A Black man has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against a hotel in Detroit, Michigan, alleging the hotel only offered him a job interview after he changed the name on his resume, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNN.
Dwight Jackson filed the lawsuit against the Shinola Hotel on July 3, alleging he was denied a job when he applied as “Dwight Jackson,” but later offered an interview when he changed his name to “John Jebrowski.”
The lawsuit alleges Jackson was denied a job in “violation of Michigan Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.”
His name was already about as white bread as it gets. This is a real and genuine problem when it comes to hiring, but it’s going to be a huge uphill battle for him to prove anything here.
When I think of the name “Dwight” I think of Eisenhower or the character from The Office. Not this guy.
Are there a lot of white Jacksons though? Legitimately asking, I don’t know any Jacksons personally and basically only drum up the obvious as far as famous folk lol
Yes, absolutely. A horrible example comes to mind; Andrew Jackson
He doesn’t need to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a civil suit. Essentially, his face value evidence is strong enough to win unless the hotel can provide clear explanation of how it did what it did, for example if they had different people processing different stacks of papers. At the same time, the plaintiff will have a chance for discovery, so who knows what will happen on that front.
It could be racism, or it could be because the reviewers eyes fell on different words while they were skimming the CV, or it could be because the reviewer was slightly more tired for one of the CVs. This sort of thing is very hard for a human being to be consistent at.
What you’re missing is his actual job history, identical on both resumes, he was applying for a luxury hotel customer service position, and had many years of exactly that experience, unless three other people with more experience than him applied and one of more dropped out, it makes no sense he was looked over, and then interviewed. That’s what pushes this from a case of maybe racism to a lawyer accepting the case because of the very strong evidence of racism.
And even if it was a case of two three people having more experience on their resume, and then dropping out, why wouldn’t the hiring manager scheduling the interview tell him that, and why did he pick the newer resume over the older one with exactly the same experience, it doesn’t add up. Resumes are usually organized oldest to newest, relevant job history greatest to least.
You are making sense, logically. That’s how it should be: If you are a better candidate, you should get the interview.
But picture this nonsense scenario that I think is nevertheless illustrative of the problem: the hiring manager is overworked, at the end of their 12 hour shift filling in doing odds and ends because they’re understaffed and the guests need service, a kid threw up in the pool, there is a standards compliance issue regarding detergent and it might be illegal to wash the sheets with this, the breakfast delivery was cancelled and in six hours there will be hungry guests, and there are 30 CVs to read while they’re on hold talking with an emergency industrial bakery.
Those CVs are not getting the attention they deserve. The job won’t be going to the best candidate. The job will go to whoever seems most acceptable of the 5 CVs they managed to read before the croissants got ordered and they’re off to their next emergency.
jackson is an extremely common surname in the black community?? the fuck??
It’s also extremely common in the white community. They’re saying that his real name isn’t one that would cause someone to assume you are nonwhite, like Will Dewitt, Ashley Jones, or Casey Smith.
The fact that this exists is the most hilarious rebuke to the guy you are replying to I can pretty much imagine.
It’s interesting, assuming he’s right (for the sake of this chain of thought), what would be the statistical relation to being black. In which part. Say, Dwight is not such a common name and how often do black Americans use it as compared to the rest. Or maybe there’s some rhythmic or melodic thing in names which people in different groups follow differently.
EDIT: And while a guy named Jackson can be anything, a guy named Jebrowski is most likely not black. Black people would usually get English\Irish\Welsh\Scottish\German\whatever names, because those were the names of their former, sorry, owners. There weren’t a lot of Poles, especially owning slaves, in the new world at the time this was happening.
EDIT2: So there is a difference along racial lines.
It’s also an extremely common last name among white people. It tells you nothing on a resume. This dude’s name is akin to someone named John Smith.
it’s known as a black surname, it’s not uncommon for white people … but it’s common if you’re black.
So no one looking at your resume would have any idea. It’s also not. It’s literally an English surname.
Yes, many black people have the name bc of slavery.
Ding ding ding.
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Jackson? That’s a common black last name. For example, Jesse Jackson.
It’s also a common white name, isn’t it?
And also a common white last name. It’s just a common last name. Alan Jackson, Andrew Jackson, Peter Jackson. It’s a surname with English origin. Lots of Jackson’s out there. It tells you pretty much nothing about what the person looks like. Couple that with your first name being DWIGHT, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a common name.