The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws enacted by the United States government.
One of the EEOC’s powers is to directly sue employers that violate these laws. Typically, the EEOC will get directly involved in several cases each year.
A review of the EEOC’s case results show, anecdotally, how pervasive workplace discrimination based on race still is in this country. Most of the case results posted on the EEOC’s website resolved since 2010.
The list of cases also shows that racial discrimination in employment is not always easy to detect. Here are some examples of cases where detecting racism may have not been easy:
- Several cases involved disparate impact in hiring practices. While the business involved may have seemed to be using reasons for selecting candidates that were not related to race, the result was that people of certain races had a much more difficult time getting hired.
- On a related point, same cases involved what many call proxies. In one case, a company’s criminal background check process was found to be a discriminatory proxy to exclude applicants of a certain race. The way employers divvy up sales territories or even how their systems treated applicants affiliated with historically minority organizations were also the basis for large settlement payments.
- Employers who inconsistently impose discipline on their employees have faced EEOC charges when people of certain races receive harsher consequences for violating the same rules as employees of other races, who receive either no consequences or lighter discipline.
- The EEOC pays attention to well-known or manufactured code words that are used to refer to workers of a certain race, even when these code words at first might not appear to be offensive.
- It is important to remember that employers have an obligation to prevent a hostile work environment, including slurs, harassment and other discriminatory behavior by managers, colleagues and even customers.
Those who suspect they have been victims of racial discrimination have options
Both federal law and the laws of New York and New Jersey protect workers from racial discrimination in all forms. If an employee suspects any unfair treatment in their workplace based on their race, they should make sure they understand their legal options. They do not have to tolerate such behavior.