discrimination

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Denial of credit to an applicant, based on factors prohibited by federal credit laws. The Equal Credit Opportunity Act allows credit denials based on the applicant's credit history, such as late payments, as long as credit denial is not based on race, color, age, religion, national origin, or other factors specified by law.

Applying special treatment (generally unfavorable) to an individual solely on the basis of the person’s race, religion, sex, color, national origin, handicap, or familial status.
See federal fair housing law.


Example: Abel is accused of discrimination under the Fair Housing Laws because he refused to rent apartments to nonwhite families.

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noun

1. The act or an instance of distinguishing: differentiation, distinction, separation. See same/different/compare.
2. The ability to distinguish, especially to recognize small differences or draw fine distinctions: refinement, selectiveness, selectivity. See precise/imprecise.
3. Skill in perceiving, discriminating, or judging: acumen, astuteness, clear-sightedness, discernment, eye, keenness, nose, penetration, perceptiveness, percipience, percipiency, perspicacity, sagacity, sageness, shrewdness, wit. See ability/inability, careful/careless.

n

Definition: bias
Antonyms: acceptance, fairness, impartiality, tolerance

n

Definition: particularity in taste
Antonyms: acceptance, indifference

Originally the act of noting differences, discrimination now denotes differentiation between people on grounds such as gender, colour, sexuality, disability, or class. Discrimination in a political system can be explicit or covert. South Africa under apartheid would be a case of institutionalized exclusion of black people from public political life recognized by the state. Similar explicit exclusions are practised against women in many Middle Eastern countries. However, discrimination on grounds of ethnicity and gender can also be seen to operate at a more informal level. Levels of education, employment, political representation, percentages of those convicted of crimes, living in poverty, and so on, have been employed as measures by organizations monitoring discrimination in various societies to indicate how informal exclusions operate.

— Shirin Rai

Distinguishing or differentiating. One of the principal abilities underlying any kind of cognition. However, in moral and political philosophy, the term is often confined to the unfavourable treatment of particular groups of individuals, on prejudiced and irrelevant grounds. Confusing these two senses can lead to the view that almost any description of people is politically incorrect.

1. Prejudicial and therefore unequal treatment of a group of persons. Discrimination can apply to race or ethnic group (see racial discrimination), gender (see sexism), or age (see ageism).

2. The ability to distinguish between different levels or types of stimulation when they are presented simultaneously.

3. The ability to make precise distinctions between different stimulus-response conditions, as when a person distinguishes between a reinforced stimulus, to which a response is given, and an unreinforced stimulus, to which no response or a different response is given.

This entry includes 6 subentries:
Age
Disabled
Race
Religion
Sex
Sexual Orientation

Age

Age discrimination is what occurs when an employer uses age as a determining (and negative) factor in a job-related decision. For example, age discrimination takes place when an employer denies an applicant a job based on age. Similarly, age discrimination occurs any time an employer denies training, promotions, or any other opportunities based on age.

Many factors result in age discrimination, including lack of knowledge, ageist attitudes, and myths and stereo-types about older workers. The most common stereo-types about older workers are that older workers are less productive than younger workers; that older workers are more expensive than younger workers; that older workers are less adaptable and more rigid than younger workers; and that older people want to retire early, that they do not want to work.

The United States enacted legislation, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), in 1967 to prohibit age discrimination in employment. Three years earlier, amendments to add age to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, gender, religion and national origin) had been rejected. Several reasons have been offered for excluding age from Title VII. First, Congress worried that it lacked the information necessary to enact age discrimination legislation. Second, many legislators feared that adding a prohibition against age discrimination would overload the civil right measure and lead to its defeat. Finally, in 1964 members of Congress simply did not understand or believe the magnitude of the age discrimination problem. As a result of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, however, Congress directed the secretary of labor to "make a full and complete study of the factors which might tend to result in discrimination in employment because of age and of the consequences of such discrimination on the economy and individuals affected."

The secretary of labor's report confirmed that age discrimination in employment was a pervasive and debilitating problem, particularly insofar as hiring practices, which can result in long-term unemployment, and advised Congress that legislation was needed to address the problem.

The federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) of 1967 prohibits age discrimination in all aspects of employment including, hiring, termination, benefits, training, and promotions. As originally enacted, the ADEA protected employees aged forty to sixty-five. In 1978, Congress raised the upper age limit to 70. In 1986, Congress eliminated the upper age limit on the ADEA's protections. As a result, with very few and narrow exceptions, there is no mandatory retirement in the United States. Groups who are still subject to mandatory retirement include federal, state, and local firefighters and law enforcement personnel, air traffic controllers, and bona fide executives and high policy makers.

The ADEA applies to employers with twenty or more employees including employers in federal, state, and local governments. The ADEA also commands that labor organizations with twenty or more members may not exclude or expel members or refuse to refer members for hire based on age. Employment agencies may not fail or refuse to refer an applicant based on age. In addition, employment agencies may be covered as "employers" under the ADEA if they have the requisite twenty employees.

The United States also has fifty state laws that address age discrimination in employment. While the national statute protects individuals age forty and older, many of the state laws prohibit discrimination at any age. The majority of these laws cover employers with fewer than twenty employees. In addition, many provide broader relief than the ADEA, including allowing a victim to recover compensatory and punitive damages. Legal challenges to age discrimination in employment must commence with a timely charge filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). However, given the fact that the EEOC files suit in less than one half of one percent of the charges it receives, enforcement of the ADEA is left largely in the hands of individuals. For example, in 2001, the EEOC received 17,405 charges but only filed suit or intervened in thirty-four age discrimination lawsuits. Because of the high cost of litigating an age discrimination lawsuit—in terms of time, money, and emotion—and the increasingly higher evidentiary burdens imposed by the courts on age bias victims, much age discrimination goes unchallenged.

While the ADEA may have raised societal awareness regarding age discrimination and eliminated the most blatant forms of it, such discrimination continues to plague the U.S. workforce. One explanation is that historically, Congress, the courts, and society have viewed age discrimination as less malevolent than race or sex discrimination and have treated freedom from age discrimination as something less than a civil right. Stereotypes about age and ability persist, in part, because of society's failure to fully attack and condemn ageist policies and practices.

Bibliography

Butler, Robert N. Why Survive?: Being Old in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1975.

Eglit, Howard C. Age Discrimination. 3 vols. Colorado Springs, Colo.: Shepard's/McGraw Hill, 1994.

