Dignity and Discrimination: Employment Civil Rights in the Workplace and in Courts
![handle is hein.journals/chknt92 and id is 1225 raw text is:
DIGNITY AND DISCRIMINATION: EMPLOYMENT CIVIL
RIGHTS IN THE WORKPLACE AND IN COURTS
LAURA BETH NIELSEN*
ELLEN C. BERREY**
ROBERT L. NELSON***
I. INTRODUCTION'
Gerry Handley (plaintiff): They would like always bring up these ra-
cial conversations and make these racial jokes . . . I'd just ignore them. I
wouldn't laugh or I wouldn't listen in . . .. They started talking about in-
cest, and they started talking about blacks from slavery time, you know,
they bred them and sold them, and they inbred them down in the south.
And I'm from down south ... they told me a lot of the blacks had sex with
their daughters and stuff like that, way back from the Caribbeans [sic]. And
I would just sit there listening like, Oh my God, I know they're not saying
this. And the guy asked me, he said, 'did I ever have sex with my daugh-
ter.' And so-
Laura Beth Nielsen: He asked you if you had sex with your daughter?
Handley: Yeah.
Nielsen: And this is your boss or your manager?
Handley: He was like my lead.2
When ordinary employees, like Gerry Handley (P14) quoted here,
face what they perceive to be discrimination in the workplace, state and
federal law may provide redress and restitution.3 As the remedy for em-
* Professor of sociology and the director of legal studies at Northwestern University and a research
professor at the American Bar Foundation.
** Assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto and an affiliated scholar of the Ameri-
can Bar Foundation.
*** Robert and Connie MacCrate Chair in Research on the Legal Profession at the American Bar
Foundation and a professor of sociology and law at Northwestern University.
1. This article revisits data from our book. See generally ELLEN BERREY, ROBERT L. NELSON &
LAURA BETH NIELSEN, RIGHTS ON TRIAL: How WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION LAW PERPETUATES
INEQUALITY (2017). In that book, we use a different theoretical framework but the concept of employ-
ment civil rights as a dignity taking was too interesting to pass up. Id.
2. Rights on Trial Audio Recordings (selections): Chapter 1, Gerry Handley's Story, ELLEN
BERREY, SOCIOLOGIST, https://www.ellenberrey.com/audio [https://perma.cc/D238-LJJT] [hereinafter
Gerry Handley's Story].
3. All names of research participants are pseudonyms.
1185](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/chknt92&div=51&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Dignity and Discrimination: Employment Civil Rights in the Workplace and in Courts
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most