Drew Hanson, chapter 5, question #6

The most interesting part of the chapter was the part about how employers would discriminate against black males because they are associated with being convicted of crimes when the employers didn't have enough information to determine which potential employees were convicted of crimes. In the example, employers hired less black males when they didn't have access to criminal history than when they did despite the dramatic difference in percentages of prison time between white males and black males. This means that, even though the likelyhood a black male has been convicted of a crime is much higher than a white male, the difference in people blindly guessing if someone has committed a crime or not is even more pronounced. The key is that more information helps all (deserving) parties. It helps the employers pick out employees who don't have a bad criminal history and it helps employees to not suffer for someone else's mistakes.