Gregory, Raymond F. Age Discrimination in the American Workplace: Old at a Young Age. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

Munk, Nina. "Finished at Forty." Fortune 139, no. 2 (1 February 1999): 50–66.

Palmore, Erdman B. Ageism: Negative and Positive. New York: Springer, 1990.

Platt, L. Steven, and Cathy Ventrell-Monsees. Age Discrimination Litigation. Costa Mesa, Calif.: James Publishing, 2000.

Simon, Ruth. "Too Damn Old." Money (July 1996): 118–120.

Worsnop, Richard I. "Age Discrimination: Does Federal Law Protect Older Workers' Job Rights?" CQ Researcher 7, no. 29 (1 August 1997): 675–695.

Disabled

The U.S. Congress noted when enacting the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that the country's 43 million disabled citizens have been "subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment" and politically disempowered because of "stereotypic assumptions not truly indicative" of their individual abilities "to participate in, and contribute to, society." Highly illustrative of this situation was Congress's citation of survey data which indicated that two-thirds of working age individuals with disabilities were unemployed, while two-thirds of nonworking disabled individuals wanted to work. Largely in response to this figure (census data was relatively more sanguine, reporting that "only" about half of working age disabled individuals were then unemployed), Congress promulgated Title I of the ADA in an effort to increase labor market participation among workers with disabilities.

Title I covers entities employing more than fifteen workers, prohibits their discriminating against "qualified individuals with disabilities" in all aspects of the employment relationship, and requires them to provide those individuals with "reasonable accommodations." These include making existing facilities physically accessible, job restructuring or modification, and reassignments. Accommodations which cause "undue hardship" to their putative providers are exempted from compliance, as is the hiring or retention of disabled individuals who pose a "direct threat" to public health or safety. To assert a Title I claim, disabled workers must first demonstrate that they are "qualified" individuals with disabilities. This requires workers not only to satisfy the ADA's definition of who is disabled, but also to establish the ability to "perform the essential functions" of a given job either with or without the assistance of a reasonable accommodation.

Although the determination of which accommodations are reasonable, and what job functions are essential, in any given dispute may seem at first blush the proper province for a jury, a vast majority of courts have instead deferred to employers' assertions of feasibility and essentiality, and have thus ruled as a matter of law that plaintiffs were unqualified for their positions. As a result, only some 5 percent of Title I plaintiffs prevailed in their federal trials during the period between 1992 and 1997.

As of 2002, the overall unemployment statistics of disabled workers remained essentially unchanged, while their employment rate relative to that of nondisabled workers had moderately decreased, leading some economists to assert that the ADA is actually harmful to the group it is intended to assist. Although issue can be taken with many of the assumptions underlying these analyses, including the metrics utilized, the picture painted remains dismal and should provoke concern and examination. Several factors have contributed to these negative post-ADA employment effects.

First is the unique civil rights chronicle of people with disabilities who, unlike other marginalized minority group members, were empowered by legislation prior to a general elevation of social consciousness about their circumstances and capabilities. Thus, popular opinions about people with disabilities, especially misperceptions regarding their capabilities, do not yet conform to the spirit of the ADA's legislative findings nor to the letter of assertions made by disability rights advocates.

Second, although a great deal of rhetoric has surrounded the costs of accommodations, the practical consequences of Title I have been the subject of surprisingly little research. The few empirical studies that have been conducted, however, indicate that many of the accommodation costs engendered by Title I are generally non-existent or minimal. In fact, they suggest that certain economic benefits, such as increased retention rates and concurrently reduced worker replacement costs, can make many accommodations cost effective for the providing employers.

A third factor is that, until 2000, national policymakers overlooked the impact of environmental factors exogenous to the ADA, including the availability of health care and accessibility of public transportation, on increasing disabled workers' labor market participation. Only a decade after the ADA's enactment were a series of policy initiatives passed to allow people with disabilities receiving social security disability-related benefits to earn more income without losing their cash or health benefits.

Bibliography

Americans with Disabilities Act (1990), 42 U.S.C. § 12,101 et seq.

Stein, M. A. "Empirical Implications of Title I." Iowa Law Review 85 (2000): 1671–1690.

———. "Employing People with Disabilities: Some Cautionary Thoughts for a Second Generation Civil Rights Statute." In Employment, Disability, and the Americans with Disabilities Act: Issues in Law, Public Policy, and Research. Edited by P. D. Blanck. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 51–67. (2000).

———. "Labor Markets, Rationality, and Workers with Disabilities." Berkeley Journal of Employment and Labor Law 21 (2000): 314–334.

Race

Racial discrimination, a long-standing issue in American society, has taken many forms and been "more than black and white" in terms of whom it has affected. At various times and to varying degrees, African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and other Americans of color have experienced racial discrimination, as have ethnic groups that in the past were regarded by many as a separate "race," such as Jews. The type and degree of racial discrimination have also varied in different regions of the country, although historically some of the most egregious discrimination has taken place in the American South.

Causes and Effects

Immigration has affected racial discrimination in a number of ways. In each wave of immigration, the newest groups to America's shores have often taken or been shunted into the least desirable, lowest-paying jobs. Some immigrant groups went into certain industries for cultural or social reasons, such as Chinese launderers and Jewish garment workers. For the most part, though, these new immigrants were at the mercy not only of "native" Americans but also of earlier immigrant groups. In the workplace, immigrants were often pitted against one another by employers and labor unions alike. While employers exploited them for cheap labor and sought to prevent them from becoming a united working class, organized labor unions fanned the flames of prejudice to protect their hard-won gains by limiting entrance to the crafts they represented. The oppressed immigrant groups themselves rarely remained solely victims. As they became more established in American society, they sometimes discriminated against newer groups in order to distance themselves from their own sense of "otherness." Moreover, for white European immigrants, racial discrimination served as a way to become part of white America and therefore superior to more visible minorities, especially (though not exclusively) African Americans.

Discrimination in the workplace has had the most profound and lasting impact on the groups it has affected. At the most basic level, it has limited minority groups to low-paying, menial jobs that offered no potential for advancement and were at times even hazardous. In the past, minority groups were restricted from the skilled trades and occupations, which have been more apt to provide union protection and opportunities for advancement than unskilled jobs. At the professional level, minorities have had to struggle on two fronts: first for admission to the educational programs necessary to pursue a profession such as law or medicine, and then for hiring and advancement within the profession. Even those who have succeeded in obtaining satisfying work have likely suffered from subtler forms of job discrimination, whether in lower wages, lack of advancement, or poor work environment. Women in minority groups, furthermore, have had to struggle against both racial and sexual discrimination.

