Racism, sexism, and remnants of slavery in job advertisements

Abstract

Job advertisements may present elements of racial oppression, albeit in subtle ways, as in the expressions “good looks” and “good hygiene.” This acknowledgment makes us reflect that the job market, and society in general, is racially structured, not only in the permanence and professional advancement of black women but even in recruitment, including online job advertisements. This research aims to understand how the publication of job advertisements with phenotypic characteristics such as “good looks” contribute to the perpetuation of racism and sexism. Specifically, we aim to understand how resistance to racist labor market practices and structure occurs. We invoke references of decoloniality and intersectionality and use thematic analysis in a corpus of 285 job advertisements on four classified sites and four black employability initiatives present on LinkedIn. In the results and discussion, we indicate that an ideal of a white worker is perpetuated in the domestic work market and that good image and good hygiene are euphemistic expressions that mask racism in the labor market, which is a remnant of slavery. Current black employability initiatives highlight the need to think about affirmative action for black men and women, historically excluded from more prestigious and remunerative jobs and decision-making spaces. This movement, between oppression, resistance, and black existence, operates a decolonial project of intervention in reality, the main contribution of this research.