Workers still face racial harassment in US |
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With Barak Obama emerging as a leading candidate for American president this time, it may not be unnatural for one to assume that the attitude towards people of African American heritage in the United States has changed for the better. But unfortunately, the treatment meted out to black employees in the workplace tells a different story which is far from encouraging. Harassment on racial grounds is still widely prevalent in factories and offices throughout America and the tools of intimidation include racist graffiti, Klu Klux Klan propaganda etc. David Grinberg, a spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), expressed shock at such continuing racial harassment and said that such occurrences in the workplace, more than 40 years after the enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was really deplorable. According to a survey conducted by the EEOC, cases of racial harassment have recorded a steep rise since the ‘90s and reached an all-time high of 6977 in 2007. It has been observed that nine out of every ten racial harassment charges are filed by blacks. Between fiscal 2000 and 2007, 51,000 racial harassment charges were lodged with the EEOC, already exceeding the number of charges leveled during the entire 1990s. Racial harassment payouts often make screaming headlines. Lockheed Martin Corp. recently settled a case and paid $2.5 million to a black electrician who complained of daily racial harassment. He was threatened with lynching and once told that the United States would be a better country if the South had won. There are many more such cases that go unreported because of smaller monetary penalties. In a lawsuit last year involving AK Steel, workers had alleged that they were subjected to Nazi symbols, nooses, KKK videos, and graffiti with messages to murder blacks. In January this year, the EEOC settled the suit against the company for $600,000. So the United States might have traveled some way to racial harmony, but the journey still seems far from over. Posted by subhasis on Wednesday Jan 16 reply Comments |
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