Combating Discrimination

Throughout American history, African Americans and other minority groups, with and without white allies, have combated racial discrimination using a variety of tactics. These have included public protests, such as street picketing and riots; organized publicity campaigns; educational efforts; and litigation. They have also included efforts at economic self-help through voluntary organizations such as the National Urban League. For example, in New York City during the Great Depression, the League sponsored the "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work Campaign," picketing and boycotting white-owned businesses that had primarily black customers but discriminated against blacks in employment. These protests spread to other cities, and in 1937 the Supreme Court upheld the protesters' right to peacefully picket.

Political efforts to end racial discrimination were first undertaken in a serious way in 1941. The African American labor leader A. Philip Randolph threatened to organize a march on Washington to protest racial discrimination, especially in the then-booming military and World War II defense industries. In response, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, creating the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC). Although at first the FEPC's powers of enforcement were limited and therefore its accomplishments were few, it was the first step in the federal government's role in stamping out racial discrimination in the workplace. Following World War II, President Harry S. Truman issued two executive orders: one that desegregated the U.S. armed forces, and one that eliminated discrimination on the basis of race or religion in federal employment and established a Fair Employment Board as part of the Civil Service Commission. In 1955 President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued executive orders affirming antidiscrimination as a federal government policy and creating the President's Committee on Government Employment Policy to administer it. It was President John F. Kennedy, however, who used the creation of the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (which also required nondiscriminatory employment practices of government contractors) to send a message to the southern-dominated Congress as he prepared what would under President Lyndon B. Johnson become the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In 1965, a permanent Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established, with much greater powers of enforcement than its predecessors.

By the time of President Richard M. Nixon's administration, with the passage of the Equal Employment Opportunity Act in 1972, affirmative action, as the policy came to be known, evolved in theory and policy from merely hiring on an equitable basis to actively seeking minorities in order to achieve racial balance in the workplace (and in higher education). Affirmative action subsequently courted new controversy, and in 1978 the Supreme Court rejected the active seeking of hiring quotas but permitted race to be a factor in employment decisions in the landmark case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

Race and Organized Labor

Racial discrimination became an issue for organized labor long before it did for the U.S. government. Organized labor was, for much of its history, more a part of the problem than a part of the solution. Beyond the attitudes of organized workers, racial discrimination was, beginning in the nineteenth century, the established policy of many of the craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), as well as the policy of the independent railroad unions. These policies effectively restricted many blacks to menial, unskilled labor. The AFL craft unions, which also supported the anti-Oriental movement and its official manifestation, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, were motivated partly by simple racism and partly by their desire to restrict the labor supply and ensure that their services would remain in demand. Those craft unions that did admit black workers generally organized them in segregated locals. African Americans as well as nonwhite immigrants, therefore, were often used as strikebreakers by employers.

The labor organizations that seemed most committed to organizing on an inclusive, rather than exclusive, basis—the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World—unfortunately also proved to have the least staying power on the American labor scene. Not until the rise of the industrial unions, and with them the Congress of Industrial Organization (CIO), in the mid-1930s did organized labor make a serious effort to eliminate racial discrimination as an official policy. The CIO unions were not perfect either; even without official segregation in union ranks, contracts often allowed for wage discrimination, and people of color were largely kept out of leadership positions. The unions that proved to be notable exceptions to this rule, such as the United Packinghouse Workers of America, were generally leftist in orientation, making them targets for the McCarthy-era onslaught against organized labor as a source of communist subversion. Even then, by the postwar years, many industrial unions were (at least on paper) emphasizing solidarity among workers across racial lines. Unions that did not move toward equality voluntarily were increasingly forced to do so by state and federal regulations. For example, the Italian Locals of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, once evidence of the union's commitment to diversity, were by the 1960s an embarrassing source of discrimination when they refused to admit black and Puerto Rican workers. The changing demographics of the workforce eventually forced a reassessment of labor's stance on issues of race, in matters of organizing and leadership alike. In 1995 the AFL-CIO elected Linda Chavez-Thompson as its first Latina executive vice president. And the AFL-CIO's drive to organize the unorganized was increasingly conducted with a recognition and even a celebration of the diversity of the American workforce.

Yet from the beginning, organized labor had to deal with both the popular prejudices of the day and the needs of its predominantly white male constituency. For example, before the Civil War the northern working class opposed the expansion of slavery not so much out of humanitarian concern as concern over its effect on wage labor. African Americans and other minority groups saw little reason to support the craft unions that excluded them, and their role as strikebreakers created a vicious cycle. Even when unions were willing to actively organize black workers, they undercut their own effectiveness by trying to honor local (usually southern) prejudices. This is what ultimately led to the demise of the effort by the Textile Workers Union of America to organize southern workers during Operation Dixie in 1946. In the 1960s the drive to organize the J.P. Stevens textile mills (made famous by the 1979 movie Norma Rae) was complicated by the union's effort to recruit white workers without alienating black workers, who were joining out of proportion to their numbers in the industry. McCarthyism also forced many unions to moderate antiracist rhetoric for fear of being thought communist. Finally, employers would often use race as a wedge against organizing, or use worker prejudices (perceived or actual) as an excuse to delay integrating the workplace.

Minorities Organize

Despite labor's checkered history in matters of racial discrimination, minority workers struggled to carve out a place for themselves in organized labor almost from its beginnings. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, before the Civil War, African Americans formed their own labor unions in a number of trades. The best known was the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In the late twentieth century the United Farm Workers built upon a Latino self-help movement, the Community Service Organization, to end the exploitation of migrant farm workers in the American Southwest. Minorities have also formed organizations to work for equality within the structure of organized labor. Among the more radical efforts to eradicate racism in organized labor and ultimately build interracial solidarity was the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, which flourished briefly in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Although the League did not last, it helped raise general consciousness among black workers and strengthened mainstream efforts towards greater inclusiveness. The most successful organization, the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, was founded in 1972 and continues to work with both labor and civil rights organizations to achieve African American equality in organized labor, the workplace, and beyond.

