Discriminating Writer As Well As Reader…

Linda Seebach, an editorial writer for the Rocky Mountain News and, I’m happy to say, a DISCRIMINATIONS reader, has an impressive column discussing a potentially important new article with a snooze-inducing title (unless you’re an economist), “Labor Market Discrimination and Racial Differences in Premarket Factors.” (Note that the link provided in Linda’s column has a space in the middle of the URL that keeps it from working.)

The authors demonstrate, as Linda puts it, “that the patterns of disadvantages for blacks and for Hispanics are very different, raising questions about the explanations often given for those disadvantages.” And also providing additional evidence, though that is not their primary purpose, that affirmative action is not the best solution to the problems they discuss.

Say What? (3)

  1. Chetly Zarko May 1, 2005 at 2:21 pm | | Reply

    I find it very instructive that the authors of the statistical study attacked only “additional” “affirmative action.” Obviously, they don’t want their careers to go down the road of Richard Sander.

    This study is more sound statistically than Sanders’ though, more relevant to policy, and like the Rocky Mt. reporter’s comment, could indict “existing” “affirmative action”. In the least, it annihilates the “gender gap” argument.

  2. John Rosenberg May 3, 2005 at 10:58 am | | Reply

    My comments were intermittently unavailable last night and this morning due to unusually heavy spamming. During that time Linda Seebach emailed the following, which I’m adding here because it’s interesting:

    Thanks for the mention, and particularly for the note about the extraneous space. I’d have put this in the comments, but for some reason they’re on “cannot display this page” status, so perhaps you could do an update. The paper has typesetting issues with URLs, especially if they’re too long for a single line or happen to be placed where they have to be broken. The H&J program doesn’t know they’re URLs, just treats them as long words and inserts hyphens in them.

  3. Arturo Peneira May 7, 2005 at 1:42 pm | | Reply

    Wonderful link, thanks so much. I always felt that latins had a much different profile than africans concerning the remedies for inequality. Most latins will work to make up the differences rather than organizing political campaigns which result in keeping everyone where they presently are.

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