Racial Harassment

Employee harassment, by tormenting a fellow worker, creates a hostile and non-productive environment in any workplace. This situation must be aggressively addressed by employers and members of any workforce. Unfortunately, reports still show that the many forms of harassment still exist in the workplace today. Among these is the seemingly persistent racial harassment.

Definition

Basically, racism is a belief that one’s race is superior over the other. More often than not, the members of the supposedly “superior” race would discriminate the members of the deemed “inferior” race. Racial harassment occurs when a particular employee is being harassed or discriminated based on his or her racial identity. This form of harassment commonly occurs in a racially diverse workplace. Racial harassment may occur in many forms. First, is the use of derogatory remarks on an employee who belong to a particular race, often times based on the historical image of his or her originas. Second is the intimidation of that employee by using historically and traditionally offensive remarks against him or her. As an example, a hangman’s noose may be displayed to intimidate an African-American employee, based on the schemes of the Klu Klux Klan. Though racial harassment now occur commonly in verbal abuse, physical assaults based on one’s racial identity still exist.

Dealing with racial harassment

Though racial harassment has significantly toned down in the last few years, it is still one of the most persistent form of harassment in the workplace. In today’s society, racial harassment is in no way encouraged. With the knowledge of their rights as human beings, many employees now know how to address such situations. More and more employees professionally confront their attackers by themselves, although, of course, the proper authorities must still be alerted every time.