Overt Discrimination In The Workplace

In today’s workplace, African Americans continue to be subjected to overt discrimination. This can take the form of ethnic jokes, racial slurs and exclusionary behaviors by Euro-American co-workers and managers. Even more disturbing is the verbal abuse, calculated mistreatment and even physical threats experienced by some African Americans while on the job. African Americans have also faced overt acts such as being reassigned to lower level projects, not receiving a promotion even though they were equally qualified and receiving less wages than other employees, even less qualified new hires. The discrimination can be so pervasive that African Americans feel uneasy and threatened, demotivated and disrespected, eventually feeling forced to leave to search for other employment.

However, unconscious bias can lead to far subtler, but highly crippling, form of discrimination. It may be the factor in African Americans not being hired, being overlooked for a promotion or becoming the first employees to be terminated in a workforce reduction without any indication that the decision was based on a person’s skin color or ethnic-sounding name.

Coping may explicitly equate to survival, forcing an African American to put their head down, work hard and hope they continue to receive a paycheck. Some may believe this will ultimately pay off and they will gain that promotion or raise. Others may find ways to adapt, accommodate or tolerate the discrimination, such as “protective hesitation” (Carr-Ruffino, 2015, p. 274). This reflexive mechanism causes the person to deliberately hesitate before replying to or interacting with Euro-Americans. This hesitation in the workplace may be interpreted as avoidance or incompetence, further perpetuating stereotypical beliefs and