Race Discrimination in History

The long history of oppression of nonwhites goes back to America's founding, beginning with the systematic destruction of Native Americans and the importation of Africans for slave labor. Although African American men practiced a variety of crafts and trades during the early decades of the republic, by the time of the Civil War, slavery had become deeply entrenched in the American South, and most were restricted to agricultural labor. Following the Civil War and Emancipation, the Reconstruction did not deliver on most of its promises to freed slaves. The sharecropping system and the black codes kept most southern blacks working in slavery-like conditions. The men were rarely able to get more than agricultural work and the women, domestic work. Also during the late nineteenth century, the American West was built in large part with the labor of immigrants from China, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines, who were paid low wages for back-breaking work. These immigrants were largely reviled by the AFL unions, which viewed them as a threat to white workers.

In the opening decades of the twentieth century black migration took many African Americans to northern cities to seek better work and better lives. In the North, these migrants found discrimination and strenuous, lowpaying jobs, for which they competed with a rising number of immigrants from various countries who also suffered discrimination and exploitation. Although during the early twentieth century a number of black business owners and professionals emerged, most African Americans remained part of the economic underclass, as did other peoples of color. Even so, for African Americans the industrial opportunities in the North were a marked improvement over conditions in the South, where industry lagged and the destruction of crops caused by the boll weevil sharply reduced the amount of agricultural work.

When the Great Depression hit, American minorities suffered disproportionately. Those who had previously been the "last hired" were now the "first fired," as whites often took over what had been "black" jobs. Drought and economic hardship, for example, pushed white farm workers off midwestern farms to compete with nonwhite migrant farm workers in the fields of California. After 1932 most black voters switched from the Republican to the Democratic Party because of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but the New Deal had a mixed record for minorities, who still suffered discrimination in obtaining federal jobs and unemployment benefits. World War II revived the economy to a degree the New Deal had not. However, the FEPC failed to eradicate racial discrimination in wartime industry. Its main problems were spotty enforcement and a failure to address the kinds of workplace discrimination that went beyond the hiring process, such as workplace segregation. At the same time, desegregation of the United States Armed Forces, the other reason Randolph threatened to march on Washington, was only accomplished after World War II.

Although the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s is primarily remembered for gaining voting rights for African Americans and ending legal segregation in the South, its role in ending workplace discrimination with the passage of Title VII should not be underestimated. Although the mainstream civil rights movement ultimately failed to tackle the economic aspects of discrimination, the failure was not for lack of interest among its leaders. Prior to his assassination in 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. had announced the formation of a "Poor Peoples' Campaign" to address economic injustices against people of all races. In fact, on the night of his assassination, he was making a public appearance in support of striking garbage workers.

Into the Twenty-First Century

Toward the end of the twentieth century, the rising tide of conservatism and complaints about political correctness threatened the gains made in eradicating discrimination. Affirmation action came increasingly under attack, both in the courts and in public opinion, with both its efficacy and its fairness questioned. Many opponents of affirmative action raised the possibility that it perpetuates the very discriminatory attitudes it was designed to eradicate, arguing that when any nonwhite employee is hired, particularly at a higher level, suspicion is aroused that he or she obtained the position unfairly through racial preferences (even if the employee's job qualifications clearly indicate otherwise). Additionally, opponents of affirmative action have argued that the system, designed to correct for past inequities of race (and gender), does not address issues of class, since many of the program's beneficiaries belong to the middle class, with all its educational and economic advantages. Proponents of affirmative action counter that affirmative action, while not eradicating racial discrimination in the workplace, has made enough of a difference in the hiring and promotion of minorities that these small losses to non-favored groups are justified. At the same time, the fact that discrimination in the workplace has not yet been eliminated has been a key argument that affirmative action is still a necessary tool to promote a more just society in an increasingly diverse America.

Bibliography

Burstein, Paul. Discrimination, Jobs and Politics: The Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity in the United States since the New Deal. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985.

Edley, Christopher, Jr. Not All Black and White: Affirmative Action, Race, and American Values. New York: Hill and Wang, 1996.

Edmondson, Munro S. "Industry and Race in the Southern United States." In Industrialisation and Race Relations: A Symposium. Edited by Guy Hunter. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.

Ferriss, Susan, and Ricardo Sandoval. The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Movement. Edited by Diana Hembree. New York: Harcourt, 1997.

Georgakas, Dan, and Marvin Surkin. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 1998. Updated edition on the Dodge Main Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM).

Honey, Michael K. Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Horowitz, Roger. "Negro and White, Unite and Fight!": A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930–90. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

Kushner, Sam. Long Road to Delano. New York: International Publishers, 1975.

Marable, Manning. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society. Boston: South End Press, 1983.

Mills, Nicolaus, ed. Debating Affirmative Action: Race, Gender, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Inclusion. New York: Dell Publishing, 1994. Covers various contemporary views.

Minchin, Timothy J. Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.

Steinberg, Stephen. Turning Back: The Retreat from Racial Justice in American Thought and Policy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2001.

Religion

Religious discrimination involves the persecution or harassment of a person because of his or her religious beliefs or practices. Throughout history, many people have been victims of religious discrimination. A primary reason that the Puritans and other groups left Europe and came to America was to escape religious persecution.

Freedom of religion—the right to believe in and practice whatever faith a person chooses as well as the right to have no religious beliefs at all—became a defining tenet of the young United States. On 15 December 1791, ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution known as the Bill of Rights became law. The first of these specifically states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise there of. …"

Several court rulings have interpreted this to mean that the government may not give special treatment or promote any religion. For example, it has been ruled unconstitutional for the government to give financial aid to religious schools and for public schools to teach religious texts, such as the Bible, or to recite prayers. However, the First Amendment was meant to protect religious groups from unfair treatment by the federal government.

It would take about 175 years for the United States to pass laws dealing with religious discrimination in the private sector, specifically labor.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 greatly expanded the rights of minorities in key areas, such as employment, education, voting, and the use of public facilities. It was intended to end discrimination in these areas based on race, color, religion, or national origin. Many consider it to be the most important U.S. law on civil rights since Reconstruction (1865–77). Like most major legislation, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 occurred as a result of great social pressure.

After World War II, minority groups, specifically African Americans, grew increasingly vocal in their demands for civil rights. Many white Americans from various walks of life also began to see the need for civil rights laws. The U.S. courts reflected these changes in attitude by protecting the civil rights of minorities in various circumstances, particularly by making it possible for African Americans to participate in some activities on an equal basis with whites.

