From the Business Journal
Posted: February 26, 2010

Alonzo Kelly seems an unlikely candidate to be facing racial obstacles in the job market given his impressive credentials and education.

Kelly, 36, has a master of business administration degree from  Concordia University in Mequon; a master of human resource and labor relations degree from the  University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and a master of public administration degree from UW-Oshkosh. In the fall, he is slated to receive a Ph.D. in public service leadership from Capella University, an accredited online degree program.

What’s more, Kelly has held executive and managerial positions in banking and health care in several big-name Milwaukee-area companies.

Kelly doesn’t like to complain about his situation, but as a college-educated black man, he questions whether race has had an impact on his job prospects, especially as companies shift their focus from diversity to cost-cutting to weather the lingering recession.

“There are too many games being played,” said Kelly, who has been unemployed for the past year.

For all the progress that blacks have made in recent decades as evidenced by President Barack Obama’s election in 2008, there are ample academic studies that prove that racial discrimination is “alive and well” in the job market, said Marc Levine, director of the Center for Economic Development at UWM.

Levine noted a 2004 study by the American Economic Review which found that applicants with black-sounding names such as Lakisha and Jamal received 50 percent fewer callbacks than applicants with names like Emily and Greg.

Black job seekers have been particularly hard hit by the recession. While the overall unemployment rate fell from 10 percent to 9.7 percent in January, black unemployment remains as high as 16.5 percent, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Unemployment has been particularly acute for black men in Milwaukee. Nearly 50 percent of black males in the city are either unemployed or out of the labor force entirely, according to the Center for Economic Development.

Many black professionals like Kelly are retooling their resumes to downplay their racial identity to overcome racial inequities in the job market. Some are removing any hint of skin color such as membership in African-American associations, while others are using initials in place of black-sounding names.

Kelly hasn’t scrubbed his resume of such details, but decided to move his affiliation with certain African-American and other minority associations to the bottom. He recently began seeking out memberships in such organizations as the University Club and  Rotary Club of Milwaukee, where white men traditionally have dominated. Such associations now are reaching out to minority professionals in an effort to be more inclusive.

“I noticed that everything I was associated with was race specific. I started to downplay this on my resume,” said Kelly. “When I highlight Rotary or the University Club, people in decision-making roles can better relate to that. I’m frustrated that I have to do that (downplay race), but I’ve got to be savvy.”

Kelly said his decision to de-emphasize his membership in African-American associations does not mean he is ashamed of belonging to such groups, but he believes it’s necessary to operate in a job market that’s been more hostile to minorities.

“That’s just the way business is done these days,” said Kelly.

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Brenda Pegues, the most recent president of the Milwaukee Chapter of the  Black MBA Association, said it was a common practice for black professionals in the group to remove racial identifiers from their resumes. Pegues has taken a different approach in her job search.

“It was a common theme I would hear from our members,” said Pegues, a management and human resource consultant who was president of the Milwaukee Black MBA Association chapter from 1999 to 2008. “I would not suggest taking black organizations off a resume or changing your name. That’s something to be proud of. It’s more about being inclusive in your networks. That’s what I’m doing.”

That black professionals are going to such lengths to mask their racial identity is not surprising to local diversity experts such as Robert Shuter.

“This has been going on since the beginning of the meltdown (2007),” said Shuter, a nationally known diversity consultant, who is chair of the Department of Communication Studies at  Marquette University in Milwaukee. “It’s not a viable strategy, but it’s a way of getting in the door and making a case.”

It’s a double-edged sword: Downplaying racial identity may result in more interviews, but, said Shuter, “it all comes home” when an African-American job seeker walks into an interview.

“You create a strategy so you’re identity free for the chance of an interview,” he said. “You get seated for the interview, then what? It’s a saddening moment that folks have to (do this) to get in the door.”

Julia Taylor, president of the  Greater Milwaukee Committee, urged black professionals to seek out companies that value what they bring to the table.

“There are companies that are interested in seeing indications on resumes that individuals can be conversant in a number of different places and with different populations,” Taylor said. “You still have to show that you have the talent and background. The added thing that you bring to the table is that you can cross a lot of different bridges with different people and different markets.”