Job discrimination involves making adverse employment decisions against individuals based on group membership rather than merit. It can take various forms, from intentional prejudice to unconscious bias to institutional policies that disadvantage certain groups. Discrimination is determined by whether group membership rather than individual merit was the basis for the decision, and whether it harms the targeted group. Studies show discrimination against racial minorities and women in hiring, pay, and job status even with equal qualifications and experience. The debate over how to address discrimination through affirmative action considers arguments about compensating past harms versus claims of reverse discrimination.

1. JOB DISCRIMINATION

2.  Discrimination in employment involves
adverse decisions against employees or job
applicants based on their membership in a
group that is viewed as inferior or unequal
treatment.
 It can be intentional or unintentional,
institutional or individual.

3.  To discriminate in employment is to make an
adverse decision against employees or job
applicants based on their membership in a
certain group.
 Determining whether discrimination occurs in
employment depends on three basic facts:
1. Whether there is a function of an employee’s
or job applicants membership in a certain
group, rather than individual merit.

4. 2. Whether the decision is based on the
assumption that the group is in some way
inferior and thus deserving of unequal
treatment.
3. Whether the decision in some way harms
those its aimed at.
 Job discrimination can take different forms.
Individuals can intentionally discriminate out
of personal prejudice or on the basis of
stereotypes.

5.  Individuals may discriminate because they
unthinkingly or unconsciously adopt
traditional practices or stereotypes.
 Institutions can also discriminate. Sometimes
this form of discrimination can be explicit
and intentional.

6.  When investigators sent equally qualified
young white and black men to apply for entry
level jobs in Chicago and Washington, the
results clearly showed racial discrimination
against young African American men.
 A study has shown that if you work for the
federal government, you are more likely to be
fired if you are black, regardless of your job
status, experience or education.

7.  According to government data, the median
wealth of white house hold is ten times that
of black households, $47,080 versus $4,500.
 And 29 % of African American households,
but only 9 % of all white households, are
reported as having no wealth at all. Racial
minorities bear the brunt of poverty in our
nation.
 Unemployment hits racial minorities hard
because they are often last hired and first
fired.

8.  About 40 % of working African American hold
white collar jobs up from 11 % in 1960. but
black and other minority workers still find
themselves clustered in low paying dead end
work.
 US government statistics reveal clearly the
extent to which the most desirable
occupations are dominated by whites.
 Even when women do the same work as men,
they make less money. Top female executive
earn 35 % less than male in the same
position.

9.  Although some would disagree statistics
alone do not conclusively establish
discrimination because one can always argue
that other things account for the disparities
in income and position between men and
women and between white and other races.
 The US supreme court has stated that
statistical evidence by itself does not prove
discrimination. But when widerspread
attitudes and institutional practices and
policies are taken into account,

10. they point to discrimination as the cause of
the statistical disparities.
 For example
 A recent survey shows that three out of four
whites believe that African Americans and
Hispanic Americans are more likely than
whites to prefer living on welfare, and a
majority of whites also believe that African
Americans and Hispanic Americans are more
likely to be lazy, unpatriotic and prone to
violence.

11.  Understanding the Supreme court’s evolving
position on affirmative action is important,
because the court sets the legal context in
which business operates and lets employers
know that they are and are not legally
permitted to do.
 But the decisions by themselves do not
exhaust the relevant moral issues.

12.  Indeed it is safe bet that the Supreme court’s
own decisions are influenced not just by
technical legal questions but also by how the
justices answer this moral question.
 A word about terminology: critics of
affirmative action often label it “reverse
discrimination” but this term is misleading.
 According to definition, job discrimination
involves the assumption that a certain group
is inferior and deserves unequal treatment.

13. 1. Compensatory justice demands affirmative
action programs. As groups women and
minorities have historically been
discriminated against, often viscously. Infact
we have an obligation to do something to
help repair the wrongs of the past.
Affirmative action in employment is one
sound way to do this.

14. 2. Affirmative action is necessary to permit
fairer competition. Even if young blacks and
young women today have not themselves
suffered job discrimination, black in
particular have suffered all the disadvantages
of growing up in families that have been
affected by discrimination. In our society they
have suffered from inferior schools and poor
environment.
3. Affirmative action is necessary to break the
cycle that keeps minorities and women
locked into low paying, low prestige jobs.

15. 1. Affirmative action injures white men and
violates their rights. Even moderate
affirmative action programs injure the white
men who are made to bear their brunt. Other
people design the programs who find their
career opportunities hampered.
2. Affirmative action itself violates the principle
of equality. These programs are intended to
enhance racial and sexual equality, but we
cant

16. do that by treating people unequally. If
equality is the goal, it must be the means,
too.
3. Nondiscrimination will achieve our social
goal, strong affirmative action is unnecessary.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act unequally outlaw
job discrimination and numerous employees
and job candidates have won discrimination
cases in the court.

17.  The debate over affirmative action is not the
only controversy connected with job
discrimination. Two other issues have been
the topic of recent moral, legal and political
discussion, the issue of comparable worth on
the job

18.  Advocates of comparable worth point to the
substantial statistical evidence demonstrating
that women are in more low paying jobs than
men.
 They also note the consistent relationship
between the percentage of women in an
occupation and the salary of that occupation.
 The more women dominate occupation, the
less it pays.

19.  Comparable worth advocates contend that
women have been shunted into a small
number of pink collar occupations and that a
biased and discriminatory wage system has
kept their pay below that of male occupations
requiring a comparable degree of skill,
education, responsibility and so on.
 Opponents of comparable worth insist that
women, desiring flexible schedules and less
taxing jobs, have freely chosen lower paying
occupations and thus are not entitled to any

20.  Readjustment in pay scales.
 The comparable worth issues continues to
engender legal controversy. The federal
courts have not explicitly accepted the
doctrine of comparable worth, even when
they have rendered legal decisions that see to
support it.