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.
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.
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Jackson? That’s a common black last name. For example, Jesse Jackson.
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.