According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 42% of Black workers felt they faced race- or ethnicity-based unfairness in their workplace in the last five years. Recently, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) was involved in a case of blatant racism at a manufacturing plant, which not only led to a settlement, but a broader discussion of how racism influences workplace productivity and impacts the bottom line. This article explains this theory and gives strategies to prevent workplace racism.
Read more here.
Journal Prompt
- SHRM’s toolkit shows strategies for preventing workplace racism, one of which is examining current policies such as those related to harassment. What kind of company policies does your organization have for addressing harassment and discrimination in the workplace? Do you feel the policies are effective as they are written? If you do not feel they are effective, what would you do to modify those policies?
- How does your company investigate reports of racist incidents? How do you feel about the statement made in the final article, “Those seemingly small interactions that come from stereotyping and assumptions have a lasting physical and mental impact but are harder to identify and recognize, especially when workplaces exhibit institutional racism by not having policies and processes to prohibit and punish racism,” in regard to your company?