Workplace Taboo Part IV – Race and Ethnicity

The mere mentioning of a name that implies ethnicity can prompt stereotypical responses. A classic experiment reported in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology sent email messages to landlords advertising apartment vacancies in Los Angeles County over a ten-week period. Names that implied Arabic, African American, or White ethnicity were attached randomly to these messages and not surprisingly the “White” names received significantly more responses. We just passed a grim anniversary of the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington. Among the patriotic memorials were caustic anti-Muslim postings on social media. Hopefully, there is guidance to prevent this type of open discrimination in your company, but unless your workforce is composed of programmable automatons you must face the probability that underneath the calm is fear, unrest, and prejudice.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination “… in hiring, promotion, discharge, pay, fringe benefits, job training, classification, referral, and other aspects of employment, on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin.” This law is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and for Federal contractors Executive Order 11246 protects the same classes enforceable by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP). A quick trip to the Department of Labor website can give a quick glimpse into what is illegal and why, but knowing the “Thou shalt not” rules doesn’t instruct how to prevent it. Following one of the tenets of Benjamin Franklin, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Inoculating the workforce through properly screening new hires, publishing and promoting company policies, and ongoing sensitivity training is preferable to fixing problems later.

Much has been said about inadequacies of behavioral interviewing in providing adequate information to decide between candidates for a job. Situational interview questions that use the “… tell me about a time… “ scenario of observed ethnic bias and what was done can go a long way toward seeing a personal bias that needs to be addressed. Ask the question, engage crap filters, and decide if the first response was personal or just what they thought you wanted to hear. Interviewer training is the best way to keep the technically qualified candidates in the hiring cycle and eliminate those that would keep you in court or answering OFCCP discrepancy findings.

Mind control is not possible or even desirable, but outcomes evaluation is mandatory. You cannot tell an employee how to think, but you can definitely accept a zero tolerance position on outward manifestations of bias. Feedback on performance and contributions to the team effort can be rewarded and negative actions corrected privately on a one-on-one situation. We need to also realize that by encouraging an open culture of cooperation there will be slips of the tongue by repeating jokes heard on late-night television that are inappropriate for the workplace. Not every slip is an indication of a racist or other bias, but creating a policy that promotes tolerance can let employees know that it is unacceptable in speech or emails. Helping them to stay out of hot water is in the company’s best interest.

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