Discrimination and harassment in the workplace and in normal life is something that’s sadly very common. However, discrimination and harassment are usually subtle. It’s not something people openly do anymore, mainly because they’ll get canceled if they do.
Learning to spot and recognize the signs of discrimination and harassment can make your life much easier. By knowing what the signs of these things are, you will be able to protect yourself and your loved ones and have offenders punished.
Here’s how to recognize and respond to discrimination and harassment the right way.
Taking Immediate Legal Action
If you have been discriminated against or harassed at work, you need to take legal action. Unfortunately, the average person has absolutely no idea how they are supposed to react after somebody says something discriminatory or harasses them. Bear in mind that in some places there is a statute of limitations that prevents people from being able to make compensatory claims after a fixed period of time has elapsed. Generally, the statute of limitations is around two years for personal injury and harassment claims. Taking immediate legal action will help you to ensure that you get the compensation you deserve.
If you are planning on making a claim for compensation, make sure that you get in touch with a professional, trained lawyer. The best way to tell how experienced a lawyer is is to visit their website and look at previous cases they have worked on as well as to read their reviews. A lawyer’s reviews can tell you a lot about them. Try to avoid reading reviews that have been posted on the lawyer’s own website though. The reason for this is that reviews posted by businesses on their websites tend to be exaggerated or biased. Reviews posted on Google Review and Trustpilot are a lot more trustworthy as they are vetted and authenticated prior to going live.
Reporting the Responsible Person
If somebody has committed an act of harassment or discrimination against you, you need to make sure that you report them. Reporting the person responsible for causing harassment or discrimination will help to prevent them from performing such acts again in the future. If you work in an office with somebody who has discriminated against you or harassed you, you should report them directly to your manager. Reporting them to your manager will allow your manager to take action against them and discipline them. If the active discrimination or harassment is especially serious, the person responsible could end up losing their job stop workplaces, and take acts of discrimination and harassment a lot more seriously today than they used to in the past.
If somebody has harassed you or discriminated against you in a social setting, the logical next step is to get in touch with the police. As mentioned in the previous paragraph, acts of harassment and discrimination are taken a lot more seriously today. Something that would not have garnered much attention from the police ten years ago today to somebody being sentenced to a period of imprisonment or at least receiving a fine. If it is possible for you, try to record the person that has committed an act of harassment or discrimination against you. Recording them and catching their behavior on film will make it a lot easier for the police to prosecute them.
Learning to Recognize the Signs
Learning to recognize the signs of harassment and discrimination can be very difficult to do, as these things tend to be very subtle. For example, people are regularly discriminated against because of their names. If a person has an ethnic name in the United States, studies show that they will not be given as much consideration for a job role as somebody with a typical Western European name. Strides have been taken to combat workplace discrimination, however, and it is becoming less common today than it used to be.
Really, anything anybody does that makes you feel like you’re being discriminated against or harassed is probably a form of discrimination or harassment. If you suspect somebody is doing these things to you, you should call them up on it or you should get in touch with somebody that can help you. Of course, sometimes you could be overthinking things, and that’s why it’s good to get in touch with a professional or somebody who can assist you. They will be able to tell you whether or not you are overreacting.
Discrimination and harassment are unacceptable. If you suspect you have been the victim of either of these things, you need to get in touch with a lawyer and potentially the police. Do not suffer in silence; the faster you act, the sooner you can get justice.