Human Resource Blog

Steps to Prevent Racial Discrimination

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There are some companies in our area that are very similar to ours. Several of those companies have recently been to court to fight off race discrimination claims. How can we protect our company from those claims?

It is very good of you to take prophylactic measures against a lawsuit, but even better that you are thinking of ways to ensure that you do not face the risk of being accused of racial discrimination by taking action to eliminate racial discrimination in your company. As you probably know, racial discrimination is strictly illegal, as are many other forms of discrimination, such as discrimination based on sexual orientation, discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, country of origin, age, and many more.

Racial discrimination is prohibited under Title VII, which is a federal document that mandates that employers do not discriminate against their employees based on superficial qualities (such as race). The organization that is in place to help prevent that racial discrimination is called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC works throughout the U.S. to help ensure that employees are not discriminated against. In the event that there is racial discrimination, the EEOC is the body that will protect the employees and help to prosecute the discriminating employer.

Many of the racial discrimination lawsuits that are currently in court have to do with racial harassment. In order to ensure that your company does not get hit with a racial harassment lawsuit, make sure that you communicate with your employees and your leadership team what racial harassment is. Basically, the following examples are common cases where racial harassment is harmful:

When employees make racial slurs, epithets, stereotype a minority, threat or have hostile actions towards a person of a particular minority or towards or about a minority in general.

When employees create graphic or written documents that show hostility towards a race and post those documents around the workplace. Often, such documents are posted in the rest rooms, so make sure that you check those regularly to avoid a lawsuit.