Working for a non-profit is a rewarding job and one that I feel is not only a service to the community but enriching me in my personal life. I get to help people when they are in most need, in a way I am a first responder for the Muslim community that might not know what services and resources are available to them when they have been victimized.It is most frustrating to get a call or have a person visit me in the office and not be able to help them due to insignificant evidence, information or even the fact that it requires further legal analysis and the individual does not have the capacity to turn to an attorney. Not being an attorney myself, it is illegal for me to provide these people with legal advise, the most I can do for them is to provide them with a referral to a pro-bono attorney willing to consult and even if possible take on their case in a feasible payment plan set-up.
Statics show that Americans are quite suspicious of their Muslim neighbors, and that is partly the Muslim community problem of not going out and showing fellow Americans who we are and how what we are about, we have much more to do. However, this perception is fed by Right Wing extremist bloggers, radio talk show hosts and TV shows and personalities that continue to rave and rant about things they have no clue about.
I do not believe nor do I like the state of the justice system where everyone is filing left and right to get their two cents worth of flesh. However, I am very happy to hear about this Sikh man (who has nothing to do with Islam) getting a $24,000 because of Bally's Fitness discrimination in the hiring process.
"He was basically asked where he was born, where his parents were born, what religion he subscribed to and whether he was a Muslim," said EEOC program analyst Linda Li. "He's very American."I wish the guy more because cases like his are rampant in the Muslim community, I get at least four cases a month that are reported, an my rule of thumb is that for every case reported there are at least three that go unreported.
In a recent Monster.com article, "Since 9/11 and continuing through the Iraq War, workplace prejudice against Arabs, Muslims, South Asians- and those perceived to be- has risen" going on to state that between September 11, 2001 and June 11, 2006 more than 990 individuals alleged "backlash discrimination," according to the EEOC. Termination was an issue in 591 of the charges; harassment was cited in 416, and upwards of a 150 people received more than $5 million in monetary benefits due to the EEOC efforts. (heck yeh, sock'em and sock'em hard)
At CAIR, there is a report that we put together called the National Civil Rights Report and then a separate one for California. California represents close to 20% of the nationally reported cases for 2006 with 25.41 percent of those cases occurring in the workplace. For the most part in the reports that I get these reports vary from service industry to University Professors and Defense Engineers in high management. We are talking about a prevalent sense of discrimination and negativity toward Muslim employees.
What is interesting, and something that I wish we could track but do not because of Personal preference issues as well as ethical standards, is that the majority of these cases are involving individuals who do not "identify Muslim" who are culturally tied- their names, immigration status, or their fluency in English, or dialect- and the majority of these cases the employer makes an assumption that this person being from a certain background is therefore a terrorist. The equation is quite deliberate and very much blatant, or its very subtle.
I want to briefly talk about the cases- blatant outright, overt and general discrimination.
Blatant Outright would be those cases I qualify as having a paper trail, emails being sent about how a person behaves in a certain way because they are Arab, or Muslim stereotypes, or even things in which terms like "terrorist, rag head etc" are used. These cases would also include repeated cases that are documented (here i have to pause, when i mean documented I mean people go to their desk pull out a notebook and write down specifics of what was said, by who, in what context, other witnesses, date and time, go into things like what the person was wearing if you have to just be very specific) or things said in front of other witnesses or even things done blatantly ie. office party some talks about homosexuality and the next day a picture of two guys kissing is put on your desk (this is actually a case I heard about when I worked as a legal assistant at a law firm).
Overt- These are cases that are much harder, this would include private conversation or "he-said-they-said" situations. This group also includes cases of interviewing and not being hired much like the case I provided an article for above. For me these are disheartening cases because normally you can pursue this further but with an attorney and if you can afford one. However, not to loose hope. For these cases, I often evaluate and listen to whats going on and then help people understand what their options are. You can read about that below.
General- I say this only because we get cases where its not really civil rights issue orientated and sometimes people precieve it to be, or it could be just not easily proven. This also includes cases of employee-employee problems, we get cases from Walmart where the Latina manager gangs up with other Latina employees to block other minorities from moving up the chain or getting placements or specific trainings, suprisingly I hear (not documented) many cases from Walmart on this issue- another evil that is.
What can people do- well I am available to help people or the local CAIR chapter if you need assistance. However, you can go to the EEOC and file a complaint or if in California you can also go to the state Fair Housing and Employment. The thing is I suggest to people to try to address the issue in house first- whether individually or with CAIR's assistance. Often times when its policy issues on religious accomadations these things can be fixed internally and it works for all parties- read Naveed's blog on a Wudu situation.
1. Discuss issue with HR, dont have one, go to the owner, its the owner who is involved turn to a third party.
2. Third party doesnt bring resolution, due report it at this point to the EEOC, they will give you a "letter to sue" which you can then proceed to get consultation with an attorney (usually an attorney will do this for you once you decide to go with one, however, I tell people you can do this yourself or have CAIR do it, but its important to do it correctly because it becomes a legal document and thats why Attorneys do it once they sign a retainer)
3. Depending on the response and your resonable demands, decide what you want to do and what is possible for you to do.
I find that many cases becomes problems because of miscommunication and mis-understanding. So I tell everyone who is involved in the situation to take a step back think about it, and write everything they remember down on paper- that for me then becomes a legal document one which "YOU HAVE TO BE WILLING TO LIVE UP TO"- if you can not then there is a major problem in the story and like I always tell the people I deal with there is always two sides to a story.
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