Prejudice And Racial Discrimination In The Workplace

“Prejudice is a negative attitude toward an entire category of people” (Schaefer). It is thoughts and beliefs, but not necessarily thought out actions. Although, A person’s belief system drives their actions and words. Prejudice is when you judge a person by ethnic, religious, or the culture groups he associates with, not his personality. This is seen in societies ethnophaulisms terms, ethnic slurs, used regularly by the people. In the early 1800s the term “Nigger” was used negatively against African Americans and during the Vietnam war the soldiers called all Asians a “gook.” These terms had negative beliefs against these people just because of their ethnic groups. “People learn prejudice as children before they exhibit it as adults. Therefore, prejudice is a social phenomenon, an acquired characteristic” (Schaefer). Every person has prejudices and society is the product of individuals sharing those prejudices …show more content…
Discrimination is the intentional and sometimes unintentional actions we take based off our prejudices. Many people groups face discrimination daily in our social institutions. One of the major offenders is the workforce. There are two types of discrimination people face, direct and indirect. “Direct discrimination is best defined as a situation where the intent to discriminate is clear” and “indirect discrimination may involve a situation where a ‘provision, criterion or practice’ is applied to a job that is more difficult for a certain category of workers to satisfy and as a result that group is indirectly disadvantaged” (Discrimination). Many would call this type of discrimination institutional racism. Institutional racism is embedded in the norms of an organization (Discrimination). Any type of discrimination in the workforce is unlawful, but indirect discrimination is very prevalent in today’s