STUDY: Reviewers Find More Errors In Your Writing If They Think You’re Black

[Behind the Aegis]

A new study by Nextions reveals that reviewers of a legal brief were likely to find more errors once they learned that the author was Black.

Based on findings from a previous study that revealed supervising lawyers are more likely than not to perceive African-American writers as having subpar writing skills when compared to their Caucasian counterparts, the researchers attempted to confirm if they would unfairly evaluate legal writing by Black lawyers.

The results were most unsurprising.

Nextions drafted a research memo from a fake third-year lawyer that focused on the issue of trade secrets at Internet start-ups. The researchers purposefully added 22 errors of varying degrees in the memo. The same memo was then distributed to 60 law firm partners (53 returned them for the study) at 22 law firms. The only difference was that one half of the partners knew the author was Black and the other knew he or she was White.

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more: http://newsone.com/3006968/nextions-study-racism-black-white-writers/

The study: http://www.nextions.com/wp-content/files_mf/13972237592014040114WritteninBlackandWhiteYPS.pdf

[hr]

For many, this will fall in the "no shit, Sherlock" or "water is wet" knowledge bank, but for others, this type of racism is something they simply think is a relic of the past; it is not! This type of racism is as insidious, IMO more so, than name calling and the obvious, in your face racism.

[BainsBane]

1. It can't be true

I was told only yesterday that " tribal isms" is something only extremists and "old people" cling to, whereas reasonable people have left them in the past.

[AverageJoe90]

2. Which is still largely true, this one study notwithstanding. nt

[BainsBane]

5. Actually not for anyone with a good college education

Learning about "isms" is standard in contemporary liberal arts curriculum. That is why the youngest members of this site tend to be most familiar with gender/queer theory and critical race theory. Denying racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, etc. is key to maintaining oppression. When people refuse to acknowledge the existence of a problem, there is no way to address it. Any African American will tell you racism is very much alive in America. Sure, some folks don't like to consider the experiences of anyone but themselves. You can't make a self-absorbed person develop a sense of social consciousness. People are who they are. Slavery, Jim Crow, Apartheid, the Holocaust, and all of the great injustices in human history have depended on those who refuse to concern themselves with the lives of anyone but themselves and those exactly like them.

Additionally, it's not just one study. Countless studies show the prevalence of racism.

[AverageJoe90]

24. Nobody is denying that racism is still a problem.

People are who they are. Slavery, Jim Crow, Apartheid, the Holocaust, and all of the great injustices in human history have depended on those who refuse to concern themselves with the lives of anyone but themselves and those exactly like them.

Which may be true.

[BainsBane]

57. Actually people are

That was the point of my reference to the previous post about leaving "isms" behind. The argument is that racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, etc., just aren't significant enough to worry about. What they are really saying is the experiences of those who differ from theirs don't matter.

[caraher]

8. Why do you believe this?

Is it based on introspection, or data? There are plenty of studies just like this out there that find similar unconscious biases among people who do not consciously discriminate. Here's one on the likelihood of responding to a request to a college faculty member for a meeting with a prospective graduate student as a function of perceived race/gender.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. Actually, it isn't. That is the point of the study.

There are other studies just like it. In your face racism is largely repugnant and those described in the other post, to which you are agreeing, are the ones responsible. It is the "unconscious" or latent racism which is quite dangerous and often ignored or overlooked, or dismissed.

This study is not an exception, it is closer to being a rule.

[malaise]

34. Precisely

It is the "unconscious" or latent racism which is quite dangerous and often ignored or overlooked, or dismissed.

[Luminous Animal]

6. Also, there is no such thing as white privilege.

[redqueen]

51. Indeed not! Only radicals claim there's such a thing as "white privilege".

People should really stop talking about this and stay focused only on issues which I consider important.

[blkmusclmachine]

3. Really?!

[Vattel]

4. This is unsurprising but very important to recognize and publicize.

[ZombieHorde]

7. K&R nt

[jtuck004]

9. K&R n/t

[Treant]

10. I'm shocked, I tell you.

Shocked. This is my shocked face.

What, it looks like my everyday face? It must be the Botox.

I've seen this in action in the workplace. It's a real delight to witness.

[Behind the Aegis]

14. A friend sent this to me.

She was a former employee. She is AA and currently working on her doctorate and she said she too has experienced this type of racism from professors. It breaks my heart because she is my friend, a wonderful woman, and smart as a whip. Basically, this study tells many what we already know.

[azurnoir]

16. it doesn't start in the workplace-it starts in the classroom

where as we're told quite often African American students just don't quite measure up

[MrScorpio]

11. White privilege rewards mediocrity

Last edited Wed May 7, 2014, 08:16 AM - Edit history (2)

Imagine if the resumes for both GWB and Obama were reversed. Bush would be regarded as a god and Obama would've never even been a US Senator.

