Racism at work
Dec 7 2008 15:58
I've been at work for about 6 weeks and one of my colleagues has started using more and more racist language and making racists comments; I have a feeling he was be careful with what he said for the first few weeks I was there. The boss and the other workers either turn a blind eye to what he's saying or seem to agree with it. Being white it's not really a matter of discrimination, I'm just disgusted by the things he's been saying.
I'm not entirely sure what to do about it; I'm 17 and only work Saturdays where as the person in question is in his mid-20's works all week and, from what I can gather, is supporting a family on his wage, if I make it a problem it'll be me who has to leave and I wouldn't want to do anything that might cut the income of his family, after all his girlfriend and son haven't done anything wrong.
Any ideas how I can tackle this?
Dec 9 2008 11:03
#2
EDIT: Rob Ray's better at this. Coulda done with this advice in a fulltime job I had a few years ago where I had to combat a Nazi sympathetic black metaller couple, one of whom was my fuckin supervisor.
Dec 7 2008 16:44
#3
His comments seem very malicious, last week he expressed a hatred for the whole Asian community. He seems to tone it down when 'new' or different people are in, however, so he might think that I'm comfortable with it.
Getting 'support' from my colleagues might be difficult as it's a really small shop, last week there were only 2 other people in and they were laughing along with him but I'm not sure if they were just humouring him. I'll probably just have to gauge how they feel and work out whether it's worth calling him out on it.
The news paper idea is something I wouldn't of thought of, I might just give that a go before I try anything else, thanks.
Dec 7 2008 18:34
#4
All of your co-workers white? So is this directed at ethnic minority colleague? Or is it just talking shit around the white people?
Dec 7 2008 19:21
#5
They're all white, it's just him talking about Asians in general, or Asians he's come into contact with.
Dec 8 2008 01:13
#6
There was a good thread on this previously. How you wish to play this depends on many factors, but the important point to consider is that your priority is to isolate him, if you can do that by ridiculing his comments in front of your co-workers at the time - great. If hes coming out with crap and others are either inagreement or apathetic its a bit more tricky, but probably just as important that you make it known you dont agree with.
Sometimes ribbing in the way co-workers do is really effective, dont worry about being PC as long as class lines are drawn. I remember I used to work with this lass and she had to deal with a racist customer and she was dating an asian lad who worked the same department, and she couldnt stomach the crap he was coming out with everytime she served him. She asked me about it, and I said she should wait till he said something racist, she should say "yeah they might be x, but at least their not racist cunts" after she said that to him he never came back apparently.
Going through management is a huge no-no, or at the very last resort.
Dec 8 2008 18:59
#7
october_lost wrote:
yeah they might be x, but at least their not racist cunts
That's a brilliant line!
I'm not sure I'll be able to ignore him if he carries on with it much longer so I'll probably take your advice and try to dig away at him whenever he says anything.
Dec 18 2008 19:22
#8
At my last job I had a similar problem. One of the guys in the construction company I was working for kept going off about how we should round up all the immigrants and deport them, with a lot of anti-mexican racism thrown in there. He was a bit of a disturbed guy. I did a few things. A lot of American humor is race jokes, so if particular comments were just sorta off-color jokes, then I didn't take any notice of them. But when he made clearly racist comments or told clearly racist stories, I'd usually just role my eyes and smile. Eventually the atmosphere turned around enough that when dude told racist stories, the joke was "Oh there's dude, telling his racist stories again, and everyone would laugh at him." Since it is an all white workplace, and he's not obviously shitting on other workers there, I think it works best if you can work with humor. Guy tells story and you laugh and say, "Oh you and your racist stories". It's been my experience that when people say something at a job site (specifically other workers), nobody wants a fight, because everyone works together all day long. So if thing just float out there, it can seem like everyone agrees with them. If you were to be like "What the fuck man, you're a racist bastard," it might isolate you as easily as him--again... depends on all sorts of things, and your reading of your co-workers. Anyway, one way to counter this is to just throw out other things. I started telling stories about friends I had who had gotten in fights with nazis and racists. Everyone likes fight stories and it puts out in the workplace other kinds of ideas. He'd have to be a real ideological racist to argue with them--and then it would probably isolate him more than you. The other thing I did was try to speak a lot of Spanish to the mexicans on the jobsite, and get some of the other white guys into trying to learn a few words of Spanish. I can't think of any situation in my experience where management should have anything to do with it though. A lot of it is about the social networks at the workplace. If you are isolated to begin with, it will be very hard to have any influence on the workplace culture. If you can relate to the other workers just in a general way, about completely different things, then you will have more influence on the atmosphere at work. Anyway. Good luck with that.
