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.”
So hear me out. From time to time, I have applicants who repeatedly apply, but because they said something stupid to the person who took their application, or they were dressed inappropriate, or had poor hygiene, or whatever reason, I keep their resume in the ‘do not call’ pile.
If that person simply changes the name on the resume, It is likely that I would then give them a call, not knowing it was actually stinky Pete applying again, or whatever.
In this totally reasonable scenario, the names used had nothing to do with it.
Also, we are always advertising that we are hiring so that we have a fresh set of resumes to choose from if we need someone immediately. We may not be hiring for months while someone applies over and over. Then someone will quit or get fired and we will immediately begin calling resumes starting with the most recent. There is a good possibility that this whole thing is a coincidence… not everything has malicious intent.
I know racial discrimination in hiring definitely exists and is probably super prevalent, but there is a chance this is not one of those cases and there are other plausible explanations if the only evidence that exists is what is in this post.
Why does your company waste people’s time saying they’re hiring when they’re not? That’s a whole other problem… called lying… but I guess it’s okay because everyone is being treated like shit equally?
You can get fresh resumes by putting up a listing on Indeed and get new ones almost immediately. There’s no excuse for lying to applicants.
I really hope your just a troll making shit up, even though I know companies do this frequently. Never thought I’d see someone almost proud of it and act as if it’s not problematic behavior.
The sign says ‘always accepting resumes - send resume to xxx @ xxx.com - see staff for details.
When people ask about the ‘accepting resumes’ sign, we tell them that the best way to get a job with us is to put in a resume about once a month and if/when we need someone we will call all the recent resumes.
A ton of people want to work for us because we pay way above the industry standard, we pay for good healthcare and retirement, paid vacations, unlimited sick pay, good bonuses, and flexible scheduling… completely unheard of in the service industry.
There is no lying, we are super transparent. And turnover is low, because only the best applicants make it through to the hiring stage.
Believe it or not, indeed provides a very slow and small number of shit applicants, nothing more. To get good hires, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the community.
You are so blinded by rage against the machine that you fail to see the difference between the dying small business and the mega corps, to you it’s all the same, and that attitude is a part of the problem.
Theres a difference between lying and not lying. For someone hell-bent on taking the moral high ground, you sure seemed to miss this detail
I work for a small business. And I’m not blinded by rage. But when I was looking for a job companies that pull this sort of “always hiring” thing are pretty frustrating.
Also, it’s not my fault if you misrepresented your companies policy. “Always accepting resumes” and “always hiring” are similar but different enough for you to switch when it was convenient for your argument. Not falling for your faux high road and trying to mischaracterize my argument.
Have a good day sir or madam.
In my state companies are required to take your application and keep it on file for a year whether they’re hiring or not
Yes those could all be possible but the evidence has shown time and time again that people with minority sounding names get less call backs than average. So him filing suit over this is good cause either it was one of those and it will be proven in court pretty easily by company records or it’ll turn out it was race based and the company can be punished for it.
Also, we are always advertising that we are hiring so that we have a fresh set of resumes to choose from if we need someone immediately.
Sure just go ahead and be disrespectfully wasteful of everyone’s time. other people are just tools that exist to be used, after all.
disgusting behavior, given the number of people actively trying to find good work to survive. if I was looking for work and I found out someone was doing this with my resume I’d be livid if they ever dared to call me.
“It’s not malicious intent”
Explains how his companies entire hiring strategy it openly malicious, lol
How is ‘always accepting resumes’ malicious? Put your resume in and move on, I’ll call you if I need you, the world doesn’t owe you anything.
If you really wanted a job, be persistent and eventually someone will hire you, but not if you walk around with a huge chip on your shoulder hating on every small business trying to make it in the late stages of capitalism.
I bet you’d bitch if you went through the effort of setting up an interview with somebody and then you never hear from them again because they’re not actually looking for a job right now. Don’t hide your clown show behind legitimate small businesses who don’t play games.
Also, we are always advertising that we are hiring so that we have a fresh set of resumes to choose from if we need someone immediately
So, you aren’t hiring then.
Correct, we advertise that we are hiring so that we have fresh resumes, and then when someone quits or gets fired, we call the resumes and hire someone. Most businesses do this.
And the prospect already got employed at a different business that had an open vacancy, congrats you’ve got NOTHING by hiring in advance and you also wasted the prospects time.
Just because there are other businesses that do this scummy tactic doesn’t mean it’s right or less scummy.
Also, hiring on advance because someone would quit or would be fired so you need to have a roster to replenish them, says A LOT about your business and its climate.
It’s called capitalism buddy, there are plenty of worse things to complain about then some small business trying to stay staffed up properly.
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.
jackson is an extremely common surname in the black community?? the fuck??
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Is ‘Dwight Jackson’ a black sounding name? I’d have assumed the person was white if I’d read that name.
Agreed, it may just be a case of they weren’t hiring but then they were or the first resume was lost or a different manager looked at the resume. There are so many reasons what it could be that it shouldn’t be assumed race was a factor unless the hotel specifically said so.
Edit: reading the article I can see the guy applied many times before changing his name. I am slightly more convinced it was based on his name but it could still be they weren’t hiring but then they were. Or maybe they just wanted to meet the guy with such an awesome sounding name “Jabroski” sounds like something you would say in the 90s when Pauly Shore was popular. Memorable names stand out and make an impression.
these, among others, are the reasons why i didn’t take the same action when i resubmitted my resume under a very WASPy sounding name and the desire gets re-ignited every time i get an interview request after re-submitting my resume the same day my original resume was rejected.
Over 50% of the people with that surname are Black.
https://discover.23andme.com/last-name/Jackson
That’s nationally too. So in a place like Detroit with a large Black population, I feel like people would assume Dwight Jackson was Black.
Dwight not so much, but Jackson, yes.
It’s also an extremely common surname for those of English/Scottish/Irish descent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_(name)
I’d be more willing to buy that they looked him up on social media and didn’t like what they saw. Whether or not that was his profile picture (race), or something he posted, is something I can’t answer.
But the name alone isn’t something I’d believe.
To the point that “Jackson” became jazz/jive-era slang that was the equivalent of “hey, what’s up?” when black people who used that slang were talking to each other.
Also need to take location into account here. Detroit is 77% black Seems it would be pretty easy to show discrimination is there is a hotel in Detroit that is lacking in black employees.
Hope he wins
I hope this is not a thing either. Issue is the proof, bigots aint putting this shit in emails unless they are trump voters.
But from statistical angle it is getting hard to justify the bullshit system wide but every wrong is settled out if it is that bad.
Nobody is ever at fault tho
Oh Detroit, you so silly.
Edit:: fixed link
I love the idea of POC making this a minefield. Set a precedent in favor of Mr. Jackson here, then spread news of it. Every time a POC gets turned down, they might try again with a white name and get a payout, and once it hits companies hard enough, they have to adjust how they hire. Make them scared and cost them money!