The executive branch of government, by presidential order, followed suit in the 1940s by legally ending discrimination in the nation's military forces, in federal employment, and in government contract work. Other bills, introduced in Congress regarding employment policy, brought the issue of civil rights to the forefront of legislators' agendas. Along with this push for racial equality came demands for equal rights for all minorities, including religious minorities.

By the 1960s, the federal government, responding to intense pressure, sought to pass a comprehensive civil rights law. Although President John F. Kennedy was unable to secure passage of such a bill in Congress, a stronger version was eventually passed with the support of his successor, President Lyndon B. Johnson. After one of the longest debates in Senate history, Johnson signed the bill into law on 2 July 1964.

Despite strong support for the measure, there were also determined critics who immediately challenged the constitutionality of the law. Not only did the Supreme Court uphold the law (in the test case Heart of Atlanta Motel v. U.S.), but the law itself gave federal law enforcement agencies the power to prevent discrimination in employment, voting, and the use of public facilities.

Title VII

One section of the civil rights Act of 1964—Title VII—specifically targets discrimination based on race, sex, color, religion, and national origin in the area of employment. The Act covers nearly every aspect of employment—recruitment, hiring, wages, assignment, promotions, benefits, discipline, discharge, and layoffs. It applies to private employers of fifteen or more persons, as well as labor unions and employment agencies.

Title VII also created the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which was given the mission of enforcing the law against discrimination in the workplace. The five members of the commission, no more than three of whom may be from the same political party, serve five-year terms. They are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The EEOC began operating on 2 July 1965, one year after Title VII became law. To those who had been fired or denied promotion because of their religious beliefs or endured other forms of religious-based discrimination in the workplace, the EEOC became a valuable ally in their fight for justice.

Claiming Religious Discrimination

Once a person or group files a charge of religious discrimination to the EEOC, the commission will determine the validity of the claim. If a case is proven, a monetary benefit is often awarded to the claimant.

Companies can often avoid a charge of religious discrimination by making reasonable accommodations for the religious needs of their employees and prospective employees. Such accommodations include giving time off for the Sabbath or holy days, except in an emergency, and allowing employees who don't come to work for religious reasons to take leave without pay, or to make up the time, or to charge the time against any other leave with pay, except sick pay. However, employers may not be required to give time off to employees who work in vital health and safety occupations or to any employee whose presence is critical to the company on any given day.

Employers also cannot schedule examinations or other important activities at times that conflict with an employee's religious needs. Nor can employers insist on a dress code that interferes with a person's religious dress.

An employee whose religious practices prohibit payment of dues to a labor organization will not be required to pay the dues. However, he or she will often be required to pay an equal amount to a charitable organization.

Training programs, designed to improve employee motivation or productivity through meditation, yoga, bio-feedback, or other practices, may also conflict with the non-discriminatory provisions of Title VII of the 1964 civil rights Act. If so, employers must accommodate such employees.

Two Key Amendments to Title VII

In 1972, an amendment to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 created a loophole for employers: They would not be charged with religious discrimination if they could prove that accommodating the religious practices and beliefs of their employees would cause "undue hard-ship." An example of undue hardship would be if accommodating an employee's religious practices would require more than customary administrative costs. This might happen if an employer incurs overtime costs to replace an employee who will not work on Saturday. Undue hard-ship also may be claimed if accommodating an employee's religious practices denies another employee a job or shift preference guaranteed by the seniority system.

What constitutes undue hardship varies on a case-by-case basis. The court weighs the facts to determine whether the employer offered a reasonable accommodation or that undue hardship existed. The plaintiff will attempt to show that the hardship was not severe or that the accommodation offered was not reasonable.

Another amendment, passed in 1991, allows claimants of the civil rights Act to request a jury trial and to sue for compensatory and punitive damages. Compensatory damages cover the actual losses incurred as a result of the discriminatory act. Punitive damages are sought strictly to punish wrongdoers for their discriminatory act. Forcing a business or company to pay punitive damages is meant to discourage them from discriminating again in the future.

A Look At Eeoc Statistics

The statistics complied by the EEOC show an upward trend in the number of charges of religious discrimination. Records also show a corresponding increase in the monetary benefits awarded claimants.

In 1992, there were 1,388 claims filed charging religious-based discrimination. In 1996, there were 1,564 claims, and in 2001, the number had climbed to 2,127. In many cases, the EEOC found no "reasonable cause" for the claim. Despite that, in 1992 $1.4 million were awarded to claimants, $1.8 million in 1996, and $14.1 million in 2001. (These figures do not include monetary benefits obtained through litigation.)

The United States is one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world, and its citizens enjoy great religious liberty. Such freedom from religious discrimination, however, obviously requires vigilance to maintain.

Bibliography

Bernbach, Jeffrey M. Job Discrimination II: How to Fight—How to Win. Rev. ed. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Voir Dire Press, 1998.

Perlmutter, Philip. Legacy of Hate: A Short History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1999.

Repa, Barbara Kate. Your Rights in the Workplace. 5th ed., edited by Amy Delpo. Berkeley, Calif.: Nolo, 2000.

The United States Commission on civil rights. Religious Discrimination: A Neglected Issue. Washington, D.C.: 1980.

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Home page at http://www.eeoc.gov.

Sex

Sex discrimination refers to differential treatment based on sex. Gender, the meaning attached to being male or female, carries different connotations of value in different cultures. Traditionally in American culture a higher value has been given to whatever is defined as male. Anglo colonists brought with them the ancient English custom of coverture, by which a married woman's civil identity was "covered by" or absorbed into her husband's for virtually all purposes except crime. Therefore, all of the personal property she brought to the marriage became her husband's as well as any earnings or income thereafter. Unable to sign a legal contract, she had to be a widow in order to make a will. With voting rights initially tied to property ownership, blocking women's access to economic resources also meant denying their political rights.

The Gendering of Work and Wages and the Devaluation of Work Done in the Home

The advent of industrial capitalism in the nineteenth century brought new economic opportunities for men but closed options for women. As the gendered work that men and women performed within the household economy was transferred to mill and factory, jobs were gendered. Little value and low pay was attached to tasks usually performed by women. For minority women, sex discrimination in employment compounded racial and ethnic discrimination, relegating them to jobs at the very bottom of the economic scale. Occupational segregation and lower wages, as well as unrecognized, uncompensated labor for those doing housework, left most women economically dependent on men. As a result, the feminization of poverty long predated the twentieth century. Those women who remained in the home performed work central to the history of U.S. labor. But because the home came to be seen as a place of refuge from work, women's labor there went unacknowledged and, was never assigned monetary value. In 2002, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, the measure of the nation's total output, still did not include an estimate for the value of household work.

