Report: most companies assume blacks use drugs
According to a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, more than any other group, black job applicants are being denied by U.S. companies for jobs.
Why? Because often, corporations assume that they are using illegal drugs.
The study’s author, University of Notre Dame economics professor Abigail Wozniak, looked at how hiring practices differ between states with laws that incentivize or encourage drug testing and states with laws that limit or do not require such testing. She found that pro-testing legislation has a “large” and positive effect on black employment and wages, especially among low-skilled black men. […]
In states that enact anti-testing laws, the opposite proves true: Limiting drug testing appears to hurt black applicants much more than it hurts whites.
The report suggests that companies in states without pro-drug testing laws assume that black job applicants are guilty of using illegal drugs.
Researchers argue that drug testing can actually help “non-using blacks to prove their status to employers, even as the drug war linked blacks with drug use in the popular imagination.”
Should all states enact drug testing for jobs?
How do we tackle the deeper issue of employers assuming that all blacks use drugs?
Sound off below!
