sociology | Case study Report 1

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Sociology
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1SOCIOLOGY
Introduction
The term cultural diversity is often used as the concept of multiculturalism can be defined
as the existence of various culture as well as ethnic groups within a society or community.
Multiculturalism can be defined as a system of beliefs as well as behaviours that recognizes as
well as respects the presence of all diverse groups in a society or organization. It also includes
acknowledgement as well as valuing the socio-cultural differences along with encouraging a well
as enabling their continued contribution within an inclusive cultural context that empowers all
within the society (Deitch et al., 2013). Two of the major factors that are responsible for Lack of
cultural competence amongst individuals include racism and prejudice. In the following
discussion, I will be describing a instance where one of my friends had got victimized of racism
by her colleagues.
Part 1 – Describe your experience:
In this paragraph, I am going to describe the experience of one of my Muslim colleague
Sahiba, who worked with me in my previous organization, got discriminated in our workplace
and ultimately resigned her job due to continuous discrimination against her. Considering the
fact that I worked in was a multinational organization, a good number of employees from
different parts of the world used to work there. Sahiba was a Muslim employee who was from
Arab. Being a devout Muslim, she used to wear hijab. Our branch manager, John, was the
superior of Sahiba. His confirmation bias interpreted the quit, patient and introvert nature of
Sahiba as indications of passive behaviour, lack of communication skill and lack of efficiency.
He interpreted that Sahiba possess only adequate competencies to perform. However, the other
employees of the organization including me were aware of excellent problem solving skills as

2SOCIOLOGY
well as initiatives taken by her for the team project. She was viewed by the employees as a
pragmatic, resourceful as well as respected peer. When John was given the positive feedback
about Sahiba, he interpreted it as the effort of the team to be protective of Sahiba’s nature rather
than representative.
Due to his prejudiced thought he stated that “Muslim women are oppressed and ductile.”
His tone during staff meeting was highly patronizing towards Sahiba which initially confused her
and eventually resulted in minimizing her interaction during meeting. The unthoughtful and
stereotype comments of the branch manager, John used to make her feel uncomfortable, irritated
and lowered her job satisfaction in the workplace (Wrench, 2016). Things got worse when during
her appraisal time he was given lower apprise. John’s unchecked bias results in mediocre and
unrepresentative performance evaluations for Sahiba. Highly demoralized, Sahiba mailed her
resignation letter in the same date and left the job.
Being one of her good friend apart from colleague, the racial discrimination of John
against Sahiba made me feel highly irritated from the very first day. As per my opinion, it is
highly crucial for all the employees to be culturally competent in the workplace. Especially when
it comes to leaders, being the individual whose responsibility is to show the way to the
employees, mangers need to have high cultural competence and demonstrate the same. Hence, I
believe that it was not Sahiba, but John who lacked the efficiency to be a culturally competent
employee. The action taken by me as a culturally competent employee was to communicate with
Sahiba and provide her with mental support in adverse situations.
Part 2 – Examine your experience