Recently I decided to "whiten" my resume. I have a name that's associated with being a minority. I have a school listed on my resume that's associated with minorities.
So I decided to hyphenate my name which obscured my race and I took off the name of my school placing another university, a white university, on my resume.
I was curious because my resume had not been getting the hits I so desired and even though I have impeccable qualifications I was aware that as a black minority in Texas where race is still a factor (a major one) I would be better off hiding my race and any information that would imply my race, on my resume.
I simply had met too many white guys with less qualifications who were able to bag very nice jobs. I had worked in a few companies in Texas where I was able to notice in each one a mostly white managerial and operational staff with minorities being pushed, regardless of qualifications, into lower rung positions.
I noticed that in each company there would be maybe one black person in management, but in a few companies I noticed that no african Americans held high positions.
I also decided to whiten my resume after I saw a great job publicly listed on a job board out of Plano, TX; and curious about the company I went to their website and they had pictures of various holiday functions. The pictures were filled with smiling and laughing employees in a celebratory mood and I eagerly scanned each photo to find a black face and to my dismay there was none. No, not a one. Out of hundreds of employees.
My heart sank.
I saw maybe one or two Asians and East Indians in the sea of white faces but not one black person.
I applied for the position anyway and to my luck I immediately recieved a phone call. The call I recieved was one of four different calls within two days after I reposted my resume with my race completely obscured.
It greatly saddened me to have to do this but I had a gut feeling my race was a factor and I still have to survive.
The young white man on the other end of the phone stated my initials and said "Is this xx"? (Real initials obscured of course) and I replied "yes sir it is".
He hesitated and when he spoke again he sounded kind of bewildered. He knew I was black. He could tell from my voice. He then invited me to Plano to interview for the position. I agreed to come in.
That morning I got dressed and drove into Plano. I was excited but cautious. I pulled up into the parking lot and walked in. The receptionist took my name and called the recruiter. The recruiter came in and he shook my hand and I realized it was the man, "shawn", who I had spoken to on the phone. We went into another room which was a conference room for the interview.
As I walked through the building with him I noticed all white male employees. We walked through two or three departments and there was not one black employee that I could see. Anywhere. This resonated with me and made me very nervous.
Finally we reached the conference room and I was directed to sit in a very nice, plush leather chair with the recruiter across from me.
Now here's the kicker.
I didn't lie about any of my skills on my resume. At all. I listed everything I knew in great detail and the resume was good enough to get me the call.
The recruiter immediately started asking me questions outside the scope of what the job description entailed and far outside the scope of my skillset which I had detailed meticulously on my resume. He stated the position called for a Cisco certified tech engineer and the position never stated anything like that. He had a copy of the position with him that I could see and I had it as well. The skills the position called for matched my skillset exactly and never, ever mentioned what the recruiter was now alleging.
He carefully crafted his questions completely outside the skills the job even called for.
I answered truthfully and told him what my skills were and what my skills weren't. He then said "well, for this position we want someone 'certified' in this, that and the other.
That was that.
He completely changed the qualifications for the position in the interview to have a reason to deny me employment in his apparently all white company.
From the company photos to my actual visit it was apparent there wasn't a black person who was employed at the company at that specific location. Probably no where else either.
I Seethed.
This happened to me "twice" after I recieved calls to interview based on my resume which had obscured my race. A few calls ended with the call hanging up in my face when I answered and after I traced the numbers they were to HR departments in companies I had applied to.
This is the often untold story of being black and educated and skilled in a state like Texas which still bases so much on race.
My next door neighbor, who is also black, is having an equally frustrating time with racism and discrimination in Texas. She's much older than I, a mother of two boys, and we have spoken about our experiences often expressing our frustration with this system and trying to find encouragement in one another.
She bemoaned to me recently that she had applied through several temporary staffing firms for a professional job that matched her professional work experience. At each agency they overlooked her experience and education avd assigned her to work production jobs which were far below her skills and which barely paid over minimum wage.
She stated she asked the recruiter a few times if they had a position open at the agency to which they stated no. She noted that at each agency the blacks were virtually non existent within the office staff even though black people made up 70% to 80% of all applicants.
She asked me had I too noticed this and I stated indeed I had. I have also applied in the past for work at various agencies and the staff is usually all white with an Asian or Hispanic here and there. I have only seen two agencies out of dozens I've been in where they have a black person hired on.
Statistically speaking African Americans account for less than .00001% of agency office staff when we make up roughly 80% of the applicants. How is this fair?
Its nothing but prejudice.
I consider this to be a travesty.
This explains completely why I meet so many young white men with highschool diplomas and GED's who somehow are able to land positions that not even a highly educated, highly qualified black person can land.
This is why so many African Americans head straight for the public sector out of college and steer clear of the private sector, especially in Southern States, with past and present patterns of discrimination.
I remember when I first moved to Texas I had met a young black man who was a Dart (Dallas City) bus driver and he stated he had worked in real-estate for many years and he was the best salesman and he managed to work a deal where he had found a wealthy, white doctor a multimillion dollar home. He stated he had done all the work.
When it came time to close on the home, the white doctor called into the company and asked up speak to a white realtor (who was friends with the black guy as well as coworkers) and the doctor stated he wanted the white realtor, who had done no work on the deal, to close on the deal, in effect steering the hefty commission to the white realtor away from the black realtor.
The white realtor asked the doctor why was he was doing this and was he unsatisfied with the work performed by the black realtor and he was told "no", and that the doctor was satisfied and the white doctor told him he felt "that's just too much money for a nigger to be making".
So the white realtor closed on the deal and drew the commission and even though he gave a percentage of it to the black realtor the experience troubled the black realtor so much he stopped selling realestate and and became a Dallas city bus driver.
African Americans can not have Full Equality Without Barriers To Economic Upward Mobility Being Fully Removed.
