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The NYTimes article “In Job Hunt, College Degree Can’t Close Racial Gap” was a most-emailed article last week. We’ve written about this issue before — job applicants with ethnic-sounding names are having a harder time getting interviews and jobs than their white counterparts, despite being equally qualified.

With the job market in a crunch, applicants are doing everything they can to gain an edge over their competitors. But when highly-qualified African-Americans are changing the way their names appear on their résumés just to get a call back, its obvious that they are facing a more devastating disadvantage.

Johnny R. Williams, 30, would appear to be an unlikely person to have to fret about the impact of race on his job search, with companies like JPMorgan Chase and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago on his résumé.

But after graduating from business school last year and not having much success garnering interviews, he decided to retool his résumé, scrubbing it of any details that might tip off his skin color. His membership, for instance, in the African-American business students association? Deleted.

Another applicant interviewed uses the name Barry J. Sykes instead of the full Barry Jabbar Sykes, even though he’s always gone by Jabbar.

Although discrimination is rarely overt, interviewees report surprised faces on interviewers once they do get their feet in the door, with waned interest after the interviewers see the applicant is not white. Surprisingly, education, which would seem to level the playing field between whites and blacks, has made it more difficult for black job applicants. The unemployment rate for black male applicants with college degrees is twice that of their white peers.

Read the full article and interpretation here.