Religious Discrimination on the Rise?
Monday August 23, 2004
Religious discrimination occurs, there's no doubt about it, but is it increasing or decreasing? One would hope that in America at least it would be decreasing - after all, don't Americans pride themselves on their religious liberty? Unfortunately, the liberty isn't always honored by everyone.
Velma Korbel, commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, writes:
The year following the Sept. 11 terror attacks saw a 40 percent increase in charges of discrimination based on religion, which had been increasing every year since 1999. That may not be surprising, given the misguided hostility of some Americans toward Muslims. What might surprise some, however, is that discrimination based on religion has the potential to affect all of us. In 2003, more religious discrimination charges were filed with the Department of Human Rights by those who practice Islam than by followers of any other religion — Muslims filed about 30 percent of all those charges. But Christians came in a close second, representing about 28 percent of all such charges, with followers of Judaism accounting for a little more than 12 percent.
Christians are facing the same kind of discrimination as Muslims? Yes, indeed — just as they and followers of other religions are sometimes the perpetrators of discrimination. A few years ago, at a meat-processing plant in southern Minnesota, a born-again Christian was harassed and taunted on a daily basis because of his religious convictions. His co-workers placed drawings of Satan in his work area, called him a "goody two shoes," and even threw meat at him. When he complained, his boss was unsympathetic, suggesting, "Why don't you go to work for God, not for me?" The Department of Human Rights found that there was probable cause to believe that this born-again Christian had been a victim of illegal discrimination.
Of course, we must keep in mind that Korbel is only giving figures on discrimination charges, not cases where actual discrimination has been found to have occurred. That’s a big difference! I wonder why she doesn’t give those figures — could it be that they don’t show the same trends?
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Comments
The final comments stated in this article are interesting. I’ve done a lot of research lately on the MN Department of Human Rights. The figures that Ms. Korbel’s department state to the public should be strictly scrutinized. It appears as though she inherited a department that was not meeting deadlines and/or whose performance was lacking. One could say she had her work cut out for her. However, in making it “appear” that the department is now at a higher level of performance (browse through legislative auitors’ reports), a true analysis of effective service for the good of the MN public is never made. If one does the math, only about 1/10 of any complaints of discrimination are ever investigated. How can one determine if discrimination actually happened if no investigation is performed. Additionally, wouldn’t it be proper to evaluate the MN Department of Human Rights’ performance by tracking how many cases are dismissed, and of those cases which ones the respondent is then found guilty in civil court in a private lawsuit at the expense of the charging party? If a charging party has to pay money out of their own pocket to get the result the department should get as a public service, the department is not doing its job. It’s just rushing cases through quickly to report high numbers of deadlines met…not fighting to eliminate discrimination…which is its purpose.