Tesla and the Cost of Racism

Prejudice is not bigotry or racism.

In my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” college course,^1,2 I teach that distinction. I do so because we must know the actual problem that must be managed and who is responsible for that management.

Prejudice is anti-group feelings, and it is prejudice because it is a pre-judgment. No one, you see, can interact with and know a whole group of people.

Bigotry is the behavioral expression of that anti-group prejudice; bigotry is an individual enacting negative word or deed behaviors toward a group based on a person’s group membership.

Racism is institutional or organizational systems (e.g., formal or informal policies) that support and authorize individual bigotry toward members of one or more racial groups.

In our personal, everyday interpersonal interactions, we may be confronted with Person-A’s negative feelings (prejudice) about a group that comes out in Person-A’s verbal or non-verbal behavior. That behavior is bigotry. As individuals, we decide whether to say something supporting or objection to Person-A’s display of bigotry.

However, that same bigotry behavior in the workplace moves the issue from a personal or interpersonal level to a work environment level. At work, if that same behavior is not addressed and prohibited by the employer, that becomes a problem of organizational mismanagement. At the organizational level, giving bigotry a pass is racism or sexism, or religionism.

Coming to recognize this in the wake of the hideous murder of Mr. George Floyd by a police officer, the board of the Webster’s Dictionary pledged to change the definition it gives to the word “racism.” In the past, Webster’s definition made racism a person’s belief or feelings. Now that has been eliminated and changed to be about the “…explicit institutional bias against people because of their race, and, second, a broader implicit bias that can also result in an asymmetrical power structure.”³

Case in point: October 5, 2021, Tesla lost a discrimination court case in Fremont, CA.⁴ At their factory in Fremont, Tesla let some of their workers use racial slurs toward Black employees who felt it as racial harassment, objected to it, and reported racial bigotry to management. Amazingly, Tesla argued that their managers heard the n-word being used but thought it was being used in a “friendly” way.

Friendly? On the face of it, that is not possible because that intergroup language has a history. By its history, the n-word is forever attached to negative feelings (prejudice) about African Americans as a group and violent behavior (bigotry) toward members of that group; lynching, castration, rape, bombings, and assassination.⁵ No one of any color can disprove the continuing relevance of that social-psychological history. No one, not even people with the Black community.⁶

Now Tesla must pay $137 million to their former employee not because Elon Musk is prejudiced. We don’t know anything about Mr. Musk’s feelings about Black people regarding the case. Never was the question about any individual being racially prejudiced. The court ruled that managers did not address the inappropriate racial behavior either in meetings or as a matter of policy. Hence the organization allowed employees to engage in conduct that created a racially hostile work environment.

It turns out, there are equal opportunity laws and statutes that prohibit an organization from creating or allowing for a hostile work environment. Those laws and statutes are derived from the “equal protection” clause of the U.S. Constitution. Our 14th Amendment reads in part that, “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

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A sexually hostile work environment is sexism.

A religiously hostile work environment is religionism.

A racially hostile work environment is racism.

Once any Black employee of Tesla reported their objection to the use of the n-word in their workplace, Tesla had the responsibility to that employee that the equal-protection clause specifies for all people who work for an American company. Once Tesla did not prohibit that bigotry, they indirectly gave organizational support to individual prejudice and bigotry; Tesla was engaged in racism. And that inaction created a social-psychological hostile work environment that will now cost Tesla hundreds of millions of dollars.