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  • Cross-Cultural Studies

The Roots of Slavery and Civil Rights Law in Employment Discrimination

By: Victoria Poland (Adrian College, '21)


After the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation marked the official abolition of slavery, but economic inequality endured. Through the convict leasing system, vagrancy laws, sharecropping, and an assortment of other discriminatory mechanisms first instituted during Reconstruction, southern black workers were denied equal opportunities to succeed economically. As such, the roots of slavery in the maintenance of economic inequality remained especially evident in the workplace. Similarly, during the Civil Rights Movement, African American workers gained more economic rights in the workplace through organizations like the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and in particular, through the use of Title VII. Yet as court cases like EEOC v. Atlantic Chevrolet/Cadillac and Griggs v. Duke Power Co attest, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1991 have shown, workplace discrimination for many African Americans continues.


African Americans did not become citizens of the United States right after the Emancipation Proclamation. Instead it took the work of countless civil rights activists and protesters to help pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the aftermath of these landmark accomplishments, black workplace victims came forward with a litany of first hand accounts of economic injustices. All of these claims referred back to Title VII. Title VII is a subset of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, religion, and retaliation,” and which is enforced by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The EEOC is a federal agency that administers and enforces civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. In an effort to keep the peace and unify the nation, the courts decided to make a compromise on Title VII. This compromise made it so the government could only receive complaints, investigate, and appease the victims. If they could not accommodate the victims, they could only file for private lawsuits or get sent to the Department of Justice for litigation. Yet typically these types of suits dragged on for years without resolutions. These restrictions on Title VII made it so that the EEOC could not properly enforce the law and allowed employers to maintain unequal workplace conditions and opportunities. However, despite the restrictions, African Americans still came forward about their mistreatments and pressed for equal employment opportunities. 


To more effectively lobby on behalf of African American workers, the EEOC sought to redefine the word discrimination for the courts in order for employers to be held to account for their unequal practices. The EEOC decided that discrimination in the workplace did not only take place in obvious and intentional acts, like many Americans at the time thought, but discrimination also occurred when employers enacted neutral policies and practices that had disproportionate impacts on minority groups. This was the case in Griggs v. Duke Power Co.in 1970. In this case, Griggs filed a claim that his employer, Duke Power, was wrongfully discriminating against black employees because in order to receive promotions for higher pay, he needed a high school diploma or was required to pass two standardized tests. The lower courts claimed that these requirements were not discriminatory and were based on what was needed in order to efficiently do the job, but the Supreme Court disagreed. They determined that these employees did not need these skills in order to sufficiently do the job required of them. Moreover, they concluded that Duke Powers’ requirements created an impediment to personal advancement and aided unequal access to education that impacted many black laborers. 


In order to maintain some liability, the EEOC began requiring employers to submit reports that showed that they achieved considerable diversity in their workplace in the mid-1970’s. These reports helped the EEOC find areas in which discrimination was worse than others and helped to expose the companies that were being discriminatory. In order to make Title VII more successful, the EEOC published several reports and videos to help educate and raise awareness to the public, more specifically to help employers understand the benefits that diversity would bring their companies.Title VII was making leaps and bounds in the effort for equal employment, but it was not doing enough. In 1971, Congress decided that the original standard for dealing with Title VII was not enough to combat workplace discrimination, so they passed the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1972 helped give Title VII more power to actually take action on the charges that victims were constantly filing against their employers. The EEOC could now sue employers, they could practice lawsuits, and Title VII now covered more areas, such as the federal government and state and local governments, as well as K-12 schools and Institutions of Higher Education.


The EEOC did not stop there as the various new additions to the laws allowed for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to be amended and created the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was made to “strengthen and improve Federal civil rights laws, to provide for damages in cases of intentional employment discrimination, to clarify provisions regarding disparate impact actions, and for other purposes.” This expanded law helped give minority workers more rights and allowed many of them to receive better protections when their rights were not being respected and upheld in the workplace. While these reforms were implemented, backlash from employers ensued.The 2009 case, EEOC v. Atlantic Chevrolet/Cadillac reflects Title VII and the new 1991 Civil Rights Act in action. In this case, two young black employees and students filed complaints of racial harassment to the Human Resources Department at their place of employment only to be ignored and subjected to further harassment. These employees were taunted with racial slurs, derogatory statements, and were exposed to racial symbols, including a noose. Since they were repeatedly harassed, they were forced to snitch on the offenders and were later forced to quit as a result. These actions violate Title VII under the Civil Rights Act, so the EEOC was brought in to help the victims and eventually won the case.  The strengthened Civil Rights Act of 1991 made it so that employers had to pay for monetary damages, tools, loss of work, and complete anti-discrimination training. This along with posting the EEOC laws regarding discrimination and continued monitoring helped to raise awareness and create discipline throughout the company and was done in an effort to avoid these problems in the future.


Although the EEOC has made many encouraging advances since 1964, it remains overburdened with cases. Most cases do not get heard by the courts because the EEOC cannot prove that discrimination was actually taking place. In order to prove discrimination in the workplace, three things need to be proven: an adverse employment action, (where employees are being denied the ability to succeed in their job), to prove the intent of discrimination, and they also need to prove a link between those two things. This can be very difficult in most cases because proving intent can be nearly impossible. For example, employers typically have all of the useful evidence of discrimination and have been known to control it unjustly, which is hard to actually prove, and it is challenging to determine what the victim and employers were motivated by when they were allegedly employing discriminatory actions. If these things can be proven, the EEOC will typically win the case, but often times this process takes several years to take action. For example, the case, Roarck Whitten Hospitality, d/b/a Whitten Inn, et al. v. EEOC was filed in 2014 and has yet to be taken to court for further action. This is just one of many cases that are still pending, and many other similar cases are often dismissed or are not taken to court.


The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was inspired by the mistreatment of African Americans and the rest of the country’s desire for change, efforts that resulted from the unresolved impact of the Emancipation Proclamation and the longer economic injustices of slavery. Although incremental changes have since addressed many aspects of economic and racial inequality, African American workers remain the most vulnerable to workplace injustice and forced to face daunting obstacles in the fight for equal rights and protections. If the history of the EEOC has taught us anything, further amendments to labor laws will be needed to more systemically undo generations of workplace discrimination.


Sources:

Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) 401 US 424

EEOC v. Atlantic Chevrolet/Cadillac (2009)

Roarck Whitten Hospitality, d/b/a Whitten Inn, et al. v. EEOC (2014)


About the Author: Victoria Poland is a junior Philosophy and Criminal Justice major at Adrian College. This blog was part of a research project in her "Slavery in U.S. History" course. Victoria aspires to attend Law School in Boston with the goal of becoming a lawyer.





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