1) The employers are racist biggots based on things that don't correlate with job performance. In this case betting against them is a winning strategy.
2) The employers are racist based on observed data from previous hires. Based on that they assume that a person with an Arab name is less able to perform. This may not be fair for the individual, but may be right on average. In this case betting against them is a losing strategy.
Given that the muslim world had all the knowledge the western world used to restore science after the dark ages yet have partially returned to them today, there may be some (tangential) evidence for 2.
It isn't a trick: the same thing happens in the US with African-American names on resumes and is trivially repeatable on your own if you are so inclined. It has nothing to do with job performance either: measured job performance isn't variable.
It does have to do with cultural comfort, and the fact humans make hiring decisions instead of machines. In any case where human judgement has been replaced by measurement or judgement blind to demographics diversity has increased.
I know it's annoying when reality is non-optimized, but it doesn't take twisting ourselves into knots to explain why: humans make predictably bad decisions.
It has nothing to do with job performance either: measured job performance isn't variable.
Citation needed for this one. It's pretty easy to to measure resume response rates, but I'd love to know how you would even go about measuring this one.
In any case where human judgement has been replaced by measurement or judgement blind to demographics diversity has increased.
This is simply false. For one example, take university admissions - after Grutter, universities have switched from objective systems to systems with human biases in order to increase demographic diversity.
Similarly, take a look at Ricci - the objective measurement system (firefighting tests) was replaced with a human judgement system in order to increase the number of minorities.
It's certainly true that diversity has increased in some cases, however - I believe women in classical music is the standard example.
It's really not that simple. Racism never is - it is much more pervasive, and more insidious than the stereotypical examples of Klansmen with guns.
There is a third, and much more likely scenario:
3) The employers' perceptions of Arabs is subtly colored by popular opinion and stereotypes as exists in pop culture and media. Much of these depictions and stereotypes appear harmless, but cumulatively add up to something substantial. Many of these depictions in media and culture are meant to be harmless, but subtly color your judgment anyways.
The employer is not out to discriminate against anyone, but their perception is colored, and therefore they make subconsciously sub-optimal choices sorting the stack of resumes.
That is a far more likely scenario, it just isn't as black and white, and isn't as interesting due to a noticeable lack of Bad Guys(tm).
I'll also disagree on the "betting against them is a winning strategy" thing. Your theory seems to be that bigotry will collapse in upon itself because they're denying themselves the objectively optimal choices. This doesn't stand up to actual example in history - Blacks were systematically oppressed until direct action was taken. The racists and bigots never caved in on themselves by cutting themselves out of a skilled labor pool, they succeeded until directly toppled.
Because we all know how pervasive anti-Arab, anti-black, etc, stereotypes are in "pop culture and media." As is well known, Hollywood is full of corporate racist fascist pigs. Which is why we see so many films promoting racism and fascism. I'm sure it's just the same in France.
Yes, that was satire. Another possibility - improbable, I know - is that there are actually statistical differences between Frenchmen and Arabs. As a smart guy, you might enjoy this essay on pattern recognition:
(I suspect you already know this, but I find it is an interesting topic so I'll post it for others)
It should probably be noted when talking about the history of science during the so called dark ages that the Islamic Empire covered a very vast area. The society was homogeneous only in religion, not in 'race'.
My (limited) understanding is that their scientific collapse was the result of a series of (religious in nature) bans on various scientific activities (translation, dissection, etc) This seems to have had fair reaching effects on the viability of their Empire and has likely been the cause of the Muslim worlds comparatively limited scientific activity since then.
Therefore I would expect that the decline of Islamic science is not a symptom of a perceived performance deficiency among people with Arab names, but rather the cause. Considering the apparently solely cultural nature of the issue, any observed phenomenon could be subject to extremely rapid change and is likely to have a very significant number of outliers.
There are two likely scenarios:
1) The employers are racist biggots based on things that don't correlate with job performance. In this case betting against them is a winning strategy.
2) The employers are racist based on observed data from previous hires. Based on that they assume that a person with an Arab name is less able to perform. This may not be fair for the individual, but may be right on average. In this case betting against them is a losing strategy.
Given that the muslim world had all the knowledge the western world used to restore science after the dark ages yet have partially returned to them today, there may be some (tangential) evidence for 2.
And that is really scary.