Dec 18 2008 21:24
#9
I have a similar scenario at my school. Although, I can tell the kids there say things like nigger and kike in a humorous manner (humorous to them). Admittedly, I have a lot of dumbass friends who can be placed in this unfortunate category. I never say anything, I don't know if that makes me a coward, I hope not. Even if I did say something, in a serious tone, then I'm sure it wouldn't stop them, I would probably just be ostracized from their ridiculous little clique. I do, more or less, the same thing. Just smile and shake it off, forgive and forget. I can honestly say though that if I ever heard someone say something malicious then I would probably just beat their fucking face into the floor tiles (assuming there's floor tiles). 
Dec 29 2008 15:25
#10
Bisc, there is a difference between racism and using "racist language" for humorous purposes, i.e. joking around with your mates. Also, don't beat anyone's face into the floor tiles unless they're threatening to put your head in a fridge.
Dec 30 2008 12:53
#11
Yeah, Bisc, it doesn't sound like things at your school are that bad to be honest.. at my old school, me and my friends used to make racist jokes with each other. we were a very ethnically mixed group of friends and the jokes were aimed at each other (I'm originally from Israel so I got called a money-lending Jew, black guys were called fried chicken eating thieves, Asians were shop owners awaiting to be married off etc). We also used to have black vs. white football matches (with Asians floating according to which side needed more players)..
the point is that sometimes racist jokes can be used as a way for people of different ethnic groups to show how little antagonism there is between them, using taboo language to make fun of the people who make actual racist comments. There's a lot between making an actual racist comment and just taking the piss with your mates..
Dec 30 2008 15:03
#12
There, you heard it from a j00. And I'm a terrorist.
Dec 30 2008 17:15
#13
The advice here is good. I'd add one thing: you shouldn't ignore it. What tends to happen is that ignoring it means that it tends to spread since people with any latent racist iclinations gauge the situation and see that it is "acceptable" to express such ideas since "nobody objects". In reality, some of your colleagues may object as much as you do but don't know what to see. You should also discretely try to see which ones are likely to support you and encourage them to do so. They need to know that, if you confront the other person, even in a "gentle way" (such as poking fun), their moral support can make a difference, for you and for the collective atmosphere.
That said, you have to carefully consider how to turn people around since some people are assholes and, when pushed or confronted in any way, can turn on you or escalate tension in an attempt to get you to drop it.
As mentioned before, there are other ways to deal with it, but these should be avoided like the plague unless the situation gets out of control or escalates. I know this is not your situation, but generally speaking, if other people at your workplace were being harrassed constantly by racists and it can't be handled, this may have to be considered as a last resort. (Here I mean things like asking your management to adopt guidelines at work, or presenting a proposal of these guidelines and then trying to enforce them - but that's better done through a group of workers than management if possible.)
The same goes for any type of discriminatory behaviour at work. Sexists, homophobes and religious zealots are just as big pains in the ass and need some confronting when they bring harrassment into the workplace.
Dec 30 2008 22:41
#14
I experience this quite a lot. I have been on a few 'back to work' schemes on New Deal and quite a lot of the people I come into contact with there tend to be quite racist and xenophobic.
When I get to know them a little better I try to get my point across. If I am out numbered I will just keep quite.
Have had some success trying to explain to them that racism is just a way to divide and control us. And that the real people I am angry with are those in power.
Other times I will just mock them. If someone says something like 'I hate Muslims' I will just say 'Oh really, who do you hate more, Sunni or Shia Muslims?' Or 'Did you read that in the Sun?'
Dec 31 2008 02:27
#15
admin note - I just deleted a load of off topic comments. Don't start big off topic silly conversations on serious threads outside of libcommunity
Dec 31 2008 15:21
#16
I had a little problem with this with a guy from my work not to long ago.
I confronted him in a few ways, firstly, by calling him up on his shit. He was having a go at 'Asians', because he 'didn't trust them'.
It didn't really make sense, but I asked anyway, and he didn't really have an answer.
And I explained to him how that divides us as a class, and the general issues associated with it.
I also raised the point that his distrust was blatant hypocrisy, considering he himself was thinking of nicking a phone he'd found, despite someone coming up and asking where it was.
And then, we laughed about. He hasn't made a racist comment, at least to me, since.
