Ban on criminal history question for US job seekers reveals deeper issue: racism

Guardian 

Several new studies on so-called “ban the box” policies that block employers from discounting job applicants with criminal records have revealed another, even more extensive problem: deep-seated employer discrimination against African Americans.

Ban-the-box laws, which prevent employers from asking about criminal history on job applications, have passed in scores of cities, 24 states and the District of Columbia. The laws were intended to reduce the impact of US mass incarceration on hiring as individuals with a criminal record attempt to return to the workplace. Because African Americans are five times more likely than whites to be incarcerated, a major secondary goal of ban-the-box advocates is to reduce the effect of racial disparities in employment. Black unemployment has hovered at almost twice that for white Americans in the US.

But researchers who have scrutinized the policies have found that, regardless of whether employers ask about criminal history, African Americans face discrimination from employers with ingrained racial biases.

“The core problem raised by the studies is not ban-the-box but entrenched racism in the hiring process, which manifests as racial profiling of African Americans as ‘criminals’,” said researchers Beth Avery and Maurice Ensellem with the National Employment Law Project, in a new study released on Thursday.

Other studies released over the past few months have reached the similar conclusion that black Americans may be profiled as criminals. Another released in June sent out 15,000 fake job applications in states with ban-the-box laws – New York and New Jersey – before and after their respective laws took effect. [MORE]