Racial Ideology and Hiring Decisions in Silicon Valley

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1999

Abstract

This article examines the hiring practices of assembly workers in the high technology industry in Silicon Valley. While recent works have viewed “the significance of race” question with empirical analysis of the labor force, this study focuses on the employers and their subjectivity in making recruitment and hiring decisions. The ethnographic data reveals the central role of racial ideology in the recruitment and hiring process. Furthermore, the data demonstrates how racial ideology can have both an exclusionary and an inclusionary function in shaping the composition of the workforce. Based on the findings, I propose a greater sensitivity to employer racial bias in recruitment and hiring decision making and call for a more nuanced approach to examining racial inequality.

Comments

LMU users: use the following link to login and access the article via LMU databases.

Original Publication Citation

Park, Edward J.W. Racial Ideology and Hiring Decisions in Silicon Valley. Qualitative Sociology 22, 223–233 (1999). DOI: 10.1023/A:1022905821460

Share

COinS