Mirror of Justice » Racial Segregation

Racial Discrimination, Race Relations, Ethnic Prejudice

Law Article — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 07:02:05 +0000

RACE RELATIONS, ETHNIC PREJUDICE: RACIAL DICRIMINATION, HARASSMENT, SEGRAGATION, VICTIMISATION, ABUSE(Based on author’s site www.geocities.com/rcdis)

It is not unlawful racial discrimination to subject another to racial discrimination if it is positive racial discrimination. One, without subjecting to racial discrimination, can be liable for racial discrimination in race relations, equal opportunities, employment laws.

Race relations laws are reasonably uniform ~multi-national is the authority of Article 13 EU Directive regarding race equality in respect of, e.g., social security, social protection -any form of social advantage.

Not everywhere are race relations and racial discrimination laws identical, but, broadly speaking, racial discrimination laws are similar, and, where exists effort to better race relations and achieve racial equality, protection against racial discrimination as the basis for good race relations and aspirations to racial equality, the consideration from which stem the race relations legislation as part of equal opportunities law, in seeking to reduce racial discrimination, is the same: harmonious integration of multicultural societies can only be achieved by good race relations based on racial equality -by way of the elimination of racial discrimination.

Lawful racial discrimination and unlawful racial discrimination and colour prejudice are regulated by race relations laws, e.g. the Race Relations Act 1976 under which was set up and exists the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE -the Race Relations Board) to assist ethnic minorities and help end racial discrimination and colour prejudice by promoting racial equality -now within and part of the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) which deals with also other equality issues under equal opportunities legislation.

Racial discrimination related equality generally are promoted in race relations by the non-discrimination policy expressing willingness in the interests of good race relations and intention to refrain from such discriminatory practices as would obstruct efforts to better race relations and racial equality, and, therefore, in furtherance of the desired race relations and aspired racial equality, not only is racial discrimination prohibited under the race relations legislation but the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2003 and Race Relations (Amendment) Regulations 2003 with two Orders in 2004 require public bodies to promote and other bodies to treat as part of the race relations code to practice race equality refraining from less favourable treatment by ethnic or colour prejudice or any other form of race discrimination or racist harassment or racism based abuse.

Race relations laws exist not mainly to promote racial equality by making racial discrimination a criminal offence, but to cater for failure to comply with the requirements of the Race Relations Act by dealing as a civil matter with disregard for good race relations and racial equality by way of entitling parties subjected to racial discrimination to seek through the courts or tribunals dealing with race relations proportionate remedies. Remedies for racial discrimination are not only for racial discrimination or colour prejudice in employment, nor for ethnic discrimination or race prejudice against racial or ethnic groups of people -remedies for racial discrimination exist equally e.g. for racial discrimination by a shop or a bar that subjects the individual customer (of any race or colour, including white) to less favourable treatment or by a public body or by a service industry that similarly subjects a customer to racial discrimination.

Indeed, also any individual who is not claiming for racial discrimination and is not affected by any colour prejudice or ethnic prejudice or any other kind of racial discrimination or racist harassment -nor even falls within a class under the Race Relations Act who are protected from racial discrimination, has the right in racial discrimination legislation in the interests of racial equality and good race relations to inform of any race prejudice the Commission for Racial Equality or Equal Opportunities Commission -who if given reasonable evidence that a business practices race discrimination has a duty under the Race Relations Act to investigate the alleged discriminatory practice to end any racial prejudice as well as to prevent the repetition of that race prejudice ~which it does by seeking to ensure a non-discrimination policy based race relations code of practice by that business and if not issues a race equality Non-discrimination Notice against re-occurrence of racial prejudice (that that business will be shut down if it refuses to respect racial equality and race relations laws -if racial discrimination does not cease).

Remedies for racial discrimination exist also for such situations in which one is subjected to racial prejudice by another who is not liable in race relations law and cannot be subjected to race equality legislation because is acting for someone else who neither authorised it nor knew of that racial prejudice and did not personally breach the Race Relations Act or the race relations code ~liability can also be vicarious under the Race Relations Act and then the latter bears vicarious race discrimination liability for the former’s disregard for racial equality for any loss or injury suffered as a result of race discrimination.

