What is discrimination? Discrimination is when people are treated unequally due to their race, gender, religion, or other parts of their identity. Racism is a form of discrimination, and racism can show up in obvious (overt) and more subtle (covert) forms. In the workplace, acts of discrimination can create what is called a “hostile work environment,” which is defined as “a work environment that would be intimidating, hostile, or offensive to reasonable people” and is against the law.
In the United States, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was formed in 1965 following the Civil Rights Act and was made to enforce anti-discrimination laws. Although the EEOC can investigate complaints and recommend cases for litigation, it was unable to sue employers, issue cease-and-desist orders, and, to this day, is unable to reveal the identities of employers accused of discrimination- in other words, the EEOC is weak by design.
Just because the EEOC exists and it is illegal to discriminate in the workplace doesn't mean that it doesn't happen, since discrimination is a choice people make. In the hiring process, when it comes to getting a callback, “full names often attributed to White Americans are estimated to provide the equivalent advantage of eight years of experience” compared to applicants with “African American names.” Also, a study in 2003 found that employers were “more likely to consider White candidates with criminal records than Black candidates with no such history.” And this is just the hiring process.
So why hasn't the EEOC been able to put a stop to workplace and hiring discrimination? At a federal level, the EEOC is terribly underfunded and significantly understaffed, leading to a consistent backlog of almost 50,000 filed charges. The state-level isn’t any better- many state anti-discrimination agencies are either underfunded or don’t even exist. Shockingly, only 18% of the 100,000 cases closed by the EEOC and its partner agencies each year result in workers either receiving compensation or a change in their working conditions. And, despite Black workers filing 26% of the EEOC’s received charges, the anti-discrimination agencies in the 10 states with the highest percentage of Black residents have annual funding of just over 70 cents per resident per year. This number means even more when compared to the over $230 spent on policing per resident per year in these same 10 states.
The United States has a long way to go when it comes to combating hiring and workplace discrimination, and beginning to tackle these issues will require dedicated financial support from both federal and state budgets. Recently, Trump appointed Janet Dhillon, who has previously led companies like JC Penny and Burlington, to chair the EEOC. The NAACP fought against his pick, arguing that the choice felt like Trump was trying to get on the good side of employers, rather than making a choice in the interest of the employees’ rights. The NAACP stated that “Ms. Dhillon has spent her entire career advocating for the retail industry in legal proceedings; she has no experience representing employees, she has never led a government agency and she has never even worked in the public sector.”
In the end, workplace and hiring discrimination is and will be a problem if the programs in place to monitor and eliminate them aren’t being focused on by our administration. However, the core of discrimination still boils down to personal choices and the decision you as an individual make when treating others. Making a conscious effort to challenge your own thoughts and choices, both in the workplace and outside of it, is a step in the right direction.
Sources:
Vox, “Workplace discrimination is illegal. But our data shows it’s still a huge problem.” by Maryam Jameel and Joe Yerardi
The Mark of a Criminal Record by Devah Pager & The American Economic Review, “Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination” by Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan, https://cos.gatech.edu/facultyres/Diversity_Studies/Bertrand_LakishaJamal.pdf
Systematic Inequality and Economic Opportunity by Danyelle Solomon & Connor Maxwell, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472910/systematic-inequality-economic-opportunity/
NAACP, Statement on Janet Dhillon Nomination as Chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, https://www.naacp.org/latest/naacp-statement-janet-dhillon-nomination-chair-equal-employment-opportunity-commission/
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