A Black man has filed an employment discrimination lawsuit against a hotel in Detroit, Michigan, alleging the hotel only offered him a job interview after he changed the name on his resume, according to a copy of the lawsuit obtained by CNN.

Dwight Jackson filed the lawsuit against the Shinola Hotel on July 3, alleging he was denied a job when he applied as “Dwight Jackson,” but later offered an interview when he changed his name to “John Jebrowski.”

The lawsuit alleges Jackson was denied a job in “violation of Michigan Elliott Larsen Civil Rights Act.”

  • catbum@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    This is actually really fascinating to me, the idea that citizenship/nationality is a bigger factor in how you feel and that race isn’t a key factor. It tells me maybe society (globally, generally) is getting less plainly racist, but anxieties around nationality (and what that could indicate about individual attitudes and intentions) is obviously rising and taking its place, so racism ends up being obliquely adjacent to the more direct fear of the state. In other words, general society is making progress with being comfortable with people of different races, whereas country of origin becoming more worrying and slowing down progress.

    What a strange disconnect there. We don’t fear individuals, we fear what they represent.

    (I ate a gummy an hour ago tho sooooo I feel like I’m just stating the obvious so … Maybe?)

      • catbum@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Exactly, that’s why I qualified that statement with the terms “generally” across the globe and also distinguished being plainly racist (which I view as hate because of race itself, stereotypes at individual level) from racism that seems to primarily precipitate from fears of or for the state (hate because of the larger stereotyped idealogies or propaganda of that person’s race, whether or not an individual espouses them).

        I am not Black, this is true. I primarily worked my hypothesis out from a purportedly Chinese person saying they wouldn’t trust the hiring of people from China. Now, their comment does seem to have a racist component. I don’t know to what levels internalized racism is related to geopolitical fears, but if we consider that this Chinese person is likely not racist to themselves, e.g. hating their individual attributes, we can assume that they are not wary of the Chinese person for being Chinese. Their mistrust in the state makes them so wary they can’t even be supportive of hiring people from China, in what I assume is the US. It seems like racism is only secondary to the primary fear of the state (or some geopolitical facet), the racism coming from a position of self-preservation rather than overt hate of the race.

        Fear is going to be the death of us.

        Also, I am high and pretty sure I just took the scenic route in describing xenophobia. Shit tits.

          • catbum@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            And it sounds like you are still overlooking all of the qualifiers and nuance in my nonscholarly, inebriated statements. In neither post did I assert “society is not racist.”

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      4 months ago

      I think it’s not that.

      Just when you are a member of a minority, communicating to others of the same minority feels weird.

      Along patriotic lines - either you are a bit less real than them, or they than you, first.

      Second, more importantly, among certain minorities some people trust “their own” more for business, employment, anything, and thus there are scams based purely on that.

      Third, with people of a bit different background you are more eager to give some benefit or doubt or something when they show their personal downsides, with people of “your” group those downsides are much more infuriating and there’s a fallacy of presuming you understand them better.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        thus there are scams based purely on that.

        There absolutely are. The ownership of the company I work for is of a particular nationality, and every single time we have been given counterfeit bills as payment it has been from another member of said nationality, which the owner thinks is one of his “buddies.”

        Every time.

        And it’s usually those same guys trying to rip us off in other ways, too. I keep telling him that these motherfuckers are trying to take him for a ride about 75% of the time and it’s plainly visible from an outside perspective, but he won’t hear it. They’re his countrymen. (No, I won’t say which nationality.)

        • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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          4 months ago

          You won’t, but being Armenian (EDIT: by heritage, but not so much by immersion, so especially prone to meeting such attempts), I’d guess they are either Armenian or Georgian or maybe Jewish.