All Her Little Secrets

In recent years, studies have come forward revealing the implicit racial biases of job hiring. Despite being just as qualified as their white counterparts, people of color are less likely to receive interviews based solely on their race. A 2019 study conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley, showed that “on average, applicants from candidates with a ‘Black name’ got fewer callbacks than similar applications bearing a ‘white name’” (Porter, Eduardo. “Who Discriminates in Hiring? A New Study Can Tell.” The New York Times, 29 July 2021). These studies found that, whether through explicit or implicit bias, interviewers were more likely to call applicants who had names that sounded white. Because of the difficulty for people of color to even receive an interview in corporate jobs, the result leads to a lack of diversity in the corporate workplace. This lack of diversity leaves the people of color who do have corporate jobs feeling isolated and singled out, since they are often the only person of color working in their department.

To combat the discrimination that people of color face in the workplace daily, President John F. Kennedy founded the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The EEOC combats workplace discrimination based on race, color, nationality, religion, age, disability, sex, or gender. In the novel, the protestors outside of Houghton file EEOC charges based on the discriminatory hiring practices as well as discrimination in the promotion of Houghton employees.