Though, he is in high school in the city, and that tends to be ripe with chauvinism and racism.
It's also an all boys school. Poor kid.
Jan 7 2009 20:02
#17
Thanks for all the sound advice, I haven't been in work for a fortnight but I'll see how things go when I get back and let you know how I get on 
Apr 14 2009 08:05
#18
My Friend had a similar experience at British Airways. Their Manager Julia Giles used to call him 'Boy' and regularly tell him that the company had 'dragged him of the street' and wouldn't he be better of on the street mugging and stabbing people. He went to Unite the trade union for help and found that the area full time officer, Chris Jones was even more racist then his manager.
he took BA to an employment tribunal. They hired a top team of solicitors while his Union appointed solicitor Linda Stuart just could not be asked to do any work. When the trial started his solicitor took a mystery trip to Australia curtsy of British Airways and so she was not available to direct the Barrister.
In the end the Tribunal decided that the terms used against him where part of his Manager Tony Funnells every day language and so it was acceptable.
It sound harsh but experience suggests their is nothing you can do about racism in modern UK. Put up with it as long as you can.
Good Luck
Apr 14 2009 08:36
#19
That all sounds like nonsense to me, John.
Apr 15 2009 06:43
#20
John, Industrial Tribunals are not the sole means of challenging racism at work, your scenario is difficult because I have never in my experienced challenged and won a dispute against a racist section of the management. There are countless cases of racist bullying actually winning court settlements, Im just not sure thats where we want them to be resolved.
A good example of the actions we want are of the building workers who walked off the site en mass last year because they were aggrieved that some of their number were being racially abused. Actions like that send a clear message to management, where as legal disputes are weighted in the employers favour.
Apr 15 2009 12:42
#21
Ed wrote:
That all sounds like nonsense to me, John.
A friend of mine is actually the Unite fulltimer for one of London's major airports, and my cousin is a Unite rep for BA groundcrew at Gatwick, both of them are mixed race so I'll see what they say...
Apr 15 2009 20:29
#22
I wouldn't bother - that post is clearly bollocks.
Apr 15 2009 21:56
#23
Steven. wrote:
I wouldn't bother - that post is clearly bollocks.
Yeah, I wasn't going to ask them about it, just see if he came back advising me to, obviously not.
Apr 16 2009 19:01
#24
I use the divide and rule example and how capitalists, state and the status quo have always tried to split the working class.etc
May 29 2009 17:50
#25
I was just sacked and a work mate had just left from my company because i wanted to put in a complaint about a colleuge who made a racist remark, i use to work for a bus company called imperial buses in romford essex, i asked for a complaint form on monday and was sacked on friday, they said they have being getting complaints about me, but if so why didn't they let me know this before hand and why just bring it up when i decide to make an official complaint i was not told of any complaints before but all of a sudden i have a big list of things that i've done, i think its all bull and imperial busses is full of it.
May 29 2009 18:16
#26
hey ruthless, i'm not an expert on employment law, but from what you've said the company's actions sound dodgy. and even if they're legal, they ain't right.
my understanding is that to dismiss someone without warning it needs to be gross misconduct, would the complaints against you amount to that? did they have any evidence, or just accusations? had you previously had any prior verbal or written warnings?
In terms of what you can do about it, do you have any friends amongst those still working there? how do they feel about the way you've been treated?
Lots of questions i know, but it's hard to advise without asking them. If you're in Romford, your nearest decent group is probably North & East London Solidarity Federation - they have members who are very knowledgeable in this kind of stuff and should be able to give you some advice and possibly practical support. They can be contacted at:
North & East London SolFed
PO Box 1681, London N8 7LE
Tel; 07984675281
E-mail; nelsf(at)solfed(dot)org(dot)uk
Feel free to ask for advice on these boards too - the organise forum is probably the best place.
How is he making the comments, is it thoughtless use of language or malicious? Have you tried talking to him on his own about it? What sort of personality type is he? Are you bigger than him? How have other people been reacting?
Just trying to gauge whether you can usefully take him to one side and explain that the language he’s using is making you uncomfortable, or whether you’d need to build support among his co-workers and then have it out with him on the shop floor.
On a less confrontational side, it can be useful to pick up a newspaper in breaks and pick things out of it which you can use to start a debate – generally someone with racist viewpoints won’t out-and-out intervene and prefers to make snide comments to see how far they can push it, which’d give you a fairly free reign to push a better angle than they’ve got with your colleagues.