!As shopworn as the term is, this is what is meant by "institutional racism." Racist sentiment is not necessary for people to behave in what is ultimately a racist way.! With the way you put it now, the people living within such systems would be racists taking racist actions based on sound evidence based reasoning. The term itself is also problematic, as no institutions nor race need to be involved for this kind of problem to occur, its simply the most familiar form to americans. Inadequate equilibria is better, but the corresponding the problem xxx would disappear if people weren't idiots isn't productive either.

Just like it is not necessary for the upper class to be more educated, its not necessary for the more educated to speak upper class. But it is more likely.

That such would be enough to stagnate social mobility seems like pessimistic hyperbole to me. Given that we are talking about high value added, high paying, i.e. worker shortage jobs and that there are significantly more demand for such workers than the upper class could provide, meaning, even at worst, such behaviour could only slow down social mobility, not stop it.

If the people who are evaluated are drawn randomly from the population as they claim to in the study, then no. If its a real hiering situation, then possibly yes, though it depends on how the position was advertised. That however may not even change the outcome of the study. In most big companies recruiters are not looking for the best applicant for the job, or atleast have no incentives to do so. They are looking for the easiest to motivate hiring for the job. Similarly, their boss may not have ordered them to find the best worker for the job, they likely asked for a good enough worker who causes minimum issues and who if they cause issues were easy to motivate having hired in the first place. Note that I never claimed that upper class speech meant better at the job, I explicitly wrote academic achievement, i.e the kind of thing which makes for an easily justified hire. Imagine having hired Dr House except without a degree, or a slightly below average doctor with an average grade degree. Now one is plain better, but the other will never get you fired. But thats a whole other problem.

> Is it the kind of society we want to create where you are essentially "locked in" to your parents' social position?

No, that is why interviews should look more like the ones Google performs and less like "please describe yourself, hobbies and life experiences"

Yes, I agree. For all the complaints, I think it is a much fairer system than the alternative.