Office notebook. The letter of racist remarks received by Karim Rissouli at his home on Tuesday, June 25, should serve as a warning to all those likely to fight against the trivialization of racist speech at work. Because it was first at work that the France 5 journalist received insults: “This is not the first time I have received this kind of insult. It happens to me regularly at the office. We often laugh about it, among colleagues, it’s a way of defusing the situation.”, he testifies in his interview given to the online media Raw. But “When it happens at home, there is a higher form of violence”.
Racist expression is not an opinion. It is an offence, even a crime when it is public:‘public insult of a discriminatory nature’ is punishable by one year of imprisonment and a fine of 45,000 euros. The stakes are high: in 2023, the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights recorded 5,000 racist, xenophobic or anti-religious offences, and 8,500 crimes or offences, up 32% over one year, according to the CNCDH report published on June 27.
Beyond simply respecting the law, it is a question of combating violence that has a lasting effect on employees and harms the company, whether it is carried out by customers, suppliers or colleagues. In his essay Everyday Racism at Work (Editions Erès, 192 pages, 18 euros), Psychologist Marie-France Custos-Lucidi describes the damage caused by little phrases like “I don’t understand you” repeatedly addressed to a mixed-race employee by her manager. This is neither humorous nor harmless, but an act of pure violence committed, in this case, to establish a relationship of domination. How can the company protect employees from this?
” It is not normal “
Approved by a recent court decisionEnedis for example terminated the employment contract of an employee who had said to a colleague: “I don’t shake hands with black people.” Outrageous remarks equated with serious facts “which have an impact on the health and safety of employees”, the employer pointed out to the one who was defending himself from having said them “for the purpose of joking.”
The discriminatory mechanism – received idea, stereotype, prejudice, discrimination – particularly insidious in relationships of subordination specific to the workplace can however be stopped before the sanction. “For both the manager and the employee, prevention involves intervention on the choice of words both to identify violence and to not let anything slip through. Because underhand violence in the workplace involves a distortion of language,” explains sociologist Thomas Périlleux, author of Raw work (Editions Erès, 2023, 280 pages).
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