Comment on: How do you react on a racist attack?

I think that trade unions should indeed help to reduce racism. Nonetheless, they should not be alone! Employers are also worthy warriors in the battle against racial discrimination. There are some things that they could do, I will illustrate with 2 examples:

First, employers can contribute by creating a multicultural environment. Consequentially, different races will get to know each other if they like it or not. By doing that, prejudices will eventually disappear, if not, your staff will.

Secondly, they can form a committee who is in charge of reducing racism in their workplace. This group could put on workshops, improve race relations by making a long-term action plan and deal with complaints from workers.

In my opinion, you might be able to eliminate racism completely by getting rid of capitalism. Our society happens to divide the human population into different groups. What we need to end racial discrimination is world revolution!

Ward Algoet
source: http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/library/record/362.html

How do you react on a racist attack?

I agree with ward’s opinion, creating laws isn’t the only solution against racial discrimination at work. The major aim is to change the line of thought of people who have a bad representation of people with another skin colour. That is why it’s important to trace the real cause of the racist attack (for example: fear or a negative experience). Therefore it’s important to distinguish facts and opinions in a conversation.

The first thing you should do is starting up a debate instead of a discussion because you will achieve more if you remain calm. Secondly, try to convince the other person that you are not a thief or a something else that he accused you off. As a last resort, find a mediator (like a trade union) who will try to solve your problem.

I think that you can’t solve racism at work by creating more laws. However, we can reduce racial discrimination by talking to each other in a calm way and eliminate all the prejudices. Maybe trade union can facilitate this process.

(source)

Laurence de Klerk Wolters

Comment on: The client is king…

          No matter how much you change the law in obliging people not to discriminate against one another, there will always be racial discrimination. It’s because we are trying to solve a psychological problem by taking legal measures.

          By having governments  we automatically create stronger and weaker groups. Therefore certain laws help to protect those weaker groups and forcing the stronger to support them. This is an effective way to approach this problem looking at the results. However, you can’t change how people think. They will choose not to violate the law but that doesn’t mean that they agree to accept other races. They choose to not discriminate someone because otherwise they will be punished.

          Martijn has illustrated this very well. Actually employers do not want to hire black people because they will lose profits. However, they are going to hire some to avoid getting sued.
We can’t reduce prejudice therefore there will always be racial discrimination.

Ward Algoet

source: http://www.bullies2buddies.com/How-to-Stop-Racism

Free market penalizes discrimination

First, I would like to react to Martijn’s latest blog entry.
In my opinion, whether a company refuses to hire certain job applicants or not, there’s a possibility to lose customers either way. If the company rejects an applicant because of his or her race, it may also lose some of its clients who don’t want to buy from a racist company.
Furthermore, as you already said yourself, if the decision whether or not to hire a certain applicant isn’t purely based on job performance, but also on skin colour, it’s a form of racial discrimination. So the client may be king, but not if he asks the company to violate the law.

I did some research on this topic and I came across an article written by Robert P. Murphy, in which he states that “bad” discrimination is always penalized by the free market principles.
Allow me to explain this through Martijn’s example of bigoted customers:
As we aim to ensure fair and equal treatment in the job market, companies that refuse to hire applicants because of their race should be an exception. Therefore, a  workforce that consists of only white workers would be a unique situation, but, sadly, a very popular one among racist buyers. Nevertheless, according to Robert P. Murphy, they pay the price for their bigotry, because, as we all know, something unique is generally more expensive. This explains how the free market tends to punish “bad” discrimination.

Annelies Delaere

THE CLIENT IS KING...

Suppose you’re an employer and your clients are racists. Would you work with black people? And most of all: is it legal not to accept an employee based on his race in order to satisfy your customers?

Let’s take a look at what the article written by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has to say about this topic. Is it legal to refuse job candidates in this situation? The article mentions that the law is very clear: this is a form of intentional discrimination. Intentional discrimination is described as: “ when an employment decision is affected by the person's race”. Conclusion: it definitely isn’t legal.

In my opinion,  this is a rather difficult question, if not an impossible one to answer when you look at it in an economic point of view. Imagine you do hire for example a black person, but consequently  you lose your customers… Normally the rule of thumb is that the client is king, but by following this rule, aren’t you a racist as well?

Martijn De Meyer

(link to the article)

(an interesting video on discrimination by employment agencies)

You’re white? Please come again!

Is race an important factor when hiring a person? That was the question that Devah Pager, an American sociologist, tried to answer.

The study focused  on job interviews. In order to compare the difference between black and white when dealing with hiring decisions, Devah Pager looked at the likelihood that job appliers were called back for a job interview. Therefore she divided the applicants in four groups: black people and white people, both with or without a criminal record. The results of her study in 2003 were quite shocking. She found that white applicants (without a criminal record) were most likely to be called back whereas their black counterparts with a criminal record were the least likely to be invited. Although it isn’t very surprising that someone with a criminal record isn’t loved by most employers, there is a huge difference between black and white applicants: white applicants are almost twice as much called back! So it seems that racism isn’t a problem of the past.

Martijn De Meyer

(link to the article)

Why will no one help the unemployed minorities?

I recently came across an interesting article on http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/06/race-gender-ethnic-minorities, in which Iqbal Wahhab talks about the problematic position of the unemployed minorities in the UK and the fact that, despite his hard work, still no steps are being taken to help them.

Since 2006, Iqbal Wahhab is chairing an ethnic minority advisory group to inform ministers about the best ways to reduce the ethnic minority employment rate. Sad to say, in all this time and in spite of several long unproductive meetings, nothing has changed. In fact, the unemployment rates of minority groups haven’t changed in twenty years and we all know that the current recession definitely won’t make things better. But still, ministers can’t be convinced to take a single step in the right direction to assure equal treatment in the job market.
Nevertheless, Wahhab won’t throw in the towel. The government should start with itself, he states. More precisely, the procurements of the government departments. Suppliers should be asked for details of the diversity of their workforces. If certain ethnic groups are under-represented, the companies have to take steps and come up with an action plan if they still want to win a contract. This approach has proven very effective in the US and Northern Ireland.
Annelies Delaere