Race discrimination in the workplace is not always overt, or even conscious, but judges are always on the alert to spot instances of stereotypical prejudice, as a Court of Appeal ruling strikingly showed.
The case concerned a black photographer who was called into her manager’s office out of the blue and told that she was being dismissed on grounds of redundancy. She immediately alleged that her race was the real reason for her dismissal, but he stridently asserted that that was a vile and entirely unjustified accusation.
Months later, after the photographer had launched Employment Tribunal (ET) proceedings, her manager stated for the first time that the true reason for her dismissal was that he suspected her of stealing stock. He said that he had preferred to give an apparently innocent reason for dispensing with her services – redundancy – in order to minimise any potential confrontation.
In ruling on the matter, the ET found that the manager had protested too much and intimidated the photographer. In awarding her over £27,000 in damages, it described evidence that she was a thief as flimsy and inferred that there was a racial element which had caused or contributed to her dismissal. The employer’s challenge to that decision was later dismissed by the Employment Appeal Tribunal.
In rejecting the employer’s appeal against that outcome, the Court acknowledged that it was a borderline case. However, it noted that the ET would have been well aware that some misguided people do, not always consciously, have prejudices against black people which predispose them to suspect misconduct.
The Court found that the manager’s persistence in lying about the true reason for the photographer’s dismissal was a defensible basis for the ET’s conclusion. If he genuinely believed that she was guilty of theft, he may plausibly have been influenced in reaching that conclusion, so hastily and on so little evidence, by a stereotypical prejudice based on her race.
