How Ban-The-Box May Increase Race Discrimination

Employers prevented by law from filtering out job applicants on the basis of their criminal history may be turning instead to what they perceive as another way of achieving the same result: filtering out applicants on the basis of race, or perceived race. Harvard economics professor Sendhil Mullainathan, in this guest “Economic View” column in the New York Times, says this study does not lead to the conclusion that ban-the-box is a failure and should be revoked, but it does suggest that it addresses only a symptom of deeper and far more intractable problems. The research used fictitious job applications, some of them with first names more common among African-Americans. The study found that employers, after being barred from initially filtering out applicants on the basis of criminal history, are statistically less likely to call back any applicant with a perceived “black” first name.