What should I do if I think a group of colleagues is being discriminated against?

Question

I'm a teacher in schools for deaf people. In one of the previous schools I taught at, we faced an organizational situation that I thought originated from the management's distrust towards our deaf colleagues.

Every teacher had some extracurricular activities, however deaf colleagues were being supervised by hearing colleagues, while hearing colleagues were not supervised at all by their colleagues, but only directly from the management. We asked the management about that issue and the answer was that there were too many mistakes in the deaf teachers activities.

Despite being a learning environment for the deaf, it seemed like the management distrusts all deaf teacher's abilities, and treated them different from the rest of the teachers. From a more practical perspective, it meant that hearing colleagues had a heavier workload since we had to supervise in addition to caring for our own activities.

At the time we did nothing, but now I am questioning whether or not I should have reported this.

In this sort of situation, where I think a group of employees may be being discriminated against (but am not positive), is there any action I can take short of reporting the issue to help resolve this problem?

Answer 1

I am old enough to remember when Chapter 766 was enacted, and I have been part of that group since it's enactment. Being discriminated against due to a disability (Dyslexia and Asperger for me) has put plenty of barriers in front of me to confront and tear down. This type of discrimination infuriates me, and I am in a way dealing with it at where I work as well, the problem you are running into is not as uncommon as you think. Color, age, sex, and disability when not always visible, but recognizable is always discriminated against, knowingly or unknowingly.

Sometimes it’s for the better or for the worse, in my case and in the case of the OP, I have to agree that it is unfair. Since you have confronted the school about this and they claim in a rather weak statement, that there are more mistakes for the deaf faculty than the hearing you may want to bring this to a higher level. What do you really want to do then, because there are things you need to ask yourself.

Do the deaf teachers want you to do anything? If not, let them be. If so, ask if they have done anything to fix what you think is discrimination, if they have and nothing has come of it, then ask if its ok for you to talk to someone about it. If they give you their blessing, then talk to the shop steward if this is a union school, if not superintendent if you have already brought it to the principal’s or Headmaster’s attention I am sure.

If this doesn’t get resolved by these actions then, then ask yourself where do you want to go from here? The news? Or do you go to the town hall and bring this up in the next town hall?

You seriously need to think of where you want to take this, because this is not only about your own personal views but other people’s lives, and if you aren’t careful you may drag people into this that you don’t intend to.

My only real statement here is that if you are going to go forward with anything, think long and hard before you do. Make sure you cover all your bases, and do everything by the book, because if you don’t, you are going to be let go faster than a hot potato covered in cheese and sour cream. Also, you may ruin a good teacher’s reputation, or other people’s lives by bringing this to the forefront, and although you may intend good, you may not be perceived as a good person because of the actions, unless you cross all your Ts’ and dot your Is’. In this super-sensitive and charged culture, all things can be thrown into a hand basket and thrown into hell faster than you can say oh poo.

Answer 2

If you really want to get into it, find the organizations, state and federal rules against such practices. Then you have to be able to clearly identify where they are violating the laws and rules. Then you can take it to the school board to do some sort of evaluation of the situation and if they find it true will do something about it. Worst case you could get a lawyer involved too.

However, this may hurt you position and is up to you how to go about it.

Unfortunately, there is unspoken discrimination and inequalities in the work place, we have to do the best we can, it will never be perfect we are human.

Answer 3

As far as changing management's attitude, it might be a long shot. I'd start with empowering the marginalized teachers in what little way I can: The deaf teachers are put under the supervision of the hearing teachers, a disablement by itself. Why not start by just easing off on your deaf colleagues and letting them take the reins, without looking insubordinate? By giving them back that control, you're going a long way in showing them your support and belief in their abilities, in spite of management's heads-up-their-you-know-where-ness. At the end of the day, I'm usually satisfied and content in the fact that my team mates have my back (and traditionally, it's always been an US v Them paradigm btw senior management and the rest of us). Keep at the back of your mind tho, for management's purposes, you're accountable.

there are also traces of racism in the management's behaviour and decisions. Furthermore, from a more practical perspective, it meant that hearing colleagues had a heavier workload (given that we had our own activities to care for).

Are you the only one who feels the way you do? Exercise a little caution here. Remember in those cartoons where someone asks an assembly of soldiers who wants to go on a mission, and then the rank and file step back, leaving one poor sap in front? Racism is a pretty heavy accusation, play the card with caution. If you've others in your corner, you might have enough critical mass to start and maybe effect a change (whistleblowing,etc).

You're indeed are in a very uncomfortable situation.

Answer 4

What an awful situation to be in...

A perfectly balanced workplace is an unattainable goal, and a fair one is more of a dream than reality. Right now you have two groups of people working in the same environment, let's call them group A and group B, where group A is supervised by group B, while the reverse isn't true for the same or a similar set of activities.

