STRUCTURAL DISCRIMINATION WITHIN COMPANIES AND ITS EFFECT ON EMPLOYEES

Structural Discrimination within Companies and Its Effect on Employees

Structural Discrimination within Companies and Its Effect on Employees

I chose the scenario of the Hispanic employee who filed a complaint against her employers when she was unfairly eliminated for consideration for a promotion because of the way she speaks and her distinctive accent.

I chose this particular scenario because I'm Hispanic myself and have an accent, although this particular scenario does not pertain to any of my personal experiences, I think it would be interesting to explore the cultural impact that structural discrimination has on both companies and employees. I work in a multicultural environment, but it triggers my curiosity the fact that the majority of the managerial positions are taken by white Americans, and few to none Hispanics, African Americans, or people from other races or ethnicities. (Scanlon 2008)

In his review of international treaties that prohibit discrimination, Wouter Vandenhole considers that there is no universally accepted definition of discrimination. In fact, the core human rights documents do not define discrimination at all, simply to provide non-exhaustive list of grounds on which discrimination should be prohibited. Thus, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights provides that "the law shall prohibit any discrimination and guarantee to all persons equal and effective protection against discrimination on grounds of race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other , national or social origin, property, birth or other status. " And the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights states: "The enjoyment of the rights and freedoms set forth in this Convention shall be secured without discrimination on grounds of sex, race, color, language, religion, political or otherwise, national or social origin, association with a national minority , property, birth or other status "(article 14). Does not address the question of what is discrimination in itself.

Any viable account of what discrimination is the willingness to consider it as a set of actions, practices or policies that are in some sense appropriate - in each group (perceived) social belonging to victims of discrimination. Moreover, the relevant groups should be "socially relevant" as Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen says, i.e. they should be groups that are important to the structure of social interactions across a wide range of social contexts. Therefore, groups based on race, religion and gender qualify as potential grounds for discrimination in any modern society, but the groups based on musical and culinary tastes of people do not usually qualify well. (Maykel 2008)

Discrimination against people, then, is necessarily geared towards them based on their membership in a particular social group type. But it is also necessary that discriminatory behavior by imposing some kind of inconvenience or harm to people who are addressed. In this sense, considering the historical view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education, holding that de jure racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. The court writes: "Segregation with the sanction of law... has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development ...