Although some women found new employment opportunities during the nineteenth century as secretaries, librarians, and school teachers, feminization of jobs once held by men resulted in a decline in pay and prestige. For those educated women seeking advanced training that could provide them entrée into better paying, male-dominated professions, universities served as gate keepers, barring their entry. Harvard Law School, for example, did not open its doors to female students until 1950.

Strategies for Improvement

Workers attempting to improve their position through protest and ultimately unionization found ready adherents among working-class women. Women weavers in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, who walked off work in 1824 were among the first American workers to strike against low wages and long hours. Yet for several reasons male union leaders were often reluctant to include women in organizing efforts. Men held the highly skilled jobs that carried greater leverage in the event of strikes. Women workers, who were for the most part young and single, were considered temporary members of the labor force. With marriage they were expected to return to their proper sphere, the home, where they could remain if male workers received the "family wage" unions sought. The assumption that women workers were neither interested in unionizing nor effective organizers was put to rest in the early years of the twentieth century by organizers such as Rose Schneiderman, Fannia Cohn, Pauline Newman, Clara Lemlich, and Lenora O'Reilly. Still in their teens and early twenties, these young women were successful in bringing half of all female garment work into trade unions by 1919. Nonetheless, women workers and their middle-and upper-class allies for the most part turned to government rather than unions for protection from exploitation.

The young female textile workers at Massachusetts' Lowell Mills were the first industrial workers in the nation to demand state regulation of the length of the workday. As more of the country industrialized, these demands were heeded. State legislators limited the workday to ten hours. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Supreme Court held that such statutes interfered with the right and liberty of the individual to contract his labor. Women reformers successfully argued that an exception should be made for laws limiting women's hours of labor on the basis of their physical vulnerability, especially during pregnancy. In the landmark case Muller v. Oregonbr />(1908), the Court upheld Oregon's ten-hour law for women on the basis of their role as child bearers. Yet without comparable legislation establishing a minimum wage, minimum hours legislation disadvantaged those women living at the margin of subsistence, who needed to work more hours to make a sufficient income. When minimum hours legislation was supplemented by laws preventing women from performing night work or "heavy" work, the restrictions were used to designate some better-paying skilled jobs as male. Minimum wage legislation did not follow until the New Deal.

While the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) established a minimum wage for both men and women, it too proved a mixed blessing. Many women covered by the act were paid less than men for the same jobs, while others, such as domestics, were simply not included. Efforts to equalize wages for men and women gained momentum after World War II amidst popular sentiment that the nation was indebted to the large numbers of women who flooded factories and ship yards to meet the wartime need for armaments. Passage of the Equal Pay Act did not occur until 1963, in part because the legislation acknowledged women as workers in their own right, not just as temporary earners contributing to the family economy. Even some male union leaders supporting the legislation may have done so not out of a fundamental belief in gender equity but rather because they anticipated that equal pay legislation would play upon employers' gender bias, prompting them to hire male workers at the expense of female workers.

The new statute prohibited different pay for men and women when their jobs required equal skill, effort, and responsibility and were performed under similar work conditions. However, since occupational segregation resulted in so few jobs in which men and women performed the same tasks, foes of sex discrimination sought in the 1970s to enlarge what constitutes equal skill, effort, and responsibility by advocating equal pay for jobs of "comparable worth."

Some state and local governments reevaluated state and municipal jobs in an effort to see whether nurses, for example, were performing work that represented the same level of training, stress, and difficult working conditions as that performed by sanitation workers so that pay scales for undervalued jobs, usually those held by women, could be adjusted. This form of pay equity encountered fierce opposition from those who feared that widespread reevaluation of work done by government employees could impact salaries in the private sector. Some feminists also opposed the policy of equal pay through comparable worth, arguing that the wage gap between fully employed men and women could best be closed by attacking job segregation.

An important start had been made with congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Title VII prohibited sex-as well as race-based discrimination in employment, pay, and promotion and called for the establishment of an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to monitor compliance with the law on the part of employers and labor unions. In addition, the federal government was obliged to undertake an affirmative action program that would provide equal employment opportunities to job applicants and employees. As later amended, the Civil Rights Act also barred discriminatory treatment of pregnant employees, who were often forced to resign as soon as they learned they were pregnant, thereby jeopardizing both their jobs and seniority. In 1978, an executive order amended the Civil Rights Act to set goals and a timetable for promoting women's access to jobs in construction, an industry in which electricians, plumbers, machinists, welders, and carpenters were almost 100 percent male and 100 percent white. Accompanied by additional legislation mandating equal educational opportunities, women in the 1970s had a far better chance of obtaining the specialized training that provided access to better paying blue-collar jobs as well as positions in professions traditionally monopolized by men.

Inequities also existed for women in the labor force with respect to benefits. Social Security provisions enacted in the 1930s reflected an era when many women were not in the labor force and most were presumed to be economically dependent on male wage earners who paid into Social Security. Consequently, wives meeting certain criteria upon the death of a spouse could collect small sums intended to allow them to stay at home and care for dependent children. Yet as more women moved into the workforce, it became clear that what they paid into Social Security did not entitle their spouse and children to the same benefits. The case of Weinberger v. Wisenfeld (1975) concerned a widower who, after his wife died in childbirth, was denied Social Security benefits that would allow him to stay home and care for his infant son. This case demonstrated that sex discrimination could cut both ways: when the law discounted women as workers it could result in inequity for male as well as female plaintiffs.

Sexual Harassment was a term first used in the mid-1970s. For decades working women had endured covert or explicit sexual advances from supervisors and employers, sexual innuendos, derogatory references to their sexual activities or body parts, and unwelcome "flirting" and fondling by coworkers. Meritor Savings Bank v. Mechelle Vinson (1986) was the first in a series of decisions that defined this type of sex discrimination. Feminist legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon, one of the attorneys for Vinson, who claimed to be a victim of sexual harassment, named two forms of such behavior for the Supreme Court: 1) "quid pro quo": when sexual submission to a supervisor becomes, either implicitly or explicitly, a condition for employment; and (2) "offensive working environment": when the conduct of a supervisor, coworker, or client unreasonably interferes with an individual's work or creates an intimidating and hostile workplace. In a unanimous opinion, the Court found for Vinson, declaring that the intent of Congress in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was "to strike at the entire spectrum of disparate treatment of men and women" in employment.

