Ethnic Minority Discrimination: Concept, Examples, and Impact on Productivity

This article discusses the concept of ethnicity, provides examples of ethnic minority groups in the UK, and explores the specific forms of discrimination faced by ethnic minorities. It also examines how discrimination can impact employee productivity. References are included.

Ethnic minority
discrimination
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Contents
1). Concept of ethnicity....................................................................................................................3
2). Concept of ethnic minority apart from some examples within UK............................................3
3). Do people from an ethnic minority experience specific forms of discrimination? And how this
can affect the employees productivity.............................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5
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1). Concept of ethnicity
Ethnicity refers to the ethnic group of groups that persons identify with or feel they belong
to. It is a measure or evaluation of cultural affiliation, as opposed to ancestry, race, citizenship or
nationality (Shahabuddin, 2019). It is a self-perceived as well as people can be in the right place
to more than one ethnic group. In addition, ethnicity of an individual is mainly related with their
classification, association or traits. It is defined as the common characteristics of persons,
especially a group sharing a distinctive and common religion, language, culture, or the like.
Ethnicity has become a key other than contested analytical concept that is used to
differentiate people groups within the wider social sciences as well as everyday life. It tends to
introduce to the categorization of persons and restrictions between groups that are mainly based
on common ideas or myths of an ordinary origin, history and descent (Van de Vijver, 2017).
Ethnicity is often connected with minority i.e. cultural, racial, religious etc. groups that are not
similar than a majority, particularly in everyday communication. On the other hand, it has
become progressively used to explain majority (e.g., ethnic Norwegian or ethnic Dutch) as well
as minority members (e.g., immigrants) within modern multicultural societies.
2). Concept of ethnic minority apart from some examples within UK
Ethnic minority refers to the group of persons who differ in colour, race, religious, national
or cultural origin from the leading group, often the majority population of the nation in which
they live. In simple word, ethnic minority is a group of persons of a specific nationality or race
living in a nation or area where majority of population are from a different nationality or race. It
is a racial or immigrant group observed by those claiming to communicate for the cultural
majority as unassimilated and distinct (Gummadam, Pittman and Ioffe, 2016).
The UK is composed of persons of varying ethnicities. The biggest ethnic group of peoples
are White British and different other minority ethnic group of persons make up the rest. Ethnicity
within UK is officially traced at a national level at all censuses. The 2011 UK census traced an
abridged share of White British persons in the UK from the time when the census preceding it in
2001 (Wallace, Nazroo and Bécares, 2016). Contributing factors in the direction of rising
populations of ethnic minorities are mixed in nature, including contradictory birth rates as well
as Immigration. For example: Minority groups include Asian British: Indians 1.45 million
(2.3%), Asian British: Pakistanis 1.17 million (1.9 %), black/African/Afro-Caribbean 1.9 million
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(3.0%: this includes 601, seven hundred/zero. Ninety five per cent Caribbean, 1.02 million/1.6
per cent black Africans and 282, one hundred/zero.45 per cent other black people).
3). Do people from an ethnic minority experience specific forms of
discrimination? And how this can affect the employees productivity
Discrimination is when someone is not treated fairly and differently. In some nations,
discrimination is faced by some person on the basis of their religion, race, disability, sexual
orientation, ethnicity etc. Racial discrimination is a type of discrimination that against peoples on
the basis of their colour, skin or racial or ethnic origin. Persons can discriminate through refusing
to perform business with, meet people with, or share resources by means of people of a certain
group. Yes people from an ethnic face issue of racial or ethnic discrimination that have negative
impact on their productivity and performance level at workplace (Douglass and et. al., 2016).
Minority groups experienced discrimination that depending on their nation of origin. At the
same time as applicants as of Western Europe and the United State were treated just and the
majority group, applicants as of more visible as well as culturally distant minorities for example-
Black Africans and applicants from MENA nations were penalized heavily. Evaluates by gender
reveal that the comparatively positive treatment of applicants as of Western Europe and the
united state is limited to female; for male, it is applicants as of India and East-Asia groups that
are frequently referred to as ‘model minorities, that are on a parity with the mainstream group
(Polanco-Roman, Danies and Anglin, 2016).
Discrimination on the basis of ethnicity have negative and direct affect over productivity
level of employees as it will impact on their mental health. It has been determined that, perceived
discrimination at workplace has a negative effect on both mental as well as physical health of the
workers. Employees who have experienced ethnicity discrimination have superior levels of
psychological distress and also health-related issues than employees who have not. This will
directly impact over productivity of employees in the workplace (Zhuwao and et. al., 2019).
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Douglass, S., Mirpuri, S., English, D. and Yip, T., 2016. “They were just making jokes”:
Ethnic/racial teasing and discrimination among adolescents. Cultural Diversity and
Ethnic Minority Psychology. 22(1). p.69.
Gummadam, P., Pittman, L. D. and Ioffe, M., 2016. School belonging, ethnic identity, and
psychological adjustment among ethnic minority college students. The Journal of
Experimental Education. 84(2). pp.289-306.
Polanco-Roman, L., Danies, A. and Anglin, D. M., 2016. Racial discrimination as race-based
trauma, coping strategies, and dissociative symptoms among emerging
adults. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. 8(5). p.609.
Shahabuddin, M., 2019. Ethnicity. In Concepts for International Law. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Van de Vijver, F. J., 2017. Ethnicity, definitions of. The International Encyclopedia of
Intercultural Communication, pp.1-5.
Wallace, S., Nazroo, J. and Bécares, L., 2016. Cumulative effect of racial discrimination on the
mental health of ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom. American Journal of
Public Health. 106(7). pp.1294-1300.
Zhuwao, S. and et. al., 2019. Gender diversity, ethnic diversity and employee performance in a
South African higher education institution. SA Journal of Human Resource
Management. 17(1). pp.1-8.
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