Page 364 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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14. LAW AND PSYCHOLOGY
intentional actions—choices—of biased or prejudiced persons that cause
discrimination. Intentional discrimination suggests that once persons
know which behaviors constitute illegal discrimination, all they must do is
choose (i.e., use free will) to avoid them, even though they are prejudiced,
knowing that their resulting behavior will then not be illegal discrimina­
tion. Thus, the logic behind Title VII was that employers would change
their behaviors (i.e., make conscious choices not to discriminate illegally)
because they would be motivated to do so.
The touchstone of the disparate treatment model of discrimination is this
motivational view of behavior and intent. Individuals may be prejudiced
or hostile to racial or other groups, but they can choose not to act on those
behaviors. As long as they make the right choices, discrimination will not
occur. Of course, implicit in this assumption is that individuals must be
consciously aware of their prejudices and hostility and of the ways in which
their biases would tend to influence them. Certainly no individual can act
against a stereotype or prejudice unless he or she is aware of the need to
engage in counteraction.
Early disparate treatment law cases sometimes included direct evidence
of this conscious hostility or intent to discriminate. Because perceivers can
never know what another person actually thinks, the determination of
intent required inferences arising from the other person's behavior. For ex­
ample, in the early case of Slack v. Havens, (1975) four Black women claimed
that they were illegally discharged because of their race when they refused
to perform heavy cleaning duties that were not within their job description.
Another coworker, a White woman, was excused from performing these
duties. Their supervisor, Pohansky, who had ordered the women to do
the heavy work, was known for making statements such as "Colored
people should stay in their places" and "Colored folks are hired to clean
because they clean better " (pp. 1092-1093). The court noted that these state­
ments reflected ill motives for requiring the Black plaintiffs to perform the
heavy cleaning. The statements were taken as "direct evidence" of racial
animus, i.e., conscious intent to discriminate on the basis of race. Under the
law, "direct evidence" suggests that the commentary from Pohansky was
the equivalent of Pohansky telling the women that they were discharged
as a result of their being Black. In other words, he was aware of his preju­
dicial attitudes toward Black persons and consciously treated them differ­
ently as a result. The bad intent caused the illegal discrimination to occur,
supporting a district court decision (later affirmed) for the plaintiffs.
If Pohansky had not made the statements attributed to him, but had
instead told the plaintiffs that they were selected because he truly believed
they cleaned better than the White woman (based on his own observation),
would the result have been the same? He might still have been acting out of