Racism Cases example essay topic

Racism has always been a major issue in the workplace. Some is just rude comments made in ears distance of others; some are comments or gestures made toward an individual. Catching it early or preventing it from ever happening is hard to do, but it is possible. According to Aaron Bernstein, "there are on average of 9,000 cases of racism filed since 1990". (par 5).

And in the year of 2002 there were 29,910 reported cases (EEOC). With modern day work groups this seems like an awfully high amount. How we control the business area and management can dramatically cut back on these numbers. Active polices and procedures should be a required step in fighting racism.

Five ways to do this are stated by Eugenie Houston in "Combat racism in your work place" The ways to ensure your policies and procedures send a clear equality message is to; 1) Send a clear message that racism will not be tolerated in the workplace, and make an open commitment to challenging racism. 2) Make sure your equal opportunities statement includes an anti-racism element. 3) Make an action plan which defines your originations key strategies to combat racism 4) Implement a monitoring process to evaluate the effectiveness of your anti-racism activities and strategies. 5) Implement strategies to encourage the involvement of Black and minority ethnic employees in workplace structures and activities.

(2) By following simple guidelines like these it would take a lot of stress out of the work area by simply not allowing racist behavior to exist in the work group. Also as a workgroup you should embrace the diversity in the group. Have events, such as different ethnic foods in the lunchroom, ethnic music, or even staff briefings. Racism seems to be one of the biggest issues in the workforce today, yet it is also one of the easiest ones to deal with and eliminate. A more difficult area to deal with is ageism. For the most part people believe that ageism cases deal with the younger group being excluded due to there age, but it is really the other way around.

With a lagging economy and an aging workforce have been prime factors in a record high age discrimination claims in the fiscal year of 2002. In the year ending Sept. 30, cases of ageism peaked at its greatest yet of 19,921 cases. (Mille, par 6) Many companies have begun to set up for this situation, where some are appealing to the older group of workers to help train and mold the younger generation of workers. Others are using the younger generation to help the older workers learn quicker ways of doing things. In Mille's article Misner disagrees that an increasing presence of older workers means the companies soon will have to manage the inevitable "generation gap".

Misner states "I don't see a clash on the horizon, instead I see them looking out for each other". (par 50-51) Dealing with a generation gap and ageism is a little more difficult to figure out what to do, but if you simply apply the same rules as you do with the racism cases, you will learn that you can get past the age difference and possibly grow as a workgroup into an unstoppable team.