Friday, October 18, 2013

In the workplace, Everybody's a Racist.

Racism has long been an issue in society. There are people who believe that the work place is the last place one would expect racism. Those people are idiots. There are thousands of examples of racial discrimination even before they are employed! A study at Princeton showed that within the state of New York, the amount of Call-backs or Job Offers by Race and/or Ethnicity for caucasians nearly doubled the amount for African Americans (Pager, Western 2005).  That doesn’t make sense to me. Shouldn’t every race have every opportunity to succeed? Shouldn’t every race be willing to work with other races in the work place?


Most don’t think so.

 

African Americans especially have felt discriminated against in the employment world since the 1960s, and if you don't believe me, check out what Racism.org has to say about racism in the work place.  Even though rates of unemployment for African Americans have been astonishingly high in comparison to Caucasians, CEOS of Companies and businesses are justifying that they are indeed for equality. But every major CEO cannot watch every major branch. Branching off into television, there is one example of discrimination that was displayed in The Office, a well-known television series. An employee of Dunder-Mifflin: Scranton notices a check e-mailed to the office involving a policy for employees with a criminal record. As soon as they begin to investigate who might the check might be for, another employee instantly guesses that one of their new African American co-workers may have had a criminal record. Modern television recognizes discrimination in America and promptly seizes the awkward comedic gold out of discrimination.


But wait! If American Television is often considered a representation of America, does that mean that everyone thinks discrimination is funny? Not really. In Bonilla-Silva’s Racism without Racists, It shows that all the interactions every race had with another in the workplace were not all funny at all. In chapter 4, a Video Store employee named Joan was accused of a being a racist after an African American woman was denied a return because she did not have a receipt, which is due to company policy. “Started calling me a white honky and every racist slur that you could think of happened…” (Bonilla-Silva 90). Another example involves a man named Darren, a white 40 year old male applying for a bus driver position. “Now I have nothing against the black person….I’m off on the side and I can hear them talking and he can’t seven speak good English, he doesn’t know how to read a map, and they’re gonna make him a bus driver and hire him over me….” (Bonilla-Silva 86). That entire segment goes on and the short version is that Darren believes he did not get hired because he was white.

Um. What?

Is stuff like this what we advocated for? We advocated for equality among races, and we get (in my honest opinion) stupid examples of humanity such as this? America wants to know how to stop discrimination in the work place? The answer to me is easy to comprehend:

Don’t be an idiot, and recognize employees and workers by color. Recognize them by their accomplishments.



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