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Tell me something I don't know. But other people have mentioned other similar things. Plenty of educated blacks also come from broken families and poor neighborhoods which can cause employers not to hire blacks. You might have blacks who are educated and not gain employment because of of their first name like Shakwan or Taneka. Certain aspects of ghetto black culture can slow down an educated black person from gaining professional employment. This is why I mentioned the African American value system needs to be improved.
My question to you is how many professional blacks act like ghetto people, and who cares what their names are.
To perpetrate the notion that African American culture is ghetto.........well hey if you really know blacks as you claim to you will know that we represent a diversity and black professionals are proud to be black, and are NOT ghetto. Since when did ghetto behavior represent the aspirations of those who graduate college and enter the professions?
Like I said mention blacks and once again the 30% ghetto blacks will be used to define the 30% SOLIDLY middle to upper middle class blacks. WHY? Which other group is so often defined by their least successful even when they don't portray that behavior?
My question to you is how many professional blacks act like ghetto people, and who cares what their names are.
To perpetrate the notion that African American culture is ghetto.........well hey if you really know blacks as you claim to you will know that we represent a diversity and black professionals are proud to be black, and are NOT ghetto. Since when did ghetto behavior represent the aspirations of those who graduate college and enter the professions?
Like I said mention blacks and once again the 30% ghetto blacks will be used to define the 30% SOLIDLY middle to upper middle class blacks. WHY? Which other group is so often defined by their least successful even when they don't portray that behavior?
Dude I know blacks with BA degrees and have those silly ghetto names which I really hate. Their names hinder them from obtaining professional employment. Again these kids were born into poverty and are trying to pull themselves out. On the flip side I know some professional blacks and blacks of middle class background. They seem well to-do but they know all to well bias is their. I have a buddy of mines is half Hispanic and half black., his sister uses her Hispanic heritage to the full extent when it comes to private or corporate employment which works. If she used her black heritage she would have still been pushing papers. If I was you, you should watch birth lottery because in life we are all not born lucky.
My question to you is how many professional blacks act like ghetto people, and who cares what their names are.
To perpetrate the notion that African American culture is ghetto.........well hey if you really know blacks as you claim to you will know that we represent a diversity and black professionals are proud to be black, and are NOT ghetto. Since when did ghetto behavior represent the aspirations of those who graduate college and enter the professions?
Like I said mention blacks and once again the 30% ghetto blacks will be used to define the 30% SOLIDLY middle to upper middle class blacks. WHY? Which other group is so often defined by their least successful even when they don't portray that behavior?
Studies show that hiring managers care, and that may be part of the problem. There's a bias. I stated it in an earlier post but more than one study indicates if all things are equal - achievements and degrees - a person with a traditional name will be hired over the person with a non-traditional name. It may not be right or fair, but it's reality.
Language can be a problem, too. I'm not talking about professionals, I'm talking about college graduates. I've had several African American college graduates on my team over the years and some incorrectly pronounce words even though they're educated and should know better. One person I corrected told me it's a cultural thing and she's not changing it because it's acceptable to her. I'm sorry, but I would never respond that way to my manager and I can't put you in front of clients if you cannot speak the language. So there may be cultural differences preventing employment, as well. To get around this, the company began giving reading tests to everyone to see how they pronounce the words, but some of the offenders correctly pronounce words during the interview process but not after being hired. It's a problem, and this isn't a matter of bias or prejudice, we've had a couple of Caucasian graduates who also didn't have a command of the language.
A degree is no guarantee of success for anyone, of any race.
With that being said, it's important these days to network and to build and maintain professional relationships, with ex-colleagues, customers, managers, peers, etc. You just never know when you might need their assistance.
I found my current position through a recruiter, who found me on LinkedIn and called me "out of the blue". I already had a position and was working. The recruiter told me that this position would pay more and that my qualifications looked to be 100% of what they were looking for. I decided to do a phone interview with the hiring manager. It turns out that the hiring manager and I worked together at the same company (different locations) 15 years ago, but did not know each other. We knew a lot of the same colleagues though. I got an offer for this new position quite quickly.
