Racial discrimination between UK and USA Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4750 words

Racial discrimination between UK and USA - Essay Example It is unlawful for an employer to discriminate against a potential employee on the grounds of race, colour, nationality, or ethnic or national origins, which the Act calls collectively 'racial grounds'. Discrimination may be unfavourable treatment of an applicant for a job, offering less favourable terms of employment than other persons might expect or simply refusing a person's application.Discrimination may occur once a person is actually in employment, through lack of opportunities for promotion, transfer and training, refusal of benefits or facilities normally available to an employee, or unreasonable dismissal. It was not until the 1960s that race became a major public issue in British politics. It was, however over the issue of 'immigration', which became the focus of attention rather than the question of racial equality. In the eighteen months before the passage of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 over 200,000 black immigrants had arrived in Britain almost as many as in th e five years 1955 to 1960 and marginally fewer than black immigrants entering the country between July 1962 and the end of 1967. This period was marked by a sharp shift in public opinion towards immigration. In 1962, a few months before the passage of the Act, 62 per cent of the public favored controls and 23 percent favored free entry but by April 1968 the corresponding figures were 95 per cent and 1 per cent respectively. While the diversity of reasons for this shift in public opinion has been well documented 2, one constant theme has been, in the politics of race in Britain, the search by political leaders from the major parties to depoliticise this issue by papering over party differences 3. By the 1960s both major parties subscribed to the view that immigration should be controlled because immigrants placed great strain on employment and housing. It was only the Labour Party, 'albeit' with substantial ambivalence, which supported the idea of anti-discrimination legislation. By the time that Britain's first civil rights law, the Race Relations Act 1965, had been passed, for many, blacks had become synonymous with immigrants. Moreover prior to the Local Government Act of 1966 (Section 11) the general laissez-faire attitude of Central and Local Government meant that virtually nothing had been done to cater for the problems that many immigrants experienced in housing, employment and education. As Burney 4 observed, in the absence of Central Government direction and incentives, many local authorities, frequently in areas of high immigration and Labour controlled, behaved as though blacks did not exist: 'most Labour controlled councils made a habit of resolutely ignoring imm igration, to the extent of, wherever possible, ignoring immigrants'. So far as access to housing was recognised as an issue of concern in relation to ethnic minorities, a resolutely colour-blind approach was advocated whereby the real need was perceived to be to alleviate the housing shortage and to provide for those in greatest need. There should be no attempt to discriminate positively in favour of such minorities to remove the racial disadvantage, which they had experienced 5. At the time of the 1965 Race Relations Act the majority of blacks resident in the United Kingdom were immigrants and were likely to experience or to have experienced difficulties in the following areas: Problems associated with settlement and establishment. Differences in the dominant form of household structure and size being met by shortage