[Enrique]

39. SNL once nailed that as good as anyone has

a heart-to-heart father daughter moment, Will Ferrell as Bush, Julia Stiles as Jenna

http://snltranscripts.jt.org/00/00rbush.phtml

President George W. Bush: Heck no, heck no. In fact, come a little closer, let me tell you a story, tell you a little story about a guy with a C minus average, who was a failure in business, who was just fartin' around down in Texas. Partyin', drinkin', doin' blow. You know what happened to that guy?

Jenna Bush: No, what?

President George W. Bush: He went to jail, 'cause he was poor and Mexican.

(They laugh)

President George W. Bush: But there was another guy doing the same stuff. But his dad was in charge of the CIA, then vice-president, then president. Do you know what happened to him?

Jenna Bush: I think I do.

President George W. Bush: He became president. I'm talking about me.

[YoungDemCA]

12. It's important to remember that many people who think of themselves as "liberal" and/or "educated"..

...also exhibit these implicit, unconscious biases and prejudices.

K&R.

[AverageJoe90]

19. That is not quite true, to be truthful.

There may be a few liberals who have some prejudice issues, yes. But not the majority, and honestly, we need not feed the Right-Wing propaganda machine by claiming otherwise, just so we can score some brownie points with disaffected radicals.

Furthermore there are more than a few racists & other prejudiced people who do indeed have very conscious malevolent ideas; they are just able to conceal it behind a mask.....in fact, it can be plausibly argued that this makes up at least 90% of those racists & other prejudiced people who aren't completely overt, at least these days.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

26. Do you have rigorous evidence for that?

For example, a study like this with the participants sorted by political affiliation would be fairly clinching, whichever way it came out.

[AverageJoe90]

61. Well, TBH, it's mostly anecdotal than anything else.

It does make sense, though, at least in terms of American society(I honestly dunno so much about Europe, though, to be truthful).

[LooseWilly]

60. You forgot to suggest that the writing of that poster "needs lots of work"

....

And, as an added bonus... "we need not feed the Right-Wing propaganda machine by claiming otherwise"?? So we shouldn't consider the possibility that we (and by "we" I mean all of us... including you and me...) can potentially find ourselves judging more or less critically based on "other than merit" considerations... because of what the metaphorical neighbors (those of political persuasions who might judge us as harshly as studies showed lawyers judging the "other" in this article?) might think of us?

I just have to shake my head as you argue that the points raised in the OP's study should be swept under the carpet in the name of political convenience, and you then offer up the sorts of stereotypes that are increasingly just marginal cases and strawmen (as described in the article) ... as fodder to help us all rationalize continuing to pretend that this study, and all it imports, is better forgotten.

Irony...

[Enrique]

36. that is VERY important

too often racism is seen as something that "they" are guilty of.

This kind of study hopefully causes people, including people who have no clue they are capable of discriminating, to ask themselves, do I do this?

[azurnoir]

15. How is it "insidious" if the race of the author was known to those rating the briefs?

seems quite in your face, in fact IMO calling it anything but intentional could serve to sugar coat it, of course unintentionally

however thank you for bringing this to the attention of those you say think "this type of racism is a relic of the past"

I must disagree it is not insidious at all it is quite intentionally damaging and meant to hold back, to limit, to discourage African Americans from their true potential and it starts in grade school-all 3 of my daughters experienced it

[AverageJoe90]

20. I can partly agree, but......

"That said I must disagree it is not insidious at all it is quite intentionally damaging and meant to hold back,"

How in the hell is that NOT insidious? You have completely lost me here.

[azurnoir]

22. because insidious means according Merriam Webster

"causing harm in a way that is gradual or not easily noticed" and this is quite easily noticed, this was easily noticed because the those rating the briefs knew the race of those who had supposedly written them

[Donald Ian Rankin]

27. I think you have it backwards.

I think that what you've got there is a claim that *race* is easily noticed, and hence not insidious, not that racism is not.

[azurnoir]

32. it is the response to knowing the race of author

that makes it not insidious, racism is hardly insidious nor are the results there of

[Enrique]

35. it is insidious because the people don't realize it

the people making the comments about the paper aren't aware of the role race played in their behavior.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. Now let's see one where they compare Northerner and Southerner.

[uponit7771]

38. +1

[Skittles]

18. having to be twice as good to be considered half as good

that afflicts women too

[Behind the Aegis]

21. Gays too.

There was a study...1991 I think (this was before it was easy to find shit on the internet and one actually had to go to the library), where various resumes were sent in with "special events" and "presentations" which would make the reviewer think the person was female, AA, gay, or variations. The results were not "happy."

