Racial Discrimination: Its Roots and Forms

Some people are likely to believe that their race is superior to others. These beliefs have led to the death of thousands and even millions across the globe.

Historically, World War II started due to Hitler’s quest to show humankind that Germans were far superior. This ended brutally, making people realize that humans are created equal and would therefore need to have equal rights. 

Experts in the field of human interaction, on the other hand, called the act of humiliating or maltreating people belonging to different race as racial discrimination.   Some of the elements that constitute this are the following:

·         Color

·         Race

·         National Origin

The law specified under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its corresponding amendment in 1991 strictly forbids racial discrimination in the United States. This country was said to have been created due to the involvement of different states, and it would therefore be a violation to its creation if people discriminate one another. 

HIV/AIDS in Employment is nothing New

Recently, a wrongful termination lawsuit was filed against The Ivy, a Los Angeles restaurant famous for its high-end customers such as Hollywood stars like Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton, and Jennifer Aniston.

Reymundo Martinez, its former employee, filed the lawsuit at the California Supreme Court with the help of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund.

The reason: he was allegedly discriminated against and terminated by The Ivy for being HIV-positive.

Martinez worked at The Ivy for five months as a busser. During his stint at the restaurant, on December 2010, he was diagnosed with HIV. He took medication after a month, but the drugs’ strong side effects forced him to stay home for a day. However, The Ivy management told him not to return to work for the remainder of the week.

His doctor promptly requested The Ivy to facilitate Martinez’s request on work schedule change. However, the restaurant management denied Martinez accommodations. He was terminated immediately.

Martinez is yet another victim of discrimination for being HIV-positive. This also shows that employment discrimination on the basis of medical condition is not new in the society. A lot of cases concerning people with HIV or AIDS have been brought up to people’s consciousness ever since the disease was made known to the world in the 1980s.

Common Issues that Happen in the Workplace

A person’s lifetime is mostly spent on work. For the first-time employee, the fact of being employed is a fun way to gather work experience, wherein he or she gets to deal with quality-oriented tasks and with people around him or her.

Along the way, he or she may experience competition, wherein the possibility of getting promoted or earning a salary increase hangs in the balance. With good attitude and working experience, the person may be well on his or her way to achieve a good standing in the company. This, in turn, can create a decent working environment for all people in the workplace.

Workplace issues

However, working on a job, especially in the corporate setting, is not without its issues. Poor management of most employment aspects, such as hiring, termination, and allocation of wages may lead to unforeseen incidents.

Working relationships may get out of hand because of this. For instance, the professional relationship between the employer and the employee may become affected, especially if the former takes advantage or does something wrong to the latter. Also, working relationships between co-workers may become affected, wherein gossip and personal issues may decrease the employee’s ability to perform well.

Here are some issues that are common inside the workplace:

·         Harassment – Harassing someone can come in many forms. It could be done to inflict physical harm, as in physical harassment. It could also be done through verbal communication which could hurt the feelings of the person; as in verbal harassment. Display of actions or materials of sexual nature, or sexual favors in exchange for employment benefits, constitute sexual harassment.

·         Discrimination – Either it is done in an act or a spoken word, employment discrimination has been one of the growing problems in U.S. Biases in all the aspects of employment, including hiring, allocation of tasks, distribution of compensation, and termination, constitute discrimination. It usually involves jokes, comments, gestures and slurs that are distasteful to the protective classes, including physical or mental disability, age, race, sex, and nation of origin.

There are other workplace issues that are usually forms of misconduct, such as unfair wage allocation, acts of retaliation from the employer, and wrongful termination. Such issues must be dealt with accordingly by the victim through the help of an employment law attorney.