Such preconceptions mold the employers’ expectations for workers
before they begin employment, and extend to strategic decisions with
long-term impact (which individuals are suited for which positions,
assumptions about skill sets and intelligence, who to train further).
Maldonado (2009) set out to interview “forty employers from twenty-
six farm operations and firms (packers/shippers, equipment and input
suppliers, warehouses) representing the various sizes and types of
agricultural operations in Washington” to gather data on Anglo/Latino
relations in such settings. Of the 40 employers interviewed, 28 were
Anglo, and each described without hesitation a division of labor based on
race. Employers sometimes reacted with irritation or direct anger when
asked about race or ethnicity; all had a set of arguments to rationalize or
neutralize the inherent racism in their employment practices. Here is one
example of an employer who has so naturalized racism in his view of the
workplace that he doesn’t hesitate to provide answers that are clearly
illogical:
[T]he workers are one hundred percent Hispanic ... [O]n all the
ranches that I run ... we have no Caucasian people at all ... And the
reason being is that we don’t get anybody applying for it. It’s mostly
been just Hispanic people were applying. (Interviewer: How do you
think it became that way?) Supply and demand, you know. Basic
economics.
(ibid.: 1024)The role of language in the racialization process comes out in an almost
matter-of-fact way in another interview with an employer who rejects the
necessity of talking about ethnicity or race at all:
I, it just [laughs] I could, I could go into a whole soapbox in my
opinion ... Race, race is an issue in this country mainly because those
populations want to keep it an issue in this country. When you really
get to the hiring and, and firing and who’s on your team type situation
... it’s based, as far as I’m concerned, on performance. I don’t care if
you’re from Mars; if you can do the job and you can communicate
with me ... and do it effectively, hey, you’re hired.
(ibid.: 1023)