Victims of Affirmative Action - Part 1

Most people don’t recognize the names of Ed Stevens or Sid Gordon. These were two of the first victims of affirmative action in the United States. The saddest of these might be Gordon. He had 11 years of experience when he was replaced with a less-experienced minority. Most people, however, do recognize the names of those who replaced Stevens and Gordon. Sid Gordon lost his job to Hank Aaron. Stevens lost his job to Jackie Robinson. For those who don’t recognize Aaron or Robinson, they are two of the greatest baseball players who ever played and both are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

In 1947, Branch Rickey (president of the Brooklyn Dodgers) discovered an amazing truth. A vast pool of talent was not being tapped. Rickey realized that the best players in the Negro Leagues were certainly better than the worst players in the Major Leagues. Any team willing to recruit the most talented players from the Negro Leagues would certainly improve the team’s talent level. The rest, as they say, is history. Over the next ten years, the Dodgers made it to the World Series six times.

It may seem hard to believe, but some teams were reluctant to pursue African-Americans players. They had perfectly “rational” explanations for their reluctance. Some teams thought that attendance would fall when they added African-Americans to their teams. Other teams did not want to disturb team “chemistry”. All of these strawmen eventually fell and other teams began to pursue talented African-Americans.

The story in Boston, however, is a bit more complicated. The Red Sox were unable to find an African-American good enough for their team until 1959. By that time, there was a tremendous amount of social and political pressure for the Red Sox to integrate. Finally, the team caved in and signed Pumpsie Green to play second base. Never heard of Pumpsie? That’s because the Red Sox did affirmative action the wrong way. They decided to pursue diversity instead of pursuing talent in diverse pools.

So what lesson does this story have for modern organizations? Surely we’re more enlightened today. Sadly, there’s a great deal of evidence this isn’t true. In 2001, researchers Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan mailed 5,000 resumes to companies advertising entry-level jobs in Chicago and Boston. Half of the resumes were labeled with African-American names (Tyrone or Latoya). The other half received names that are more common among Whites (Emily or Matthew). The researchers set up voice mail accounts to find out which names were more likely to receive invitations for interviews. Sadly, resumes with White names were 50 percent more likely to receive interviews than resumes with African-American names and the same qualifications.

Even more disturbing about this study is the fact that some of the resumes were written to be a good fit for the advertised position. Others were designed to be a poor fit. Resumes from unqualified Whites were 26 percent more likely to receive interviews than highly qualified African-Americans. In other words, even today Ed Stevens is more likely to get an interview than Hank Aaron.