With all the hard work that you do for your company in Kansas City, one can understand how frustrating you must feel when you are passed over for promotion. That frustration becomes compounded even further as it happens again and again. Pretty soon, you may feel as though you have hit the proverbial “glass ceiling.” Yet how can you tell if that glass ceiling has been placed above you because of your race?
The easiest indicator would be if you begin to see colleagues whose credentials are similar to yours and who work in related positions start to be promoted. If the only difference that exists between you and them is race, then you might have the basis for a claim of racial discrimination. According to The U.S. Civil Rights Act, not only can an employer not discriminate against candidates due to their race in its hiring practices, but it can also not do the same when promoting from within. Yet it may seem as though your employer has an airtight excuse in this situation: It can simply claim that it viewed the candidates that you were competing against for a promotion were simply more qualified. How do you counter such a claim?
Your first step would be to show that you were qualified for promotion, and that the circumstances surrounding your denial of it were questionable (e.g., an apparently less-qualified candidate was chosen, the position went unfilled and/or its listing reopened). After that, observations like the one mentioned before (others in your situation being promoted while you are not) or that your employer gives inconsistent answers when explaining why you did not get the job might be used to help bolster your claim.