Racial discrimination in law is not only about the racist who claiming cultural or colour or national or ethnic supremacy with disregard for race relations advocates racism and racial hatred against ethnic refugees or immigrants not of same race inciting prejudice for colour or religion or belief. Racial Discrimination Definitions when are looked at, basically racial discrimination as prohibited by the Race Relations Act is anyone’s in any situation and in any way treating one less favourably than another on grounds of, e.g., one’s race or colour -because of race prejudice or colour prejudice…

But racial discrimination as covered by the Race Relations Act is not limited to racial discrimination on the ground of one’s race or in the form of colour prejudice ~it is equally unlawful racial discrimination if the racial discrimination is on grounds of nationality or national or ethnic origin (indeed while race equality legislation include in the Race Relations Act mainly racial discrimination related harassment -i.e. colour prejudice based harassment or race prejudice based harassment or harassment in ethnic relations [now also harassment because of nationality or citizenship prejudice], such statutory instruments as the EE (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003 also extend less favourable treatment detriment to cover e.g. religious prejudice harassment or belief discrimination based harassment -also on such grounds making unlawful bullying or abuse e.g. derogatory remarks affecting respectability).Racial Harassment can be a criminal offence -also race prejudice which is not harassment can be harassment if persistent; and racial discrimination includes the violation of one’s dignity under the Race Relations Act -including by way of name-calling, as well as the creation of an environment which is hostile or degrading or offensive to one or in which one suffers intimidation ~also after the relationship has ended and also if it humiliates affecting only self-respect (taking into account in race equality lawsuits particularly also one’s own perception of those as evidence of race prejudice).

Additionally, racial discrimination does not have to be direct racial discrimination, and one can be liable as much as for direct racial discrimination also for indirect racial discrimination -although under the Race Relations Act indirect discrimination is more difficult than direct discrimination to prove in racial discrimination lawsuits.

But what is racial discrimination has essentially to do with who can be subjected to racial discrimination -who can complain of racial prejudice, who qualify under the Race Relations Act to claim for racial discrimination.

It became necessary to define who fell into the category that under the Race Relations Act can suffer because of racial discrimination -who the racial discrimination legislation should cover and by what criteria.

Colour, race, nationality, national origin, are pretty easily definable, but not so always ‘ethnicity’ or ‘ethnic origin’ or whether ‘creed’ would qualify) and the courts have given guidelines on what constitutes an ethnic group, and the characteristics which qualify for classification for purpose of legal action for racial discrimination as a member of an ethnic group or of an ethnic origin include (Mandale -v- Dowell Lee, 1983) a historical and long shared consciousness of being distinguished by it which is alive and continues to be in memory, a tradition which is cultural and includes customs and manners socially, consciousness of ancestral descent and/or geographical origin, commonness of language or literature and/or of religion as distinct from those of such other groups that are neighbouring, or being within a larger group a minority group be it dominant or oppressed ~this, except in Northern Ireland, excluded religious prejudice as racial discrimination, and the need to reconsider gave rise to the Religion or Belief Regulations.The amended Race Relations Act and Race Relations Regulations outlaw prejudice on ground of citizenship too and emphasize equality as neither to whom nor where but the principle of it ~one equally is liable for race prejudice for aiding or abetting a discriminator, being also unlawful inciting to or inducing race prejudice or race harassment).

If one is directly in relation to, solely on the ground of, national or ethnic, racial or colour, differences is subjected to racial discrimination, Direct Racial Discrimination that is called in law ~and since the party alleged to have subjected to the ethnic or race or colour prejudice is not likely to admit to disregard for the Race Relations Act by the alleged unlawful racial discrimination and the burden is on the party who alleges racial discrimination to prove it, the ‘but for’ test is used by the courts in lawsuits for racial discrimination before them in determining on a balance of probabilities whether one has been the subject of racial discrimination in law -this test is: would not the party alleging to have been subjected to racial discrimination under the Race Relations Act not have been treated so but for the racial difference? (If would still have been treated so it is not racial discrimination -if not, it is unlawful racial discrimination.)

But, racial discrimination often takes place in the form of what is called in law Indirect Racial Discrimination -by imposing a requirement which cannot reasonably be justified and which only members of a particular e.g. ethnic or colour or racial group are unable to comply with ~for example, refusal of employment to a Sikh on the ground of a prohibition to wear a beard or long hair, which effectively barred from consideration all job applicants who were Sikhs and whose religious beliefs include the wearing of a beard or long hair was held to be indirect racial discrimination in Britain (Panesaar -v- Nestle & Co. Ltd. 1980), and uniform considerations made lawful forbidding Islamic dress (Denbigh High School -v- Begun 2006).

The difference between indirect discrimination and direct discrimination, therefore, is simply that in direct racial discrimination it suffices under the Race Relations Act to show less favourable treatment on racial grounds of the person alleging race prejudice, whereas in indirect racial discrimination it must be shown as being less favourable treatment on racial grounds of a group of persons who in light of the guidelines the Race Relations Act applies to and that the person complaining of racial discrimination belongs to that group of persons.

