The impact of racial discrimination in the workplace is vast and continuous, despite legal protections. Even workers who do get hired find that it can be far harder to keep those jobs.
Some have even gone so far as to say that African-American workers must be “twice as good: twice as smart, twice as dependable, twice as talented.”
That’s clearly an unfair situation. If an African-American worker has to be twice as good as a white worker just to keep a job, there are some fundamental problems with the way that the workplace runs.
However, experts claim that African-American workers get more scrutiny from their supervisors. They are held to higher standards and bosses are less likely to overlook mistakes. This can make their performance reviews appear worse than those of white workers who did the exact same jobs. It could even lead to an African-American worker getting fired for a small mistake or error that would have been ignored for a white worker.
The problem is that this causes a “feedback loop.” When workers get worse reviews, they end up with lower wages. They may also lose their jobs. They’re forced to start over, costing them experience. This makes them less attractive employees. When they finally get hired again, citing that history, their supervisors give them extra scrutiny and have less grace if mistakes are made. And the whole cycle starts over again.
Are you a worker in California who has run into this type of discrimination? If so, it is critical for you to understand all of your legal rights.