No matter what your color, culture, sex, age, or special circumstance, today’s workplace
demands that you meet the challenge of succeeding in a diverse workplace. Whatever your individual circumstances, you can be part of the thinking that influences the business mindset if you’re on the inside.
by Donna Maria Blancero, Ph.D and Robert G. DelCampo
New research suggests perceived discrimination impacts mentoring relationships and workplace attitudes. Management studies on ‘minority groups’ in general are lacking, but for Hispanics in particular it is severely lacking. Currently, the population is 13% Hispanic: If we include Puerto Rico in our statistics, there are almost 43 million Latinos in the United States and it is estimated to grow by more than 1.7 million people a year -- this means 5000 people daily!
As the immigration policy debate heats up over the issue of undocumented workers, it's easy to lose sight of the work categories and hiring rules that affect immigrant job seekers. In practice, immigration's impact on hiring is very nuanced. Immigrants do much more than pick lettuce and clean hotel rooms. They are engineers, doctors, business executives, professors, researchers, athletes, investors, entertainers and religious figures.
In the past, it wasn't uncommon for an African American woman to be referred to as a “two-fer” -- she counted twice for affirmative-action purposes: once as a woman and again as an African American.With the current challenge to the University of Michigan's use of race as one of several factors in determining admission, affirmative-action policies have been thrust into the spotlight once again. Is there a stigma attached to affirmative action? That depends on whom you ask.