While also Racial Discrimination Victimization (e.g. discriminating by way of employer retaliation and firing a worker or e.g. overlooking a worker for a pay increase, or promotion) is unlawful prejudice under the Race Relations Act, including for the reason that one is suspected that one might complain of racial discrimination) in practice one alleging victimization arising from race prejudice may be expected in most legal action, especially in matters of employment, to have and to produce evidence of having in writing to, e.g., one’s employer, complained of racial discrimination -although not necessarily of racial discrimination victimisation itself (an employee’s serving on the employer at least later a Racial Discrimination Questionnaire might also help).

Action for racial discrimination normally lie to County Courts under the Race Relation Act in the normal ways of any civil action; but in matters to do with race prejudice in employment and race equality laws every employer is required to have a formal and well publicised non-discrimination policy about racial discrimination and to do so in the form of a formal written equal opportunities statement -covering also race relations and racial discrimination issues, and action for racial discrimination is in Employment Tribunals ~in either kind of action if the alleged racial discrimination involves the teaching profession or an educational establishment also the Department of Education it is expected to inform of that racial discrimination.

In Britain while in matters of race equality in employment one at no cost may complain of racial discrimination in recruitment or selection or vocational training, or of racial discrimination in the workplace, to such tribunals, one may be barred from pursuing a race prejudice lawsuit, or may face the other party’s (and possibly other) legitimate and probably untaxed costs, if one pursues a racial discrimination case which is considered to be misconceived -i.e. has no prospect of success (although this might revert in the future to frivolity or vexation in the course the legal proceedings).Lawful Racial Discrimination is possible -racial equality laws do allow for it in, e.g., employment and race relations.

Sometimes lawfully as Positive Racial Discrimination may be practised ethnic or colour or race prejudice in promoting race equality and in the interests good race relations, e.g., by employers, in order to keep a reasonable racial balance, by intentional racial discrimination specifically recruiting from a particular colour or from a particular racial or ethnic background alone -to do so genuinely for that reason is legal racial prejudice and such positive discrimination is not unlawful racial discrimination.

This is because employers are expected by the Race Relations Act as a matter of non-discrimination policy to help promote racial equality by regular racial monitoring at the workplace to ensure that they have a reasonable number of e.g. black or Indian employees -indeed sometimes if sued for racial discrimination they may be asked to show that ~and that is sometimes done by way of positive racial discrimination in the recruitment of their workforce.

One may not claim for unlawful racial discrimination in the case of such employment as may be reasonably classed as personal services -in cases of such employment it is not illegal to exercise racial or religious prejudice and, e.g., if a Jewish family advertise specifically for a Jewish employee as nanny and would not do a non-Jew for employment as such for their children that is not unlawful racial discrimination under the Race Relations Act but perfectly lawful racial discrimination.

Nor is it unlawful racial discrimination where employment involves a requirement that one must be of a specific race and that requirement is a genuine occupational qualification -such as in relation to employing only black actors to play, e.g., in Shakespeare’s play ‘Othello’ the role of the black character called so.

And, of course, Racial Discrimination Segregation it would not be classed as if, e.g., one who often prides himself “I am a African” is separated from a disrupting colleague who needles “He don’t speak proper English.”(Laws change –always ascertain current law)The author has a website at: http://www.geocities.com/eoa_uk

The author’s favourite site is the Teacher of Teachers

Jim Crow and Civil Rights in North Carolina

Law Article — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 00:55:02 +0000