The other downside is when you try to be "half as good" by being "twice as good," you get dinged for that too! You are a "braggart," "in your face", "trying to hard." It is a vicious cycle.

[woolldog]

23. From the study:

EXAMPLE:

In one law firm where we found that minority summer associates were consistently being evaluated more negatively than their majority counterparts, we created an interruption mechanism to infuse the subjective with objective. We worked with the firm to create an Assignment Committee, comprised of 3 partners through whom certain assignments were distributed to the summer associates and through whom the summer associates submitted work back to the partners who needed the work done. When the work was evaluated, the partners evaluating the work did not know which associate had completed the work. The assignments for this process were chosen judiciously, and there was a lot of work done to ensure buy-in from all partners.

At the end of the summer, every associate had at least 2 assignments that had been graded blindly. The firm then examined how the blind evaluations compared with the rest of the associate’s evaluations and found that the blind evaluations were generally more positive for minorities and women and less positive for majority men.

[Skittles]

30. sorry, I just take it from my experience as a female for over 50 years

[azurnoir]

33. Myself I find this study disturbing and disheartening

I'm speaking as the mother of a bi-racial daughter who will be graduating from law school this summer

[Luminous Animal]

53. Yes. And work evaluations are not blind evaluations thus discrimination.

That is, if it is not known whether you are a woman or a minority, you are apt to get a better evaluation.

[woolldog]

59. Exactly.

[Luminous Animal]

62. Kick. And a wave right back!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

25. Having to be 1.3 times as good to be thought as good.

The great thing about this is that (assuming the methodology is sound, and I don't see how it couldn't be) it's wholly rigorous and objective. There's no element of rhetoric or anecdote involved (except for the selected comments, which I wish they'd omitted).

It pretty much rises from the standard of "evidence" of racism to the standard of "proof" of racial discrimination.

[woolldog]

28. I love that it's the exact same memo.

What an ingenious little experiment.

[ismnotwasm]

29. So not surprising

Institutional racism working hard to keep people messed up. But I completely agree it is insidious, it's very damaging, and it needs to stop.

[Behind the Aegis]

31. Sadly, you are correct, it really isn't surprising.

I see this more as "societal" and "individual" racism, than "institutional", it just happens it is institutions affected. Too many people are oblivious to this type of racism (and other -isms). It takes its toll on the victims too.

[madaboutharry]

37. This makes me sad.

I just don't understand some people.

[Shandris]

40. Did anyone read the study?

This 10 year old study was made with the intent of showing confirmation bias. It didn't control for any other intersectionalities -at all- other than 'known ethnicity of the preparer'. It didn't even control for intentional bias. Meaning, they didn't even try to see if someone/anyone was intentionally racist. Furthermore, it showed that another minority (women) were the ones who offered the most and longest unsolicited edit comments.

I don't think anyone of decent intent thinks there's no such thing as institutional racism, but this report has virtually no controls whatsoever to recommend it as a good case study. It took Group A, gave them a paper ostensibly from a white person, Group B, gave them a paper ostensibly from a black person, and then gathered them up and said 'See, we're right!'. We don't know how Group A would have reported on black Thomas Meyer's paper, or how Group B would have reported on white Thomas Meyer's paper, or any other interesting data point along the way. All we know is that two groups of people found differing numbers of errors with no control made for virtually anything.

Unless (and as always, I admit the possibility) I misread something in the report.

[Enrique]

42. the control was that the papers were identical

Except for the race of the preaparer. I'm not following your critique.

[Shandris]

43. That's not a control.

Here. Let me demonstrate.

Let's say we have two people, John and Jane. We want to see how they grade this paper by Mr. Black Thomas and Mr. White Thomas. We give one copy each to them. John gets white, Jane gets black.

When they turn the papers back in, Jane has found more errors than John. Jane is racist.

Or does Jane simply have a better eye for detail? She is a woman, after all. So did she find more errors because she's better at finding errors, or because she thinks black Mr. Thomas is a terrible person because she's a racist? Well, we don't know, do we?

Better yet, what if Jane IS racist. She's Cliven Bundy and the Duck Moron combined. She finds every error, makes up about 3/4 more, and then writes a screen on -top- of all that. Does that show that she had unintentional confirmation bias, or does it show she's a frickin' racist, tried and true? Again...they didn't check. They don't know.

There is -no comparison that can be made-. The people each got a single copy, corrected to the best of their ability (presumably), and sent back. That's not a control.

