Anonymous commenter, http://www.antimoon.com/, December 18,
2005The Nutshell
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act was designed (in part) to protect workers
from discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sex,
age and other protected categories, or traits directly linked to those
categories. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
provides directives on national origin discrimination with multiple
examples of what does, and does not constitute discriminatory behavior
(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2002).
While employers will often go to great lengths to cloak discrimination,
sometimes there is direct evidence as in the case of Sergio Fonseca, a
native of Guatemala and a native speaker of English, who sued his
employer for discrimination on the basis of national origin. In 2004, the
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit found Fonseca’s case had
merit, in part because of evidence like this:
Fonseca went to tell [his supervisor] Peterson about a problem with
the new computer system. Peterson was familiar with the problem,
and Fonseca spoke clearly, but Peterson pretended not to understand
Fonseca. Fonseca repeated himself more than once while Peterson
laughed at him and mocked his accent and repetition.
(Fonseca v. Sysco 2004)More often employers who are actually guilty of discriminatory practices
will try to prove to the court that they had a legal and reasonable
motivation for their actions. This is where the courts become complicit.
The Civil Rights Act
With the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (Pub. L. 88-352, 78 Stat.
241), some types of discrimination in the workplace have been illegal
under Title VII. In broad terms, Title VII makes it illegal to deny a person
employment, promotion or workplace advantages (benefits, use of
facilities). The scope of the law is limited to protected categories (also
referred to as classes) which are: race, color, national origin, sex, or