I felt compelled to express my view on the state of minorities in the workplace- especially Hispanics.
I will agree that a lot of progress has been made in corporate America, all in part to Affirmative Action and the concerted effort by major companies to embrace diversity. Yet I feel more could and should be done.
There is plenty of evidence indicating that discrimination in the workplace still exists. In 2008, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) received over 95,000 discrimination charges, almost 34,000 of which were race related (EEOC, 2009). Discrimination, whether real or perceived, can create a lot o problems not only for the organization but also for the individuals involved.
Hispanics are the fastest growing group in the United States and will comprise 16.4% of the civilian labor force by the year 2016. Hispanics also have tremendous purchasing power..averaging a combine income of $653 billion dollars- a figure expected to reach $1.2 trillion dollars in 2012. In 197615.4% of college student enrollment was accounted for by minorities. In 2007, it inreased to 32.2%. The biggest increase amongst the minority enrollment was found in the Hispanic and Asian populations.
As the economy continued to struggle in 2009, amongst all ethnicity, African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos saw the biggest decline in jobs. Employment rate for his Hispanics was 12.1% and 14.8% for African Americans.
Although I realize that some of these facts can be attributed to Hispanics and African Americans having lower levels of schooling and jobs that require little to no experience (thus making them easily expendable), I can't help but feel race may have played a part. I am not saying every employer uses race as a determining factor whether to hire someone or not but the facts are a large portion of them do.
I found the article below to be most interesting.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3338/is_201012/ai_n56445025/?tag=content;col1
Kervis, It is unfortunate to agree on the point you make as far as discrimination is within the corporation arena today. As a Human Relations Commissioner for the state, we have recently reported that today's discrimination is subliminal and hard to prove. On a monthly basis we study data and report of disparate treatment within education, employment and accommodations within Pennsylvania. The highest area of complaints is employment for Blacks and Latinos. These cases figure into the thousands that many companies eventually have to pay in settlements.
ReplyDeleteAs far as educational levels trailing main stream Americans, I partially agree with your statement, yes there aren't enough prepared degree-ed Blacks and Latinos out there as I'd like to see.
Company leaderships in charge of ensuring they run a diverse workforce are presently merely paying lip service to their diversity efforts. They operate in manner of speaking about diversity rather than practicing diversity. Unfortunately this is to their disadvantage, because they eventually wind up losing opportunities of tapping into those markets.
It is a shame that discrimination still exists today. Fortunately, it is getting better than what it once was because of laws that protect minorities, and hopefully it will continue to improve. Businesses that continue to discriminate are hurting themselves and their potential growth. Diverse skills can be so beneficial for companies are becoming global. Innovation is also key to growth, and different viewpoints provide an even greater pool of ideas.
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