From the LA Times, 10/4/03:

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EDITORIAL
Connerly's Unreal World

Maybe in Ward Connerly's world, race is merely what he calls a
"sociopolitical phenomenon." In that world, we can do away with the
relevance of race by ordering government agencies to stop racial
cataloging, as his brainchild, Proposition 54, would require. His vision
has won nationwide advocates who suggest that if government stopped
officially taking note of race, its influence on lives would end.

That optimism is blind to a flurry of recent research documenting the
unyielding disadvantage black skin carries in the job market.

The latest study, by Northwestern University sociologist Devah Pager, found
that employers would rather hire a white man just out of prison than a
black man with an unstained record. Pager had college students pose as job
seekers at 350 Milwaukee-area companies advertising entry-level positions.
The young men were assigned similar backgrounds, with one exception: The
white candidates told employers they'd served 18 months in prison for
possession of cocaine with intent to sell. The black applicants had no
criminal record. Still, the white "ex-cons" were called back for interviews
17% of the time, whereas the crime-free black applicants were called back
in only 14% of cases.

The results confirm an earlier study demonstrating that job seekers with
names like Brendan and Emily were 50% more likely to generate calls from
employers than those with so-called African American names like Tyrone or
Tamika, even when their resumés were identical. A "white" name on a resumé
was as valuable as eight years of work experience.

Both studies mirror results from an 8-year-old project that found blacks
24% less likely to be offered a job than equivalent white candidates, when
both made it through the interview process.

Researcher Pager suggests that Americans' "strong and persistent negative
stereotypes" about blacks account for the disheartening findings. Others
blame strained race relations in Milwaukee — America's
second-most-segregated city — for skewing the results. But if the "why" of
the results is open to debate, the "what" seems unambiguous.

In the real world, bias still exists, and the effect of race cannot be
diminished by denying it exists. The effect of race on employment
opportunity is painfully clear. You'd have to be more than colorblind to
miss it.