Discrimination in the Workplace

My dad's semi-joking response to me starting out working night-shift as a part-black guy "Oh, they always have black people work at night." got me thinking, what sorts of on-the-job discrimination is still seen as acceptable on the job, whether it be race, sex, or orientation, and what can be done to combat it?

As an Ambiguously Brown person in a mostly homogenous city/state, I kind think he was half truthing.

edited 12th Sep '13 11:11:27 PM by SmytheOrdo

I think you would be reading a bit too much into it in your specific instance. They very well might have just needed someone to work nights. In businesses where nights are less busy than days, it's easier to get training done and ease a new employee into a job.

Not sure how truthful it is, but my mother told me that I didn't want to put on weight because nobody hires fat people, even if the job is totally unrelated to their physical fitness and/or attractiveness. They think fat people are lazy and will therefore be a bad employee.

Yeah my dad still thinks everything is racist. Haha.

There is probably some truth in that but it sounds like something parents say to discourage you from putting on weight.

Like how you should allways wear clean underwear in case you get knocked down by a bus.

Well it would be pretty embarrassing if you were wearing especially soiled underwear but then again if you died then your underwear gets soiled anyways.

As for discrimination, unfortunately, it's super hard to tell at an individual level. Statistics are easy to read, individuals are not. You'll just have to become friends with a few extra people at work to get a better sense about the situation. Also be sure to befriend people of all skin colour and ethnicity, otherwise your answers will be biased (they still will be based on a person's colour but if you get a nice wide range, you get a better overall picture of whether people just simply don't like each other or there's racism/discrimination going on).

edited 18th Sep '13 12:11:29 PM by ohsointocats