A recent New York Times article highlighted the phenomenon of African Americans downplaying racial markers in their resumes in order to compete in the job market:

Tahani Tompkins was struggling to get callbacks for job interviews in the Chicago area this year when a friend made a suggestion: Change your name. Instead of Tahani, a distinctively African-American-sounding name, she began going by T. S. Tompkins in applications.

Yvonne Orr, also searching for work in Chicago, removed her bachelor’s degree from Hampton University, a historically black college, leaving just her master’s degree from Spertus Institute, a Jewish school. She also deleted a position she once held at an African-American nonprofit organization and rearranged her references so the first people listed were not black.

Black job seekers said the purpose of hiding racial markers extended beyond simply getting in the door for an interview. It was also part of making sure they appeared palatable to hiring managers once race was seen. Activism in black organizations, even majoring in African-American studies can be signals to employers. Removing such details is all part of what Ms. Orr described as “calming down on the blackness.”

The article provides some sociological data on how African Americans are faring in the labor market:

[The] Popular perception that affirmative action still confers significant advantages to black job candidates…is not borne out in studies. Moreover, statistics show even college-educated blacks suffering disproportionately in this jobless environment compared with whites.

“The average organization either doesn’t have diversity programs, or has the type that is not effective and can even lead to backlash,” said Alexandra Kalev, a University of Arizona sociologist who has studied such efforts. “So in the average organization, being black doesn’t help.”

Playing down one’s black identity may carry a psychic toll for those who do so:

In “Covering: the Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights,” Kenji Yoshino, a law professor at New York University, wrote about this phenomenon not just among blacks but also other minority groups. “My notion of covering is really about the idea that people can have stigmatized identities that either they can’t or won’t hide but nevertheless experience a huge amount of pressure to downplay those identities,” he said. Mr. Yoshino says that progress in hiring has meant that “the line originally was between whites and nonwhites, favoring whites; now it’s whites and nonwhites who are willing to act white.”

John L. Jackson Jr., a professor of anthropology and communications at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Racial Paranoia,” said he wondered about the “existential cost” of this kind of behavior, even if the adjustments were temporary and seem harmless.

“In some ways, they are denying who and what they are,” he said. “They almost have to pretend themselves away.”