Cultural discrimination, from race to ethnicity pay gap: we need action, not lip service

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Race-based discrimination refers to behaviours or practices that result in avoidable and unfair inequalities across groups in society based on race, ethnicity, culture or religion.

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Race discrimination in the workplace necessitate a deeper consideration about the nature, scale and human impact of racist bullying and harassment within an organization.

There are so many different types of race discrimination.

Jokes, ‘banter, particularly in terms of accent and the pronunciation of names, customers refusing service from ethnic minority employees, exclusion from social events and racism from colleagues outside the workplace, including work-organised social events and informal gatherings. These are just a few of the innumerable form of discrimination that many ethnic minority workers had experienced.

When I started thinking about this issue I thought it was unbelievable that it could still represent a problem in the workplace. Actually, racial discrimination is an unceasingly growing issue. Then I realized how many times I heard the expression “I’m not being racist, but …’. I think that beyond that ‘but’ is essentially hided the truly heart of the problem, because usually it is followed by an imminent exclamation of something that is indeed racist.

Nevertheless, this issue embodies a “hidden” downside as well. When we talk about ‘race discrimination’ we need to consider a related problem, known as ethnicity pay gap. This is nothing new across the UK, especially in London. A report from the Equality and Human Rights Commission stated that “broadly speaking, in the period 1993-2014, there has been very little narrowing of ethnic pay gaps and for some groups they have actually increased, particularly among men”.

Practices to overcome this eradicate issue have been promoted through the years. These might include easy-to-follow steps: encourage open communication among employees, establish a workplace committee focused on anti-racism projects, hire employees belonging to different ethnic groups and races and training them about specific anti-discrimination policies.

Despit this, I think that race equality must to be prioritised. I think should be a primary concern of organizations and Government as well, in order to respond better to these inequalities.

Until employers directly tackle not only unconscious bias but work-based and interpersonal discrimination, people of a multicultural background will not have fair job opportunities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAMC0s2lImI

References:

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/advice-and-guidance/race-discrimination

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/mar/04/employers-gender-pay-gap-race-ethnic-minority

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research-report-108-the-ethnicity-pay-gap.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/02/sadiq-khan-vows-action-over-london-public-workers-ethnicity-pay-gap

https://www.raconteur.net/hr/racial-equality-set-biggest-issue-workplace

https://www.eeoc.gov/eeoc/initiatives/e-race/caselist.cfm

https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/RaceAndRacialPrejudice.aspx

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/mandatory-pay-gap-reporting-ethnic-minoritiies-a8287796.html