The "good-ole-boy" network is not a gov sponsored institution. However, the racial "rule of three" or whatever it is called quotas are.
And it is not about "they are qualified" it is about who is the best qualified, and AA is allowing qualified candidates positions based on race and gender, not that they were truly the best qualified. Look at Ricci v. DeStefano for an example of this ridiculousness.
I don't get your point. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs (the white people who scored high on the test). The fire department violated Title VII by discarding the tests. Yes, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was used to protect white people. The Rule of Three in this case referred to the department only promoting the top three scorers; it had nothing to do with race. All of this further proves the point that people believe a lot of myths about Affirmative Action. Ricci v. DeStefano | The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law
The "good-ole-boy" network is not a gov sponsored institution. /
My point was that they are there and that they are funded to make them less of a hardship on AAs.
So my next question would be, aren't successful Black businessmen mentoring up-and-coming AAs? I suppose if they preferred, they wouldn't need to use government funds.
Just because someone is a minority OR WOMAN (because you all seem to think that affirmative action only applies to black people) doesn't mean that they will be hired simply based on those factors- THEY HAVE TO BE QUALIFIED FOR THE POSITION.
But let me flip this- how many white males have been hired for positions they sure as HELL don't qualify for, but they knew someone who inducted them in the 'good ol' boys' club? Can you answer that? I know you don't think all of the white male faces you see in these positions meet all the requirements on the checklist now do ya?
You thought you were slick by including minorities-Affirmative Action-less qualified in the same sentence.
EXCELLENT POST!! I'm glad someone caught this and responded with truth. I'm tired of hearing from opponents of Affirmative Actions (does it even exist anymore) that the minorities (Blacks primarily) hired due to Affirm-Act are just placed in any job position even when they're unqualified for it and can't handle it just to satisfy the law but Whites (not just the males but females too) are always hired for positions they're wholly qualified for. What a bunch of crap!
More and more you'll see "Spanish fluency required" as a way to keep most blacks out of that workplace. It's strange that you'll see them blatantly proclaiming they discriminate toward one particular ethnic group and then have themselves as an EEO employer -- and you look and they haven't got a single employee that is black - or white for that matter.
It's bad where I live because they're stationing many military families here -- but the family members absolutely cannot get jobs in the community because of the rampant discrimination.
I've found it to be true in my experience - what the article stated. This is generally how the world works unfortunately. Even when immigrants come here and start businesses, they discriminate by hiring their own family and friends (people who look like them for the most part). I've seen this over and over with east Indians, Middle-Eastern Muslim groups, and Africans. Hispanics do and get away it by using language as the excuse. They will hire only other Hispanics/Latinos in their businesses or an industry where they dominate such as building cleaning services. Our country is probably better than most in the fact that at least the majority population, Whites, are trying to do better. So far the other groups continue to get a free pass to discriminate and hire only their own.
I'm a Black person with two degrees (currently employed at one of the better paying companies than I have been for the past 6 yrs) and I know plenty of Blacks with degrees (some are long term employed with one company, others never have been laid off or unemployed during their career, some have been laid off, or struggling finding a job they felt was right for them) and we haven't had a worse time obtaining employment than anyone else in this economy.
Could things be better? Of course. There's always room for improvement. Until Black people collectively improve their personal behaviors, business practices, business acumen, business entrepreneurial-ship, and communication skills then we will continue to be at the mercy of other non-Blacks willing to hire us. Even then, because the Black population is around 13% in the US there will always be Blacks who will work for non-Blacks and that's usually not a bad thing in my experience, at least if working for Americans (exclude "Americans" who require that you as an American speak Spanish). I can't speak for working for immigrants in the USA.
Exactly, I'm not discounting that discrimination exists but I have my picture of my very Black self on Linkedin. Yet I still get unsolicited invitations to talk about this, that or the other opportunity.
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Excellent!!