Jim Crow and Civil Rights in North Carolina
Segregation shaped black-white interactions in the post-Civil War North Carolina, where it reigned from the white supremacy revolt of 1898 until the 1960s. Jim Crow period was a crucial phase of race relations in American society. However, racial segregation had far deeper roots in the North Carolina past. Before the Civil War, slaveholders needed few regulations to isolate slaves and free people of color, who were kept apart by custom. After the Civil War, a white backlash against the former slaves began to legalize the customary distance between blacks and whites.
Planters intended to defy the emancipation guaranteed by the Thirteenth Amendment and exploit ex-slave workers. White employers flogged and even killed freed people who dared to assert their new liberties, even in the face of Union garrisons and Republican authority. While the state constitution of 1868 confirmed abolition and legitimated previous black and mixed-race births, it plainly stated that Black children and white children should study in different public schools (Franklin 73).
Despite the presence of federal and state militias, the Ku Klux Klan terrorized Republican voters and officeholders, black and white. In 1870, when conservative Democrats regained a legislative majority, Klansmen murdered 16 Republicans and whipped at least 121 (Franklin 88). An act of 1874 proclaimed that no white child could be apprenticed to a black adult. The amended state constitution in 1875 prohibited between white people and African-Americans and it reiterated the requirement for dual schools (Evans 55). The legislature soon established industrial and normal colleges for blacks, but it ignored the terror that drove thousands of them to Kansas and Indiana in 1879-80.
Blacks continued to vote and hold office in much of eastern North Carolina, backing “the Party of Lincoln” despite facing dangerous opposition (Anderson 37). For instance, between 1868 and 1889, fourteen black Republicans were elected to seventeen state house and six state senate terms from New Hanover County, home of Wilmington (Evans 54). Between 1874 and 1890, three blacks also won terms in Congress from the Second Congressional District, “a Republican and black stronghold.” (Anderson 34).
Legislators in 1892 proposed to segregate railway travel, as eight other Southern states already had done. Republican and Populist assemblymen opposed the enabling bill.
Oppression increased as black North Carolinians persevered. Their votes enabled Fusion men to gain 74 of the 120 General Assembly seats in 1894 and win the governorship in 1896, while electoral reforms passed by the Fusionist legislature helped blacks to regain numerous local offices (Anderson 93). By 1897, in Wilmington, four aldermen, an audit board member, a justice of the peace, the deputy clerk of court, and the coroner were black (Edmonds 162). Clearly, 1898 marked a turning point in Jim Crow. The election that year brought into relief not only extreme white racism, but also fallout from the legal disfranchisement of blacks in South Carolina (1895) and the Supreme Court’s “separate but equal” decision in Plessy v. Ferguson ( 1896) (Edmonds 165). Klansmen and White Supremacy Clubs frequently demonstrated at black and Fusion rallies, intimidating the crowds by a show of guns. In 1897-99 seven lynchings were reported in North Carolina, and racial intimidation and terrorism reached into even the most remote crossroads and towns during the fall of 1898 (Evans 87). Democrats reclaimed five of the state’s nine congressional seats; Republicans retained three seats, reelecting the nation’s only black congressman, George H. White, from the Second District (Evans 88). In state contests Democrats took ninety-four house and forty senate seats to the Republicans’ twenty-three (four black) and seven (one black) and Populists’ three and three (Evans 95).
During the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898 legally selected Republicans were overthrown by white Democrats. As the result, Democrats established the government which was based upon white supremacy (Wilmington Race Riot 1). It symbolized the creation of a codified and brutal color line, one that would last through the first half of the twentieth century.
In 1899 lawmakers adopted voting restrictions based on the Louisiana model of a literacy test, poll tax, and grandfather clause. Scheduled for a referendum in 1900, the suffrage amendment promised significant reduction of the black electorate, thereby undermining a multiracial or working-class challenge to Democratic and white dominance. Adult illiteracy then was 40 percent for black males, compared to 20 percent for white males (Edmonds 180). Registrars did not expect or permit black men to read and explain a section of the state constitution as specified in the amendment. Nor could most blacks afford to pay poll taxes, for they earned only subsistence incomes. Virtually none had grandfathers who voted prior to January 1867, so, as descendants of freedmen, they lost by fiat the protection given to illiterate white men.
The assault on democratic citizenship quickened. At least two acts proscribed racially mixed fraternal orders and mental hospitals; five empowered the utilities commission to enforce Jim Crow in transport. In 1900 black leaders issued “An Address to the White People of North Carolina” protesting the imminent passage of the constitutional amendment that would disfranchise blacks (Edmonds 195).
Legal separation proceeded apace. The state required the board of education to operate all-black school districts and dictated that school librarians “fit up and maintain a separate place for the use of the colored people who may come to the library.” (Jim Crow Laws, Libraries). One statute allowed for relief and pension benefits to “fire companies composed exclusively of colored men.” (Edmonds 199). Furthermore, a “person of negro descent to the third generation, inclusive” was defined as black (Jim Craw Laws, Intermarriage). Any officer who failed to confine black and white prisoners separately should be considered guilty, according to an order on prisons. Three orders similarly charged operators of streetcars and trains.
