module 1

A. What was the authors starting inquiry question? How did that question change, expand,
and/or strengthen throughout the piece?

Their question is about racism in the USA and how it's affecting ethnic groups, more
specifically how african americans are less likely to get callbacks on resumes when applying
for jobs.They study the problem through social experimentation, in which they sent resumes
with ethnic names to see the likelihood of getting a callback, and the result is the white names
got more call backs than african-american.
B. Why do they have an interest in this question? Do you think this affects the appropriate
ways to research the question?
Because it's one of the modern day struggles that affects a certain ethnic group, and because
there has been certain events that sparked controversy about racism in the US which was
displayed in the article as follows

C. How does the author's piece demonstrate some of the main principles of inquiry?
They showed a number of studies and analyzed the results in order to make a ruling. And the
inquiries were about the discrimination that job seekers may face if they had africanamerican, and to do that they sent resumes with ethnic names and compared results from
resumes with white names and resumes with african american names, which lead them to the
conclusion that there is clear discrimination between the two

D. Consider what experiences or published pieces the author used as source(s) for their
research and/or answer-searching. They used this to come to a final idea about their topic. Do
you think that it is genuine or fair research? Why or why not?
No because the study does seem very limited and doesn't offer through explanation of the
problem. They first start with a small news segment with issues concerning race, then
jumping towards discussing ethnic relations, and immediately going to the questions. And so
besides their very quick introduction the study itself was very limited, they only mentioned
the ethnic names on the resumes and not the qualifications themselves which is a pretty big
part of the resumes, for example did they use similar qualifications, did the less qualified
white names get more callbacks then the more qualified african american names, and vise
versa. They even questioned the authenticity of one of the research results, which just tells me
whoever wrote this article does not believe in the results, which the author does say in the
end. Also a callback is not a very accurate method of measuring the hire rate of certain ethnic
races, and many people don't have names related to their ethnicity, and the author even says
that it wouldn't matter what their name is since the ethnicity would be recognized when a face
to face interview would be conducted.
E. How was the author able to enter and extend this conversation about naming and identity?
What topics came up within the piece that could be pulled for further questioning and
exploring? This can be a question that the author could pursue or that a reader could be
inspired by and pursue.
Well the ethnic names weren't really explained well, because first the author found two
studies showing different results, but settled for a reliable third, also the author mentioned

that having a black name is "primarily a consequence rather than a cause of poverty and
segregation.", which does not really make any sense and the author offers no explanation.
If I was to conduct a study to find out the discrimination of hire rates in ethnicities, I would
first collect data from ethnic groups based on their ethnicity ,qualifications, salary, and hire
rates. I would concentrate on the salaries because I believe that is where I will truly find the
discrimination, because if I find a consistency in low wages in an ethnic group then this
would be valid evidence in discrimination. And not callbacks on ethnic names.