Racial Discrimination at Work......................
Posted: Wednesday, November 12, 2008
by Vikki Mungre
Statistics Published until March, 2006.
The Human Rights Commission staff dealt with
- over 43,000 inquiries by telephone
- 1,760 by letter, and
- 760 in-person visits
- 2,117 cases were completed at the Commission: Average age 12.9 months
- 143 cases were referred to the Tribunal: Average age 27.6 months
- An additional 27 cases were sent to the Tribunal after a reconsideration by the Commission of a previous decision
- Over the last few years, the Commission has received more cases than it has capacity to address resulting in a backlog of 581 cases
What do these mean in reality?
Simply put, when someone is treating you unfairly, bothering you and or threatening you because of your race, color, ancestry, ethnic background, religious beliefs, even where you were born, this amounts to Racial Harassment. Hopefully you know that there is legislation in this country to protect you Human Rights Code. Protect you at work, home or even when you are availing a service from a medical clinic, restaurant, mall, schools or hospitals.
How does Racial Harassment happen or take place?
Well, it can happen in a variety of ways, for example when somebody:
- Insults you or ridicules you because of your racial identity
- Treats you unfairly or differently based on your race, color, ethnicity
- Calls you names because of your religious beliefs, color, country of origin, etc
- Makes racial jokes all the time
- Attempts to degrade you as a person of a particular group by using cartoons, pictures
What can / should you do?
To begin with you can tell the person to stop. Keep in mind, that it is not your responsibility alone. It is equally the responsibility of employers, owners, contractors and authority figures of establishments that provide work, facilities or services to make sure that racial discrimination does not take place in their premises, offices or homes. Furthermore, you can contact the Human Rights Commission to make a complaint and contact the Police as well, in case you are in danger or being threatened.
Finally some advice from a fellow immigrant Do not accept wrong because it encourages the wrongdoer to continue with the unwanted behavior towards other people. It is the duty of each one of us, to make Canada a wonderful place to live.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)Good article, Vikki. I love it here in Canada, but as your article says, we could much more on bringing the “R” thing out in the open and confronting it head-on. I like your advice on not encouraging the wrongdoer to continue with the unwanted behavior. For many immigrants, it’s their first experience of racism (culture-shock), and many of us come from cultures that encourage “not offending anyone”, so we kind of suffer in silence.I remember my first experience and being offended because I was called “black” for the first time. I knew I had a very dark complexion, but no one had ever called me “black” before. I learned to accept being called “black” but I also learned to accept other unacceptable behaviour towards me that came with being black. It was a slow process to re-educate myself to be able to stand up and say “you can’t do that.”Thank you for the article -- and welcome to Searchwarp.
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