.
Responding to newspaper listings for entry-level jobs, the researchers sent résumés that were matched in terms of experience, education, and skills but differed in terms of the applicants’ names. When the researchers varied applicant credentials, high-quality candidates with African American names were at an even greater disadvantage relative to high-quality candidates with white-sounding names. Similar studies found that equally qualified applicants were much less likely to be contacted by prospective employers if they revealed the existence of a disability or were in their mid-sixties.

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