The legal and informal contours of Jim Crow covered a wide domain. The restrictions betrayed white fears of black-Indian cooperation, black educational progress and competition for jobs, interracial sex, and blacks’ political dissent. To wit, the state reordered the segregation of Indians in jails, homes of the aged, and hospitals. It warranted a curriculum of only “practical agriculture and the mechanical arts and such branches of learning as relate thereto” for black colleges (Murray 332). Toilets had to be “lettered and marked in a distinct manner, so as to furnish separate facilities for white males, white females, colored males and colored females.” (Murray 339). Indeed, by the eve of World War I, almost every visible space had been separated. During the war, the state stopped the “organization of colored troops . . . where white troops are available, and while permitted to be organized, colored troops shall be under the command of white officers.” (Murray 342). Even a breach of the color line among convicts meant a fine or jail sentence for their jailers.
A sample of legislative acts from 1917 to 1945 can be useful to suggest the vagaries of Jim Crow. Of sixty-one Jim Crow statutes enacted in that period, three concern black aliens (Anderson 90). Education is the subject of nineteen, including a 1935 stipulation that “books shall not be interchangeable between the white and colored schools, but should continue to be used by the race first using them.” (Murray 331) An act detailing punishment for violations of the toilet restriction applies to all categories of labor. Seventeen measures relate to provisions for the handicapped, and fifteen cover buses and trains (Murray 338). Not until 1947 did the state restrict cemeteries, which had long been separated by tradition.
State permission to segregate the races resonated locally. Cities and towns tended to replicate the Winston-Salem housing pattern. Winston-Salem’s black residents had been segregated overwhelmingly into its southeastern corner by the 1920s. Black population clusters, always cordoned off by a main street, railroad track, or similar fixed barrier, shaped the social geography of every city and town. Hayti in Durham and Gilmer in Greensboro typified the urban ghettos (Woofter 67). In their segregated communities, veiled from white society, blacks forged a world of aspiration (Woofter 79).
Ordinances on accommodations (restaurants, theaters) and common spaces (auditoriums, stadiums) multiplied greatly. Lest there be trespassing, “White Only” and “Colored” signs policed entrances, exits, and seats. Banks, railroads, textile and tobacco factories, and other places of employment regularly exceeded statutory requirements. Tobacco plants in Durham, Reidsville, and Winston-Salem assigned “Negro and white workers to separate parts of buildings, or to different workrooms even when performing the same tasks, or to separate sides of the same room, or even to separate rows in the same room.” (Woofter 100).
Many African Americans struggled against Jim Crow laws and promoted dignity and liberty of Black people. For example, Charlotte Hawkins Brown whose grandparents were slaves made substantial contribution to the development of African American education and established the North Carolina State Federation of Negro Women’s Club (Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum 1).
The other examples include Murray and Mebane who were emblematic of the black men and women who survived Jim Crow and struggled for protection of African-American civil rights. In 1938 the University of North Carolina denied Pauli Murray admission for graduate study. Two years later at Petersburg, Virginia, she was arrested for sitting in the front seat of an interstate bus.
Blacks such as Murray and Mebane responded to Jim Crow by pursuing an array of community-building activities to soften segregation’s harshest edges and build autonomy and self-respect. Within “autonomous institutions”–including the family, education, religion, cultural expression, labor, business, and politics–blacks built a sense of hope. Consider post-riot Wilmington: by 1930 institutions within the black community included one of five hospitals in the city, two of thirteen homes for the elderly, two of nine cemeteries, twenty-eight of fifty-two churches and four of fourteen public schools (Wilmington Directory 700).
Black colleges and universities which were founded after the Civil War contributed substantially to black North Carolina education. There are eleven Black higher institutions in North Carolina (Historically Black Colleges and Universities 1). Among them are Bennett College, Barberia-Scottia College, North Carolina A&T State University and others. These colleges also cultivated ambition and self-esteem in their students.
In 1960 a group of Black students from North Carolina A&T University was not served during lunch; they protested against such discrimination by their refusal to leave the lunch counter. The Greensboro sit-ins were started by four African-American activists such as Ezell Blair, David Richmond, Joseph McNeil and Franklin McLain (Greensboro sit-ins, Timeline, 1). This non-violent protest has continued to take place in many cities. Thus, within the period of two months the lunch counter sit-ins took place in 54 cities in 9 states (Greensboro sit-ins, Timeline, 2). Later the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was organized to support Sit-Ins (Six Years of the SNCC 2).
Thus, Black activists participated in college boycotts and other forms of nonviolent direct action, helping to catalyze the emergent civil rights movement in North Carolina. Their fight on the home front to abolish Jim Crow bequeathed a significant legacy of hope to the next generation. Due to the courage and high aspirations of those Black Carolinians of the post-Civil War Era, African-Americans in North Carolina can enjoy civil rights and liberties which they have today. Individuals on both sides of the color line started to take each other seriously, with neither preordained stereotypes nor false etiquette.
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