Racism

[shootingstar]

I don't know that reporting this to management is the way to go. After all, the feelings aren't illegal, only the actions. Also, I've been down that route once and it wasn't a pretty one. I wound up losing my job; the racist kept hers. I think what I would do in this case is to start a conversation with her, something along the lines of what's been said here: Racism is widespread.

Over the years, a person picks their battles to speak up directly. In other cases, just works with the person ..by being oneself and interacting with the person frequently on a less emotional plane.

In this situation, it is concerning a personal relationship, a possible friendship that soured rapidly but COULD escalate and spill over into the working relationships on the job. At this stage, the real effect is the employee's customer service or lack of to blacks.

Unless windingroad is a supervisor of her friend, she does not have the authority in the workplace to tell her friend/employee that this is not conducive to positive customer relations.

This is why like Duck, i would tend to approach it directly as how windingroad felt, on a personal level. Sometimes it is the most meaningful approach to the person who said negative/racist stuff.
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Each situation at work where there is a incident of racism, depends on the circumstances, parties involved and who has the authority to do something/set the tone for the department and whether or not something should be escalated to human resources, that is if human resources dept. or manager has a track record of listening/acting without harming the whistleblower (like what happened to Duckwheels).

It helps if the company has a written policy of a workplace that is treats one another with respect, and customers as valued etc.

Example #1
When the 9/11 attacks had just occurred in NYC, and we heard news of it, one of the employees in my dept., on that day, said in panicked way, "I hope we stop the Palestinians. I feel like going over there....etc." She was Jewish (short of being Orthodox). She said this to myself (her manager) and another employee working in same dept. I simply said: "You know, some of our Muslim employees may not appreciate what you just said." We all worked for an international firm that was high diverse in its employee composition in Toronto with overseas offices worldwide, including Muslim dominant countries. None of us knew at that time, it was the Taliban involved, etc.

That was all. It was intended as a reminder to her to check her comments. Did I report it to human resources? No. But she no longer made comments. It doesn't mean she might have changed her attitude about Israelis vs. Palestinians.

Example #2
I was told by another manager about a clerk, whom my dept. shared with another dept. Manager confidentially told me, she didn't think, given xxx's command of English, she could learn Microsoft Word and Excel...even though xxx had asked for this type of training so that she could take on wider range of work. xxx was a pleasant Filipino-Canadian who was with firm for 5 years in a low clerical position.

I was perturbed, but said nothing since I was still new to the firm and barely had time to know of this employee's real performance. I knew xxx enjoyed working for our dept. However I could not recommend this training for xxx, since her role in my dept. was limited to a few hrs. per wk. on other priority work. Then manager of other dept., moved to a different position. Replaced with a different manager. New manager did grant Microsoft Word and Excel training to xxxx whereby xxxx blossomed as an employee.

And so many other stories where racism is not just expressed, directly but embedded in attitude without namecalling/racist words but retards development of other employees who demonstrate real potential.