[Enrique]

45. forget about whether they are racist

that's actually a big part of the problem with the way race is discussed. A lot of people think the most important thing is to find out who is racist. Cliven Bundy and Don Sterling are freak shows, if we say they are the face of our race relations in the U.S. is a huge mistake. That lets us off the hook, as I see it.

I think the most productive way to look at studies like this is not to see the subjects as racists, but to see them as ourselves. The vast majority of us don't consider us to be racists, but we are definitely capable of making prejudiced judgements like in this experiment.

[Shandris]

47. I think using the study as something to help evaluate ourselves against is a perfectly good use...

...of it. As I said in a post further downthread, I don't think the study is useless or anything like that; I just didn't think it made a good case study or 'proof' study. But I'm not certain I agree that determining whether someone is racist is a problem in light of the stated goals of the study. In trying to find the presence of institutional unintentional confirmation bias, I would think it would be very important. Not necessarily for every study involving the presence of racism, or common reactions, or other things of that nature, but given the goals.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

58. I think you've completely missed the point.

They got back responses from 53 people. The black ones were, on average, 0.9 lower - that must be at least one standard deviation, and probably several. And there was *nothing* differentiating the two groups except for the race of the person being marked.

What this *doesn't* show is that any individual is a racist. Some people grade lower than others, sure.

But what it *does* show is that, between these 53 people, there is a considerable amount of racial discrimination. Not all of them are necessarily doing it, and we can't tell which ones, but quite a lot of them pretty much must be.

[haele]

56. I disagree. The results come from sixty law firms. Or rather the 53 that answered.

There's a statistical formula for finding the most effective study size for the target premise - and a premise that tracks how much a known cultural bias like race is present in average legal reviews.
The link to the study indicates it is a market study using sixty law firms to track professional trends when it comes to race bias; 60 law partnerships are a pretty good sample on which to base a study of this sort.
The control would be that 60 firms were given a paper to be "peer reviewed" and 30 firms were told the writer was black and 30 were told the writer was white. They were given four weeks to provide their results.
At this point (knowing a few lawyers and how they operate), the paper would then go through whatever pre-reviewing process that particular firm had; a paralegal might review it, an intern (either still in high school or going to college) may review it, or one of the law partners who isn't doing anything at the moment might review it - or s/he might just hand it off to a friend or spouse that knows Word inside and out to look over it and "spell-check, please", and then give it back to the person who was originally asked to look the paper over for a final evaluation of the content. That person would then read over the paper, incorporate any of the pre-review notes while making his or her final review, and send it in.

At this level and number of participants in the study group, it doesn't matter they were just given one paper to review. In fact, it might be counter-productive to send a bunch of papers and specifically note on each one the "race" - suspect they are part of a study if Nextions sent them even two papers from writers with race-neutral names and specified the race.

This study is well within the criteria for judging known bias.

Granted, your stated example of "Jane" and "John" would not be a good study, as the size of participants within the control are way too small and there are too many externalities that would affect such a study.
Jane may or may not be a racist, or she may "have a better eye for detail" - or she may not (BTW, being a woman does not automatically give her a "better eye for detail" - that's a stereotype that does not hold up in my 30 years experience being a female engineer...). While John might not be interested in reviewing anyone's paper at the time, being focused on something else going on in his world, or he may be hungry and want to just get it over with, or he might just be a casual reviewer to begin with.



Haele

[woolldog]

46. The study isn't 10 years old.

Where did you get that? The first line of the study states that they discovered that superivsing attorneys had negative evaluations of black attorneys' writing compared to white attorneys' 10 years ago. It then describes the study they constructed to test out a hypothesis related to this discovery. It doesn't say that the study is 10 years old.

[Shandris]

48. Gah! You know what they say about assumptions...

I was thinking 'former study 10 years ago, followup study obviously followed it immediately' when no such thing was actually meant.

This is why I go to great pains to point out I may be misinterpreting something; its all too common!

[Jemon]

41. Questions to those yelling racism

Do you know if you would be immune to the bias found in the study?

[Shandris]

44. 'Yelling' racism?

That seems a bit...confrontational. It is very likely there is racism involved. I don't think the study makes for a good case study or a proof, but that doesn't mean it's chopped liver, either.

[Behind the Aegis]

49. What an odd, assumptive question.

What does one being "immune" have to do with discussion of the study?

[Coventina]

50. K & R for great food for thought.

It's very possible that not a single person who was harder on the Black Mr. Thomas thinks of themselves as bigoted.

A very sobering thought.

[SamKnause]

52. It's 2014, it's 2014, it's 2014 !!!!

When are earth's inhabitants going to evolve ??????????????????????????????

[Louisiana1976]

54. K&R

[nadinbrzezinski]

55. I am betting the same result if they know you are hispanic, other native born minorities,

or immigrant.