Discrimination in the workplace

It’s the twenty-first century, and gender and race discrimination is still a controversial issue world-wide. You may ask what’s so controversial about it. Well, thousands and thousands of people in the United States are getting discriminated by their race or gender. More specifically, they’re getting discriminated in their workplace. Not only is unfair job discrimination illegal, but discrimination is seen through-out history, and will probably continue throughout the future. So there are many people who try to prevent and get awareness, while the employers discriminate their future or current employees by their gender or race.

                Kids are the future of this country. So, therefore they should be treated like so. LICRA, the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism. They have many campaigns and spread awareness to its people, they encourage to denounce any abuses and for everyone to have vigilance. LICRA has released an advertisement campaign the reads the following: “Your skin color should not dictate your future”. Underneath it shows three babies. The two on each side are white babies, while the other baby that is in the center is a colored baby. The colored baby is wearing a maid’s outfit. That may come off as an insult, but LICRA wanted to come across a point. They wanted to show people that just because someone has a different kind of skin, it does not mean they know their future. Someone with colored skin won’t grow to be a maid or even have a lower class job.

When applying for a job, everyone is required to fill out some type of application or at least to meet with a manager or a supervisor. There are different ways to discriminate in the workplace. One way is a way that author Larry Alexander encountered and wrote about in “Disparate Impact: Fairness or Efficiency”. Alexander explains and gives his theory on how there is a disparate treatment in the workplace. A way that an employer would be able to give different treatment is when he or she is looking if you’ve passed the “test” of being a certain race or sex. Only then will they choose if they prefer the future employee over others. Now if the employer would be direct and if the policy of his business stated that he did not want blacks or women in his business that would be illegal, and he would get penalized. So they employer will start giving out actual tests. Other tests easier than others. The employer would be able to do this because it would be easier for him to reject the employee candidate that he didn’t want. An important point that Alexander pointed out was that if the employer does this, he or she may be outing at risk the business. Not because they may get caught of breaking the law, but because they may be losing money. Capital is the most important factor in having a company. That and having the best capacitated team of employees. So, because the employer is discriminating against race and gender, he or she may be losing money because he doesn’t have the best team.

                In a video made by BeyondBlue Foundation, they give an initiative to stop racial discrimination. They focused on the “invisible discriminator”, an invisible man that stood behind people and whispered into their ears discriminating and telling them to not make eye contact or to move away from the person from a different background. A specific cut-out of the video stood out the most. Since the video was made in Australia, the accents were a bit different. But, in a scene there was an indigenous Australian girl that was applying for a job. The invisible man was behind the lady employer and stood by her while telling her if she could actually trust her. Discrimination can cause anxiety and depression, just for being who they are. So besides of discriminating people, anyone who does discriminate is causing them more harm they actually believe they are. There a various websites that explain what a specific discrimination is and what can be done help out victims of racial and gender discrimination. For example, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people for discrimination in employment based on race and how someone that feels that way may contact HR.

                Racial and gender discrimination will always probably always be a controversial issue that not everyone will understand because it happens to specific people. It will continue throughout history and it’s amazing how people take a stand for what they believe in.