White Canadians earn more, because they have white privilege.

White Canadians earn more than non-white Canadians, even when comparing only the whites and non-whites with the same education and of the same age. Comparing only the foreign-born white Canadians with the foreign-born non-white Canadians, white people earn more. Comparing only the second-generation, Canadian-born white Canadians with the second-generation, Canadian-born non-white Canadians, white people still earn more.

In other words, even when controlling for age, education, and generation, white Canadians earn more than non-white Canadians. Racial appearance causes the difference in earnings.

Wellesley Institute’s study, Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market, was released in March 2011 and draws on data from the last mandatory long-form Census (which has been cancelled recently by the politically-conservative Harper government):

THE LAST AVAILABLE CENSUS DATA before the federal government cancelled the country’s mandatory long form Census reveals a troubling trend in Canada.

Despite years of unprecedented economic growth and an increasingly diverse population, this report confirms what so many Canadians have experienced in real life: a colour code is still at work in Canada’s labour market.

Racialized Canadians encounter a persistent colour code that blocks them from the best paying jobs our country has to offer.

[…]

Default explanations like “it takes a while for immigrants to integrate” don’t bear out. Even when you control for age and education, the data show first generation racialized Canadian men earn only 68.7% of what non-racialized first-generation Canadian men earn, indicating a colour code is firmly at play in the labour market. Here, the gender gap — at play throughout the spectrum — becomes disturbingly large: Racialized women immigrants earn only 48.7 cents for every dollar non-racialized male immigrants earn.

The colour code persists for second generation Canadians with similar education and age. The gap narrows, with racialized women making 56.5 cents per dollar non-racialized men earn; while racialized men earn 75.6 cents for every dollar non-racialized men in this cohort earn.

Further Reading:

• Skin colour matters in access to good jobs (Toronto Star)
• Canada’s Colour Coded Labour Market (PDF) by the Wellesley Institute

---

Related posts:

• Women of colour earn 53 cents for every white man’s dollar. by Restructure!
• Asians are not all rich. by Restructure!
• What’s in a Name? Your Job! by Sobia at Racialicious

Rock Star Programmer: The Charlie Sheen Guide To Passing a Job Interview

In The Charlie Sheen Guide To Passing A Job Interview, John P. Lopez provides a very compelling case that answering interview questions exactly like Charlie Sheen would get you hired. I argue that job seekers applying for the position of a “rock star programmer” at a tech startup would do especially well if they had the aura of Charlie Sheen.

Lopez writes:

Seriously, if you didn’t know the back-story — you didn’t know the trainwreck that Charlie Sheen’s life has become, and the history of drug use and decadence — wouldn’t Sheen’s recent quotes be impressive?

Let’s say you were an employer, looking to add to your sales staff? Wanna play? Here are some typical job interview questions and REAL Charlie Sheen answers.

Admit it, you’d hire the guy if you didn’t know any better:

What is your greatest strength?

“I’m bi-winning. I win here. I win there.”

Describe a typical work week.

”I’m proud of what I created. It was radical. I exposed people to magic. I exposed them to something they’re never going to see in their boring normal lives.”

How many hours do you normally work?

“Sometimes sleep is for infants. I don’t sleep. I wait. When I can’t sleep I don’t fight it. I just figure that there’s a higher calling.”

What is your greatest weakness?

“I am on a drug. It’s called ‘Charlie Sheen!’ It’s not available because if you try it once you will die. Your face will melt off and your children will weep over your exploded body.”

[…]

What are your salary expectations?

“I’m not [broke] but I was kind of counting on some of that money to get me through the summer. Now I’ve got to like work. But that’s alright. Work’s good. Work fuels the soul.”

[…]

What do people most often criticize about you?

“You borrow my brain for five seconds and just be like dude, can’t handle it, unplug this bastard. It fires in a way that is, I don’t know, maybe not from this terrestrial realm.

Seriously, there is something very wrong with a culture in which programmers’ outrageous self-descriptions are taken at face value.

Men tend to over-estimate their abilities and self-promote more than women when it comes to math and coding ability. Instead of hiring programmers who act like Charlie Sheen, recruiters and interviewers should take imposter syndrome into account.

Discrimination against job applicants with non-white names continues.

Muslim ‘refused job because of his name’ accuses airline bosses of racism:

A Muslim airport worker has accused airline Cathay Pacific of racism after he was refused a job interview – only to be offered one when he applied two days later using a fake white British-sounding name.

Algerian-born Salim Zakhrouf applied to Cathay Pacific for a job as a passenger services officer at Heathrow Airport.

Mr Zakhrouf, 38, who has lived in Britain since 1991 and is a UK citizen, was told by email he had not been selected for interview.

But applying 48 hours later as ‘Ian Woodhouse’ with an identical CV and home address, he was invited for an interview by the same personnel officer who had first refused him.

via Resist racism, who points out, “For clarity:  My name is not the problem, as others have suggested.  Racism is the problem.”.

---

Related links:

• British employers racially discriminate against job applicants with African and Asian names. by Restructure!
• Call for anonymous CVs to stop job interview sexism and racism (The Guardian)
• Masking the gender and race of job applicants increases diversity in hiring. by Restructure!
• Discrimination against resumes with Chinese, Indian, and Pakistani names in Canada
• Discrimination against resumes with black-sounding names in the United States
• Discrimination against resumes with Chinese, Middle Eastern, and indigenous names in Australia

The Hidden Job Market – Whiteness Has Its Privileges

© Copyright 2010 by Joseph Worrell. Reproduced with permission on Restructure!.

In February 2006, The Canadian Labour Congress presented a disturbing study on Canadian workers. The report maintained that Canadian-born visible minorities faced the highest barriers to steady, well-paying jobs of any group in the country.

Post 911 Arab-West Asians came in first with a 14% unemployment rate, Blacks at 11.5% and Latin Americans at 10.5%. Aboriginal Canadians also failed to reap many job rewards but statistics curiously grouped them with unemployed Euro-Canadians.

The Labour Congress’ study caused a bit of quandary, except among those who are already “in the know” about the dilemma.

Leslie Cheung, of Simon Fraser University, declared the report could not disavow “workplace inequality with education disparities because non-White Canadians are better educated as a whole than native-born Whites and immigrants”. The Labour Congress predicts the situation to worsen as huge numbers of non-White young people enter the job market.

Women of colour earn 53 cents for every white man’s dollar.

Race, gender remain workplace barriers in Ontario, Census data reveal – Employment equity programs needed to level workplace playing field for visible minorities (Toronto Star):

A new report based on 2005 Census data being released [June 3, 2010], shows that visible minorities in Ontario are far more likely to live in poverty, have trouble finding a job and earn less in the workplace.

Sexism and racial discrimination “pack a double wallop,” for visible minority women who earned 53.4 cents for every dollar a white man earned, said economist Sheila Block who wrote the report for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

“The Census data reveals that in 2005, at the height of pre-recession economic prosperity, women from racialized backgrounds working in Ontario faced real barriers to success,” she said. “They earned about half as much as non-racialized men.