Later Gains and Persistent Problems

As the result of such policies and, not least, women's own determination to break down gender barriers, sex discrimination in the workplace decreased during the late twentieth century. Yet it by no means disappeared. Earnings differentials, while narrowing, especially for younger women, persisted. In 2000, full-time female workers earned 76 cents for every dollar earned by males. The difference was due to the fact that 80 percent of working women held gender-segregated positions where wages were artificially low. Women made up two-thirds of all minimum-wage workers in the United States, and as a consequence, women also make up two-thirds of poor Americans. Even in higher paying positions where equally credentialed young men and women start out with the same pay, differentials tended to increase over time for a variety of reasons. Barriers to upward mobility and higher pay sometimes came in the form of a "Glass Ceiling," which women had difficulty breaking through because of subtle but lingering gender bias. Other barriers arose from the fact that the workplace, designed originally for males, only slowly accommodated to women who usually bore the greater responsibility for care work, even in dual income families.

Major companies with highly skilled employees whom they wish to retain instituted family-friendly policies such as flexible time schedules, maternity leave, and child care facilities. But many small businesses, especially those employing less skilled workers, offered little to employees, some of whom were already working two jobs, to help offset the burden of wage work, care work, and house work. For the increasing number of women who were their families' sole breadwinner the burden was especially heavy.

At a time when women now constitute 46 percent of the labor force and 64.5 percent of all mothers with children under six work outside the home, a fundamental rethinking of both work and family are needed to minimize the gender disparities that have historically inhibited the achievement of economic parity between the sexes. Necessary too is an extension of family-friendly government policies. Passage of the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act was a start, albeit a problematic one. In the early 2000s women constituted 46 percent of the labor force and 65 percent of all mothers with children under six worked outside the home. The 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act acknowledged the need for family-friendly government policies. The statute required employers of over fifty persons to grant up to twelve weeks of unpaid leave annually to all full-time employees who had been on the payroll for a year for family or personal medical emergencies, childbirth, or adoption. However most Americans could not afford three months without income. Unlike Japan and Western European countries that allowed for longer leaves and, more important, paid leaves, the United States was the only industrialized nation that did not provide paid maternity leave.

The fight against gender discrimination faced obstacles in the late twentieth century. Beginning with the Reagan Administration in 1981, measures instituted in the 1960s and 1970s that were intended to promoted gender equity were eroded through the appointment process, cuts in funding, and other measures. The EEOC, which once had the power to institute legal proceeding against companies where a pattern of sex-based discrimination could be determined statistically, was no longer the effective monitor of the workplace Congress originally intended. The controversial welfare laws of the 1990s required benefits recipients to make the transition to employment without providing the necessary supports of a living wage, child care, and health care.

In sum, the policies of the second half of the twentieth century eroded gender barriers, lessening the impact of sex discrimination. Women made significant inroads in traditionally male professions such as engineering and law. More women owned their own businesses and earned better wages—by 2002 one in five American women earned more than her husband. Yet in a highly stratified labor market, discrimination based on sex and compounded by race and ethnicity continued, though often in subtler forms than in the past. Occupational segregation, while weakened in some areas, remained intact in others. Nurses and secretarial workers were still over 90 percent female, while the work force in the construction industry remained 98 percent male. The feminization of poverty continued. In an era when the number of female-headed households continued to rise, those penalized were not just women but their children. Gender equity in the work place remained an elusive and essential goal.

Bibliography

Baron, Ava, ed. Work Engendered: Towards a New History of American Labor. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991.

Boydston, Jeanne. Home and Work: Housework, Wages, and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

Goldin, Claudia. Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family From Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 1985.

Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

———. A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990.

———. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900–1965. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995.

Ruiz, Vicki L. From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth Century America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Salmon, Marylynn. Women and the Law of Property in Early America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.

White, Deborah. Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South. New York: Norton, 1985.

Sexual Orientation

This refers to the treatment of individuals based on their sexual orientation by other individuals and public or private institutions. People whose sexual orientation places them in minority categories, such as lesbians, homosexuals, and bisexuals, have sought legal protection from this type of discrimination. The political and legal fight against this discrimination has been the general aim of the gay rights movement, which established its presence in American society and politics with the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City.

Federal, state, and local civil rights legislation, as well as private corporate employment policy, is used to remedy this type of discrimination. In 1982, Wisconsin became the first state to legally ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in private and public sector employment. At the end of 2001, ten other states (California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Vermont), the District of Columbia, and 122 counties and cities had a similar ban in place. Public-sector employees in an additional ten states (Colorado, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Montana, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, and Washington), as well as in 106 cities and counties, have legal protection against this type of sexual discrimination. More than half of the Fortune 500 companies and 2,000 other corporate entities have policies banning discrimination based on sexual orientation.

On 28 May 1998 President William J. Clinton signed an executive order banning this type of discrimination against all civilian federal employees. This executive order affords protection to all civilians employed by all federal departments, including the Department of Defense. At the beginning of the first term of his presidency, Clinton sought to overturn the Department of Defense's policy of discharging gay and lesbian noncivilians. This action marked the first controversy of his administration, and resulted in the Department of Defense's 1993 policy that became known as "Don'T Ask, Don'T Tell." Still enforced in 2002, this policy prohibits military officers and other enlisted personnel from asking fellow noncivilians about their sexual orientation. It was implemented as an attempt to end the military's practice of discharging noncivilians from service because of their sexual orientation, but it did not end the practice. In fact, it apparently had the opposite effect: by 2001 the number of such discharges increased 73 percent from 1993, the year when the policy was implemented.

There have been other attempts at the federal level to ban this type of discrimination. First introduced in the U.S. Congress in 1994, the Employment Anti-Discrimination Act (ENDA) seeks to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation in private and public employment in the thirty-nine states that have not enacted this law. In 1996, the bill was narrowly defeated in the Senate by one vote. It was reintroduced in 2001 to the 107th Congress, but it still lacked a majority vote needed for passage. Despite the anti-discrimination bill's failure to gain passage in Congress, a 1999 Gallup poll showed that 89 percent of Americans favored banning workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Legislation protecting against discrimination based on sexual orientation has sustained scrutiny by the U.S. Supreme Court. In the early 1990s, several cities and towns in Colorado enacted such anti-discrimination laws. These laws were overturned in 1992 when Coloradans approved Amendment 2, which outlawed throughout the state any legal protection against discrimination afforded to gays and lesbians. The constitutionality of Amendment 2 was tested in the case Romer v. Evans, which came before the Supreme Court in 1995. In 1996, a majority of Supreme Court justices ruled that Amendment 2 violated the equal protection clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In 1998, however, the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to contradict its ruling when it refused to hear a challenge to Cincinnati's Issue 3. Issue 3 stated that the city could never pass any legislation remedying discrimination based on sexual orientation. Justices Stevens, Souter, and Bader Ginsburg noted that the Court's refusal to hear the case neither set new law nor precedent, and that the Court's decision was based upon uncertainty concerning Issue 3's legal scope and effect.

