Employment Search Information

There are two basic types of racial discrimination that are common in the workplace; the more common one, disparate treatment, is direct and purposefully harmful to the person.  Essentially, disparate treatment means that the person being discriminated against is treated in a way that is deemed unfair or is directly discriminated against by the actions of the employer.

For example, when an Iranian man who is an American citizen is treated poorly by his co-workers or his company because of his race and ancestry, this is considered disparate treatment.  The discrimination is directly and purposefully aimed at the man because he is of a certain race.  It would also be considered disparate treatment if the same man was passed over for a job position for which he was entirely qualified simply because he was Iranian or had Arabic ancestry.

Of the two common types of racial discrimination that are found in the workplace, disparate impact is the harder one to describe and even harder to prove.  Disparate impact, unlike disparate treatment, is not directly aimed at a particular person or race, nor is it intentional.  In fact, it is often a complete accident that disparate impact happens at all, and generally it is the fault of company policies.

One example is using the Jewish race and faith.  If a Hasidic Jewish man is hired by a company and is not treated unfairly because of his race, then he is not experiencing disparate treatment.  But if the company’s policy requires every employee to work one Saturday a month, the Jewish man may experience disparate impact because he cannot work on Saturdays because it is the Sabbath.  In this situation, the company may change their policy regarding the necessity of everyone to work one Saturday each month.

In 2007, five African American women won a court case against their employer for racial discrimination.  The five women were let go form their employer during layoffs; they were scrutinized while they packed their belongings, and were searched thoroughly before leaving the premises.  Meanwhile, a white male coworker who was also laid off was not subjected to the same embarrassing treatment.  While the women were not treated unfairly directly or with words, they did suffer the same discrimination and humiliation as a result of their employer’s actions.

This makes a huge difference in the world of anti-discrimination law as regarding the actions of an employer.  It proves that though the employer was not directly or verbally discriminating, their actions proved that racial discrimination was, in fact, present in the workplace of these five African-American women.