Racial Inequality In The Workplace

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“Inequality at work is the existence of unequal opportunities and any form of bias or discrimination that takes place in a work environment. It is allowed and promoted by the workplace authority.” (Acker, 2006) Inequality will bring drawbacks to the workplaces such as lower the productivity and inferior performances of the workers, this will result in negative outcomes of the whole business. There are several forms of inequality at work: gender, social class and race (Undurraga, 2014). In the workplace, a hierarchy is usually existed (Hyman, 1979). Employees who have a higher position such as managers are paid higher salaries and have more prestige and authority than the employees who have a lower position (Cowherd, 1992). “ Management means …show more content…

“Racial inequality is a disparity in opportunity and treatment that occurs as a result of someone's race.” (Berkowitz, 1966) There are several surveys asked about the discrimination’s experiences at work of African Americans and other racial minorities. For example, “One of the survey found that more than one-third of blacks and nearly 20% of Hispanics and Asians reported that they had personally been passed over for a job or promotion because of their race or ethnicity.”(Schiller, 2004) Furthermore, in the social hierarchy, the frequency of racial discrimination does not eliminate: middle-class blacks are also seen as working-class (Feagin& Sikes, 1994). For the job types, racial minorities usually focus on those jobs with lower levels of authority and stability and fewer chances for their advanced studies (Parcel& Mueller, 1983). Likewise, there are factors such as social networks and motivation that produce racial inequality at work (Acker, 2006). For the wage difference, there is research that found that “whites were offered wages that were on average 15 cents/hour higher than their equally qualified black test partners.” (Acker, 2006) Racial inequality will bring disadvantages to the labour market as it will diminish the effort and performance (Ogbu,

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