The issue of discrimination based on sexual orientation is a controversial one. In 2001, for example, the Maryland legislature passed a law banning such discrimination in the public and private sector. Subsequently, citizens in the state drew up a petition to subject the ban to a statewide referendum to be held the following year. By placing the ban on a referendum, the law's detractors were able to suspend its enforcement for a year until the vote on the referendum could take place. Nevertheless, despite the controversy, the movement to ban sexual discrimination continues to grow. The Human Rights Campaign Foundation reported that in 2002, 161 employers, including state and local governments, unions, colleges and universities, and private corporations, enacted for the first time policies that ban this type of discrimination.

Bibliography

D' Emilio, John, William B. Turner, and Vaid Urvashi, eds. Creating Change: Sexuality, Public Policy, and Civil Rights. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000.

State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Americans 2001. Washington, D.C.: The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 2001.

State of the Workplace for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered Americans: A Semiannual Snapshot. Washington, D.C.: The Human Rights Campaign Foundation, 2002.

—William B. Turner

This entry contains information applicable to United States law only.

In constitutional law, the grant by statute of particular privileges to a class arbitrarily designated from a sizable number of persons, where no reasonable distinction exists between the favored and disfavored classes. Federal laws, supplemented by court decisions, prohibit discrimination in such areas as employment, housing, voting rights, education, and access to public facilities. They also proscribe discrimination on the basis of race, age, sex, nationality, disability, or religion. In addition, state and local laws can prohibit discrimination in these areas and in others not covered by federal laws.

In the 1960s, in response to the civil rights movement and an increasing awareness of discrimination against minorities, several pieces of landmark legislation were signed into law. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e et seq.), the most comprehensive civil rights legislation in U.S. history, prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex, race, religion, nationality, or color. Title VII was designed to provide for parity in the use and enjoyment of public accommodations, facilities, and education as well as in federally assisted programs and employment. It further allows an injured party to bring suit and obtain damages from any individual who illegally infringes upon the party's civil rights. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (42 U.S.C.A. § 1973 et seq.) prohibits the states and their political subdivisions from imposing voting qualifications or prerequisites to voting or standards, practices, or procedures that deny or curtail the right of citizens to vote, because of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 (42 U.S.C.A. § 3601 et seq.) prohibits discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin, in connection with the sale or rental of residential housing. In 1988, Congress passed the Fair Housing Amendments Act, which extends the same protections to handicapped people.

Other important federal laws have been aimed at remedying discrimination against other groups, including older U.S. citizens and individuals with disabilities. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 (ADEA) (29 U.S.C.A. § 621 et seq.) prohibits employers with twenty or more employees from discriminating because of age against employees over age forty. Industries affecting commerce as well as state and local governments are covered by the ADEA. Disabled individuals received federal protection against discrimination with the passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (29 U.S.C.A. § 701 et seq.), which prohibits any program activity receiving federal funds from denying access to a handicapped person. In 1990, Congress enacted the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) (codified in scattered sections of 42, 29, 47 U.S.C.A.). The ADA was widely hailed as the most significant piece of civil rights legislation since the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It provides even broader protection, prohibiting discrimination against disabled individuals, in employment, public accommodations, transportation, and telecommunications.

Although discrimination on the basis of gender is included in title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a number of other federal laws also prohibit sex discrimination. The Equal Pay Act of 1963 (29 U.S.C.A. § 206 [d]) amended the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (29 U.S.C.A. §§ 201-219). It prohibits discrimination in terms of different forms of compensation for jobs with equal skill, effort, and responsibility. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000e[k]) prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of pregnancy and childbirth, in employment and benefits. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (20 U.S.C.A. §§ 1681-1686) prohibits sex discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funds, including exclusions from noncontact team sports on the basis of sex. In addition, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (15 U.S.C.A. § 1691 et seq.) prohibits discrimination in the extension of credit, on the basis of sex or marital status.

State and local laws can also protect individuals from discrimination. For example, gays and lesbians, though not yet included under federal civil rights laws, are protected in many cities by local ordinances outlawing discrimination against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation. Minnesota, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, and other states have passed such legislation — though some voters have sought to repeal it, with mixed results.

See: Affirmative Action; Age Discrimination; Colleges and Universities; Disabled Persons; Equal Employment Opportunity Commission; Gay and Lesbian Rights.

IN BRIEF: To treat some people better than others.

The restaurant owner was accused of discrimination when he refused to serve some customers.

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The minimum angular distance at which two objects on a radar screen can be seen separately. In the figure, the discrimination capability of the radar is 2°.

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For a list of words related to discrimination, see:

• Attitudes and Behavior - discrimination: different treatment for certain racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual groups

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - diskriminering, vurderingsevne, smag, evnen til at sondre, adskillelse

Nederlands (Dutch)
discriminatie, discriminerende (be) handeling, onderscheid, waarneming, onderscheidings- vermogen

Français (French)
n. - discrimination, distinction, séparation, discernement, jugement

Deutsch (German)
n. - Diskriminierung, Unterscheidung, Urteilsvermögen

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - διάκριση, διαφοροποίηση, αντιδιαστολή, μεροληψία, άνιση μεταχείριση ή αντιμετώπιση, ορθοφροσύνη

Italiano (Italian)
discriminazione

Português (Portuguese)
n. - discriminação (f)

Русский (Russian)
дискриминация

Español (Spanish)
n. - discriminación

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - diskriminering, omdöme

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
差别, 辨别力, 岐视

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 差別, 辨別力, 岐視

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 분간, 차별, 상위점

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 識別, 区別, 識別力, 差別

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) التمييز بالمعامله ( عادة بشكل سئ) لشخص عن آخر, حسن التمييز‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אפליה, הבחנה‬

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