What is race discrimination?

Race discrimination in the workplace occurs when an employer performs an adverse employment action towards his or her employee due to the employee’s race. Adverse employment actions include, but are not limited to, hire, fire, pay, demotions, promotions, and other unfavorable conditions. Harassment of an employee by an employer based on the employee’s race is also a form of race discrimination. Harassment could include, but is not limited to, derogatory comments, teasing, and/or insulting remarks based on the employee’s race. Race discrimination at the workplace is a violation of the law, and therefore, is illegal.

There are several examples of race discrimination that could occur at the workplace. A hypothetical scenario would be if a Black employee was recently hired and after one day of working at the company, he immediately noticed that he is the only Black employee in the entire company. The rest of the employees are all white. The Black employee soon discovered that previous Black employees who used to work at his workplace were often of small numbers, possibly one or two Black employees in the whole company. The Black employee also found out that the previous Black employees were each terminated after a very brief working time and were given lower job positions, even though many of them would have more experience and skills than the white employees who were not terminated around that time. After working for this employer for a month, the employer suddenly terminates this Black employee. The employer claims that the employee was poorly performing his job duties. The employer’s claim for termination of employment was contradicting the actuality of the situation. The employee knew that the employer’s claim was false because he had previously received outstanding performance reviews, and even had a record of them. The Black employee decides to seek justice and fairness, and thus, he begins to file a claim with the court for race discrimination. In this example, the Black employee has a strong case for wrongful termination based on race discrimination because he has a record of his job performance reviews, he has past information regarding previous Black employees and their mistreatment at the company, and he can argue that the company hiring process is completely unfair and demonstrates race discrimination (as evidenced by the highly disproportionate ratio of Black employees to white employees).

Another example of race discrimination at the workplace would be if a Black employee receives a lesser salary than a white employee, even though both employees have the same amount of experience and have the same positions at the company. Therefore, if all other factors are the same except the race of these two employees, then the employer is clearly promoting race discrimination at the workplace. Race discrimination is when wages and salaries are unfair and exemplifies racial inequality. If this employee decides to file a race discrimination claim with the court, then the employee could receive compensation for the employer’s damages. Employer’s damages do not necessarily merely imply lost wages, but can also imply damages in regards to the employer causing the employee emotional distress from the employer’s actions and behavior.