Racial discrimination refers to the practice of treating individuals differently because of their race or color. Federal law prohibits race discrimination in the workplace and incidents of race discrimination can take many forms, in the workplace particularly, race discrimination can be hard to identify. For more information about race discrimination read below.
- One of the more difficult aspects of racial discrimination at work, is that it can often take place entirely undetected. After all, unless an employer specifically admits otherwise, who can say for sure why they made a particular decision to hire a certain individual or gave another a promotion?
- In employer discrimination cases, and especially those involving racial discrimination, seemingly innocuous statements can be interpreted as having racial overtones indicative of discriminatory intent. Be alert to such comments and keep track of them if you see a pattern in your workplace.
- Judge the candidates based on these professional parameters. If you fear a colleague is discriminating in their choices, ask for a third party to judge the candidates without seeing their names or faces.
- Set non-negotiable equal pay for new hires (based on their degrees). This stops discrimination regarding salary offers, and accounts for the fact that women are on average more hesitant to negotiate their salaries.
- Post it in a common location and add it to your employee handbook. Place a human resources manager in charge of complaints.
- Some smaller companies can’t afford to hire human resource managers. However, someone at the business should be a “contact officer,” who is responsible for handling discrimination issues before the employee contacts a state agency or a lawyer.
- Take complaints very seriously. No one should be told to "stop being so sensitive" if they are being mistreated at the office.
- Make it clear that there is a zero tolerance policy when it comes to discrimination. Announce how complaints and disciplinary action will be handled.
- Training should include topics of gender, race, LGBTQ status, size, disability, religion, and age.
- Explain that the company does not tolerate microaggressions, such as sexist jokes, the r-word, or derogatory racial terms.
- Look around at your work force. If you exist in a diverse population, but your employees are all from the same race, you may be inadvertently promoting hiring practices based on discrimination.
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