Given that the only difference (we know of) between the two groups is a biological characteristic, I'd agree that the situation reeks of discrimination. However I don't think, at least from the available data, that we can safely conclude the management's behaviour is unfair (and potentially illegal).

What you need to do first is gather more data. A good place to start would be discussing your observations, in an as much an unbiased way as possible, with colleagues you feel comfortable with. Get at least a hint of confirmation that there are others out there who noticed the behaviour(s) and reached more or less the same conclusions as you.

Regardless of whether there are colleagues you feel comfortable enough to discuss the matter with, the next step would be to gather hard data, any kind of documentation that supports your observations. Since the behaviour manifests itself in an organizational manner, I think you have good chances of actually finding paper documentation that describe the possibly unfair hierarchy.

Assuming that you've found at least another colleague that agrees with your conclusions, and/or hard data that hint/support that there's something fishy going on, you need to start debating whether to report the situation higher up the hierarchy chain or not. From my brief time in education, I'd suggest looking into your local school board, relevant professional association(s), local deaf people associations, and even NGOs that focus in fighting discriminatory behaviours.

Lesser options to report the situation would be local or even national news, but be prepared for a ruckus, and political organizations, that in my experience would jump at the opportunity to present themselves as leading an anti discrimination campaign.

Whether to actually report the situation or not, and whether to do it anonymously or eponymously is completely up to you. Obviously reporting it eponymously would be the option with the more chances of success, but also the option with the larger impact on your own career. It's a personal decision, and I'm afraid I can't advise you further one way or another.

Fortunately I haven't had much experience with discriminatory behaviours in the workplace, but from what I've seen I can tell you that it's quite easy to masquerade them as valid management decisions. An easy excuse to the situation you're describing would be that hearing colleagues aren't actually supervising the deaf ones, but the two groups are coupled for the activities the deaf colleagues are in charge to help the deaf colleagues deal with external parameters, like contacting parents, or whatever/whomever else outside the school (it's a hearing dominated world, after all).

One thing to keep in mind is that usually discriminatory behaviours stem from deep personal bias, and it's unlikely that they only manifest in a simple organizational matter. If the bias is there, there will probably be other traces of it and behaviours like the one you're describing are probably going on for a while.

Arm yourself with as much evidence as possible, hard data is essential, and... good luck!

Answer 5

The first thing that comes to mind, that seems worth throwing out there is the thought of "reasonable accomodation". Supervision shouldn't and doesn't imply punishment - in a workplace, everyone should have some level of supervision, commensurate with their work needs and skill level.

Treating two groups differently for a reason that is related to race, gender, disability, etc, can sound like discrimination, and in many cases it is, particularly when it limits the opportunities and puts undue strain on certain employees in terms of attaining job success. HOWEVER, disabilities are the wild card, because it is safe and in fact required under many laws (US law is my only experience) that employers need to provide a reasonable accomodation to allow disabled employeees the same opportunities as regular employees if they can adequately perform the majority of their job functions. For example, if I manage people in a big company who are deaf, and unable to communicate with me because I don't speak sign language, then a reasonable accomodation is to have our communication filtered through an interpreter. Obviously this is different than it would be for a hearing employee who can communicate with me directly. And it varies in cases of the size of my company and my profit margin - in a 3 person company, hiring a 4th person purely to be the intepreter may be an undue burden - but in a multinational where 1 interpreter supports 20 employees - it may be quite reasonable. In essence, if the company has the means to provide an ASL interpreter, hiring and supporting the needs of the deaf employee is not only fair, it's required by law in some cases.

So it has a lot to do with the reason for the issue - if management could all communicate clearly and effectively with the deaf employees directly, then there would be no need for an accomodation and the case you mention might be a case of discrimination. However, if there are a large number of deaf teachers, who can't communicate clearly with management, so management is asking for hearing teachers who have a strong capability to act as interpreters and take on some of the communication burden to prevent mistakes and communication gaps - then that is reasonable given that other options might be fire the deaf teachers or hire so many interpreters that the school would fail to keep a reasonable budget.

Ideally, the school will find a way to balance the work load so supervising teachers are compensated differently or given less responsibility in other areas to account for the added time requirement. And ideally there is a metric for measuring whether a deaf teacher is good enough at communicating with hearing managers that the teacher may not need this extra accomodation, and might even be able to be a supervising teacher himself - so that no one is limited by a disability...

It would also be nice if there was a greater reliance on non-human communication tools - like email - where deaf teachers are no more limited than hearing - except my understanding of deaf communication has been that even in writing there can be gaps, as writing imitates spoken language much more closely than it does ASL... so using it as the only communication tool could be risky, as well.

And of course, the very obvious hope - would be to hire some managers who are strong sign language speakers - after all, if it's a school for the deaf, you'd think that would be a core competency, even in the administration!! But it's hard to guess from the outside what's really possible.