Racial discrimination in hiring has long been a problem in the United States. It used to be legal for companies to advertise that they only wanted to hire white candidates, for instance. But, for decades now, this type of explicit discrimination has been prohibited.
That’s not to say that it doesn’t happen, however. For instance, some reports have looked at whitewashing resumes to remove indicators of a person’s racial or ethnic background. Employees with the same qualifications who appeared to be white received more callbacks and interview requests than employees who appeared to be part of a minority group.
Recently, a company has gone viral for being a bit more explicit with their alleged attempt to only hire white employees. The tech firm posted an ad for a job that paid $75 an hour. In that ad was a note that said they wanted only white workers who were born in the United States. The note even included a phrase saying that this information was not supposed to be shared with candidates, implying that it was posted accidentally.
The company’s web presence is gone
The tech company does claim that they weren’t attempting to do this on purpose. They say that someone who is a “former employee” had added discriminatory language to the posting. In other words, it was never their intent to seek white workers, they claim, but a disgruntled employee simply edited their ad copy to make it appear so. They have also completely deleted all of their social media and other web presence due to the response to this job posting.
It will be interesting to see what happens as more details about this case come out. But it certainly shows how widespread discrimination can be in hiring and why employees need to make sure that they know about all of their legal rights.